'Hot' rumor under fire

PROVO — Organizers of this year's Stadium of Fire are attempting to quell a hot-running rumor that the show is sold out.

"We heard rumors that when we got Taylor Hicks, ticket sales went so fast that they sold out," said Taylor Macdonald, executive director of America's Freedom Foundation, which hosts the show. "That is simply not true."

Officials at BYU's ticket office also are battling reports that a computer glitch caused the Internet site to tell would-be ticket buyers that the show was sold-out.

"There was no computer glitch," said Clark Livsey, a ticket office manager. "It's just how the computer was processing orders. If a customer wanted to buy tickets in a section that was sold out, it would take them to the next best available seats."

It may have caused some confusion, he said, but "it was never a glitch."

Stadium of Fire chairman Brad Pelo said event planners might even decide to add more seats on the field to accommodate the high numbers expected to attend.

That news came Thursday after the announcement that Freedom Blast, a concert-and-fireworks show also planned for July 1 at Rice-Eccles Stadium at University of Utah, has been canceled. That show's headliner was country music group Sugarland.

Pelo said any tickets purchased for the Freedom Blast can be exchanged for tickets to Stadium of Fire.

"We don't want to see anyone out there who has planned their Independence Day celebrations around Freedom Blast to be left out there trying to reorganize their plans," he said. "We certainly don't gloat in this at all. We want people to know they are welcome."

Macdonald declined to release the exact number of tickets sold so far but said there are still good seats left in the $35 sections.

The Freedom Foundation is promoting the July 1 event more heavily than usual this year, even asking folks in Utah County to put up lawn signs advertising the event.

Billboards around the state also promote the line-up — Hicks, this year's "American Idol"; country singer Lee Ann Womack; and Raven Symone, star of Disney's "That's So Raven."

Stadium of Fire, the capstone event of America's Freedom Festival at Provo, is competing against several big acts, including Tim McGraw, 311, Ben Harper and Red Hot Chili Peppers, to name a few, and that may play a part in how people choose to spend their concert dollars.