Konsertti oli loppuunmyyty, mutta meillä oli liput.

Loppuunmyyty means sold out.

It is a compound word:

• loppuun = to the end / completely
• myyty = sold (from myydä, to sell)

So the literal idea is something like sold completely to the end, which Finnish uses for sold out.

Finnish often forms this kind of idea as one compound word, so writing loppuunmyyty as one word is normal.

Because Finnish normally needs a finite verb in a full clause, just like English does. Here that verb is oli, the past tense of olla (to be).

So:

• Konsertti = the concert
• oli = was
• loppuunmyyty = sold out

Together: The concert was sold out.

Without oli, the sentence would be incomplete in standard Finnish.

Because there are two clauses, and each clause has its own verb:

• Konsertti oli loppuunmyyty
• mutta meillä oli liput

The word mutta means but, and it joins two complete statements. Each of those statements needs its own finite verb, so oli appears in both parts.

Finnish usually does not use a separate verb like English to have for basic possession. Instead, it uses:

• olla = to be
• the possessor in the adessive case

So meillä oli liput is literally something like at us were tickets, but the natural English meaning is we had tickets.

This is a very common Finnish pattern:

• Minulla on auto = I have a car
• Meillä oli liput = We had tickets

Meillä is the adessive form of me (we).

The adessive often has meanings like on, at, or with, depending on context. In possession sentences, it marks the possessor.

So:

• me = we
• meillä = on us / at our place / with us

In this sentence, meillä is the form that allows Finnish to express we had.

Liput is the nominative plural of lippu (ticket). In this sentence, it refers to a definite or complete set in context: the tickets / tickets that we had.

If you said lippuja, that would be the partitive plural, which often gives the sense of some tickets or an unspecified quantity.

So the contrast is roughly:

• Meillä oli liput = We had the tickets / we had tickets as a complete set
• Meillä oli lippuja = We had some tickets

Because Finnish has no articles, the exact English translation depends on context.

Finnish does not have articles like English a, an, or the.

That means:

• konsertti can mean a concert or the concert
• liput can mean tickets or the tickets

The context tells you which English article makes sense. In this sentence, English naturally uses the concert and tickets or the tickets, depending on the situation.

Yes, Finnish word order is more flexible than English word order, but changing it usually changes the emphasis.

The neutral order here is:

• Konsertti oli loppuunmyyty, mutta meillä oli liput.

That sounds natural and straightforward.

You can change word order for emphasis, but learners should usually stick to the basic version first. For example, moving liput earlier could put more focus on the tickets themselves. Finnish allows that, but it is not the default form.

Usually it simply means we had tickets in the general sense: we possessed them, had bought them, or had access to them.

Whether the tickets were physically with us depends on context. If you specifically want to say that you had them on you, Finnish often adds something like mukana:

• Meillä oli liput mukana = We had the tickets with us

So the original sentence does not strongly force the idea of physical possession; it just says that we had tickets.