Iron Maiden Plays Costa Rica March 3

The offshore sportsbook, casino and online poker sector will have something to celebrate come March 3 as Iron Maiden arrives in Costa Rica for what is being billed as a "monster concert".  More than half the online gambling sector operates from the Central American nation of Costa Rica.

Put on by the same uber concert promoter that brought the country Latin heartthrob Alejandro Sanz, Sting, the Black Eyed Peas and more recently Placido Domingo, Iron Maiden may be the biggest draw yet.  That's because heavy metal and 80's music in particular is still widely played on radio by college age men and women.  It is more a staple than the salsa music typically played in other Latin American nations.

Iron Maiden is a pioneer of the New Wave of British Heavy Metal movement.  They first rose to fame in the early 1980s, and after several lineup changes, they went on to release a string of platinum and gold albums. These include the US platinum-selling landmark The Number of the Beast in 1982 and the follow up Piece of Mind in 1983. Iron Maiden released their newest studio effort in 2006 entitled A Matter of Life and Death peaked at number nine on the Billboard 200 and was certified gold in the UK.

As one of the most commercially successful heavy metal bands of all time, Iron Maiden have sold more than 70 million albums worldwide  without significant mainstream or radio support. The band won the Ivor Novello Awards for international achievement in 2002, and were also inducted into the Hollywood RockWalk in Sunset Boulevard, Los Angeles County, California during their tour in the United States in 2005. Their influences include Thin Lizzy, UFO, Deep Purple, Uriah Heep and Wishbone Ash.

Iron Maiden were ranked #24 in VH1's "100 Greatest Artists of Hard Rock.  The band were ranked fourth on MTV's "Top 10 Greatest Heavy Metal Bands of All Time  Iron Maiden were named the third best metal band of all time on VH1 Classic: Top 20 Metal Bands  The band also won the Ivor Novello Award for international achievement in 2002.  The band was also inducted into the Hollywood RockWalk during their tour in the United States in 2005.

The Costa Rica concert is part of the final leg of an extensive world wide tour entitled "Somewhere Back in Time". The setlist for the tour consists of hits from the 80s, with a specific focus on the Powerslave era for set design. The tour started in Mumbai, India on February 1, 2008 where the band played to an audience of about 30,000.

The Estadio Alejandro Morera Soto venue in Costa Rica, where the concert will take place, will be selling 25,000 tickets.  Nearly all the shows on the tour have been sellouts.