THE first ticket allocation for the 2018 Port Fairy Folk Festival has sold out inside 24 hours.
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Online ticket sales opened at 6am on Friday with half of the 11,000 public tickets up for offer.
By 11pm, all tickets had been snapped up.
The first allocation was open to only festival subscribers.
The second batch of tickets will go on sale at midnight this Thursday and will be open to all members of the public.
Port Fairy Folk Festival ticketing manager Shane Lenehan said it was exciting to have such a big response.
“We sold 1000 tickets in the first seven minutes,” Mr Lenehan said.
“We had previously done the first allocation on a Sunday night but we thought we would try something different and it has worked out well.
“Last year our first allocation went into the second day. The quickest is still the 40th in 2016 when the first allocation went in 13 hours.”
There are five ticket allocation periods planned with the price rising slightly with each one. A ticket for the first allocation was $240 while the second will be $260, the third $280 and the fourth $300.
The fifth allocation is a gate price of $310 but that is highly unlikely to come into play with all tickets almost certain to be sold prior to the start of the festival.
Mr Lenehan said the demand for tickets was a big tick for the festival’s program director Caroline Moore, who had her first year in the role in 2017 after taking over from festival founder Jamie McKew.
“It says a lot about the type of program Caroline produced this year and what she has planned for 2018,” Mr Lenehan said.
“It carries on from the work done by Jamie. People know it is going to be a great festival.
“They know they will have some old favourites but also find some new acts to fall in love with. There is certainly something at Port Fairy that you don’t get anywhere else.”
The first batch of performers announced for the festival included Mental As Anything and Steve Poltz.
On Monday, the festival released its second lot of artists which includes Amistat, Ben Waters Band with Derek Nash, Black Sorrows, Blair Dunlop, Davidson Brothers, Frank Burkitt Band, Lily & King, Peter Rowan Bluegrass Band, Rory Ellis Trio, Ted Egan and Victoriana Gaye.
The festival will be held on the weekend of March 9-12.
