U2 Rules The Net - Pollstar News

Not only did U2’s Pasadena show break YouTube viewing records, but demand was so high for passes to the band’s free Berlin gig that the server belonging to the company handling the freebie distribution crashed.

Photo: Debbie VanStory / RockinExposures.com

Rose Bowl, Pasadena, Calif.

U2 streamed Sunday’s sold-out at Pasadena’s Rose Bowl Oct. 25 on YouTube. Unofficial estimates earlier this week put viewership in the millions.

YouTube now has some hard data to go with those estimates. According to the video site, nearly 10 million plopped down at their computers and watched Bono and Co. Sunday evening.

The rebroadcast also did pretty well, scoring more than 1.1 million viewers.

Photo: AP Photo

Rose Bowl, Pasadena, Calif.

Evidently YouTube’s servers handled the load without any problems. Too bad the same can’t be said for Eventim.

The German ticket service handled the distribution of free tickets for U2’s free Nov. 5 show at Berlin’s Brandenburg Gate where the band will do a four-song set.

However, demand for the 10,000 tickets was, well, what you’d expect for a free U2 gig, and at one point Eventim’s server crashed from the excessive traffic.

But Eventim recovered from the crash and went on to distribute all tickets in just three hours.

The concert is a tribute to the fall of the Berlin Wall 20 years ago on Nov. 9, 1989, and takes place on the same day as the MTV Europe Music Awards show in the German capital.