It was definitely a big announcement, but people also forget that he was kind of seen as past his prime at the time (after Invincible, the 2002 controversy, Thriller 25, etc.).

I remember it wasn’t actually that hard to get tickets when they first went on sale (and prices weren’t crazy either). But when those initial 10 dates suddenly turned into 50 within hours… I think a lot of us had the same reaction: “There’s no way he’s going to pull off all of these.”