Some 160,000 tickets for U2's Croke Park concerts this summer went on sale at 8 a.m. in Dublin this morning.
Unprecedented demand to see the band perform to a home crowd is expected to ensure they are quickly sold out.
According to Justin Green, spokesman for promoter, MCD, demand for the tickets will be unparalleled.
"The reaction to this tour has been unprecedented, we have never seen anything like this before."
The tickets for the Irish leg of the Vertigo world tour are priced at €59.50, €70, and €80. The promoters are hoping to arrange a third concert.
The Vertigo tour has sold out at each venue throughout the world as soon as tickets became available. In Britain, 260,000 tickets were sold within hours of them becoming available.
In Brussels, 53,000 tickets were sold in less than four hours. In the US, 370,000 tickets have been sold for the gigs there.
However, sales have been marred by a controversy surrounding the pre-selling of some tickets that were offered to subscribers to the band's website.
Even though they only became officially available at 8 a.m. today, pre-sold tickets were already being offered last night for both the June 24th and 25th dates in Croke Park. One British website was offering seated tickets for €335 each.
The band has asked fans to report resellers. "Some of these touts have posed as genuine U2 fans, taken out a subscription and bought tickets in the pre-sale only to readvertise them for huge sums," said U2's website.
Drummer Larry Mullen, apologised to the fans.
"There was a mess up in the way the tickets were distributed," he admitted in an open letter published on the website. Tickets can be bought on credit-card lines - (Republic 0818 719 300 / Northern Ireland 0870 243 44 55 / International +3531 4 569 569) and are available in person at Ticketmaster agents nationwide.
Online purchases can be made at www.ticketmaster.ie