Ronan Keating live in Dubai

Visa will be presenting the Dubai tour and once again Mirage Promotions will be working with Visa Ticketline and ibuytickets.com as the preferred ticket vendors. Both mediums were recently launched in Dubai and they now provide residents in the UAE to purchase tickets via credit card both on line and via over the telephone.

In addition Mirage Promotions and Visa Ticketline have taken up the services of M-Code and launched a major SMS competition to further promote the concert. Participants simply have to text Ronan to the four digit number: 4808. Within second callers will receive a reply message advising them if they have won a prize - with over a 1,000 prizes to be won there are prizes for virtually 15 messages received.

"We see this medium as a highly valuable marketing tool," comments Thomas Ovesen, General Manager of Mirage Promotions. "As well as providing sponsors with a unique medium to communicate with potential customers, the fact that participants give their consent assures us that they are interested in the event and that we are not in danger of offending mobile phone users with unsolicited sms broadcasts.

Furthermore this is the first time that premium billing SMS messaging has been used in conjunction with a concert in the UAE and we are very optimistic about the future opportunities it offers.

In terms of audience size, we are expecting a crowd in excess of 3,500 here in Dubai. Ronan Keating has proved to be one of the best selling western artistes in the region and his popularity spreads across audiences of all ages and nationalities.