Fans desperate to watch Scottish singer Paolo Nutini live on the Isle of Man have been warned that tickets could be voided if they fall foul of the Villa Marina’s re-sale policy.
Earlier this week, the chart-topping musician announced he will be appearing live at the Royal Hall at Douglas’s Villa Marina on Friday, August 2.
Tickets for the intimate concert went on sale at 9am on Wednesday and sold out in less than half an hour due to phenomenal demand.
Sales were limited to ‘strictly’ six per transaction with customers paying up to £60 a pop for the privilege of seeing the New Shoes singer live on the island.
Many fans who missed out on tickets took to social media to share their frustration after news broke that that the event had sold out.
One said they’d joined the virtual queue to buy tickets at 6.30am on Wednesday - two and a half hours before they went on sale - and still ended-up empty handed.
The demand to see the show has led desperate fans to turn to social media in a bid to source second-hand tickets for the gig.
But a spokesperson for the VillaGaiety, which is based at the Villa Marina, urged would-be concert goers to be wary of buying tickets for non-official sources, saying the venue operates a ‘strict re-sale policy,’ which could see buyers refused entry to the concert.
In a statement issued online on Wednesday, the spokesperson said: ‘Where a ticket is offered for resale, the ticket holder must provide to the buyer full details of the ticket.
‘If a ticket is re-sold or transferred for profit or commercial gain by anyone other than DESC (Department of Education, Sport and Culture), hirer or one of their authorised sub-agents, it will become voidable and the ticket holder may be refused entry to the venue without refund.
‘We kindly request that ticket holders refrain from re-selling and instead get in touch with us at 694500 if you are no longer able to attend a sold-out event you have purchased a ticket for.’
Paolo Nutini is an Ivor Novello Award winning musician has a number of hit singles to his name, including Pencil Full of Lead and Last Request.
He shot to fame in 2006 with the release of his album These Streets which has since been certified quintuple platinum by the British Phonographic Industry.
In 2022, he released his fourth album Last Night In The Bittersweet which went straight to number one in the UK album chart.
That record became Nutini’s third consecutive number one album and contained the singles Through The Echoes, Lose It and Petrified In Love
Ahead of the tickets going on sale on Wednesday, the Villa Marina announced it would operate a virtual queuing system.
A notice on the Villa Gaiety website said that any customers logging into the site before tickets went on sale at 9am would be allocated a ‘random’ place in the virtual queue to ‘ensure no-one gets an unfair advantage.’