England’s Ed Sheeran breaks Dire Straits’ ticket sales record

Singer Ed Sheeran has just outsold Dire Straits’ record-breaking Brother in Arms tour of 32 years ago.

English singer Ed Sheeran at Perth’s Optus Stadium. Picture: Colin Murty

The ascent of the world’s biggest-selling recording artist of 2017 continues in Australia where 27-year-old Ed Sheeran has just outsold Dire Straits’ record-breaking Brothers in Arms tour of 1986.

In Dunedin later this month, the equivalent of the city’s entire population of 125,000 will see his show over three nights.

At Perth’s new Optus Stadium yesterday, where Sheeran’s 18-show stadium tour starts tonight, the English singer-songwriter acknowledged Australia as a significant part of his commercial success. “I do actually think it’s my biggest market, that and Ireland,” he said.

Veteran Melbourne music promoter Michael Gudinski stood alongside Sheeran as he spoke, wielding a champagne bottle and a giant smile. He said more than a million tickets had been sold for the Australian and New Zealand tour, 32 years after Dire Straits sold 950,000 tickets on their tour of the two nations.

“We’ve taken Abba out, we’ve taken Dire Straits out,” Gudinski told Sheeran. “You are a gift.”

Sheeran’s third album Divide earned him the best pop solo performance Grammy last year for the single Shape of You. He is well aware fans are coming to hear his hits the way they know them.

He said he once received good advice that all his fans wanted to do was “have one big singalong” with him.

“All people want to do is be entertained, they don’t want to hear a song in the way you want to do it or hear like a new song, they just want to be entertained with the songs they know,” he said.

“It’s a very very paint by numbers thing. The show differs every night but the songs people want to hear they will hear and people will come away going. ‘oh cool he played all the songs I wanted to hear’.”

But Sheeran has thought about what his next challenge might be, including whether to add a backing band to his shows.

“I wouldn’t mind getting a band but I would only get a band if the show could be better than the show I have now,” he said.

“Like there would be no point getting it just for the sake of ... just because someone tells you that you have to do something doesn’t mean you have to do it if it doesn’t move you forward.’’