According to Jay Smith of Pollstar, when it comes to the Top 50 Worldwide Tours, Bon Jovi was the top earner.
Bon Jovi grossed $142.1 million. With an average ticket price of $95.60, the band played 60 shows in 58 cities, sold a total 1,486,726 tickets and achieved an average gross of $2,450,476 per show.
Another New Jersey act captured second place. With an average ticket price of $107.19, Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band’s total tickets sold was 969,504 for 31 shows in 21 cities. The group’s average show gross was $4,948,700 for a total gross of $103.9 million.
A total gross of $87.7 million was enough to put The Rolling Stones in the No. 3 position on Pollstar’s Top 100 Worldwide Tours chart while the same figures enabled the band to capture the top slot on our Top 100 North American tours. Sporting a heart-stopping average ticket price of $346.09, the original bad boys of rock played 18 shows in 11 cities, grossed an average of $7,969,276 per show and sold 253,296 tickets overall.
Taylor Swift followed the Stones in North America, capturing the No. 2 position with a $58.5 million total gross. Ms. Swift earned her money by doing 37 shows in 27 cities, averaging $85.11 per ticket and $2,164,879 per show.
Fleetwood Mac appearing in the third position on Pollstar’s mid-year North American Tours reminds us that the band’s absence from the concert stage only fueled fans’ desires to hear those classic songs performed live one more time. Scoring a total gross of $58.1 million during the first six months of the year, the band played 42 shows in 42 cities with an average ticket price of $107.80, resulting in an average per-show gross of $1,383,333.
But the above figures, while fun to show & tell, merely offer a peak at the concert industry’s past six months. What you really need to do is feast your eyes on all the data contained within Pollstar’s Top 100 Worldwide and North American Tour charts.
source: pollstar.com
31 Responses
That list blew my mind! Heavy Metal and Hard Rock is basically dead. Certainly the live draw is. Bon Jovi isn’t what I’d call hard rock or heavy metal. The top hard rock band in the list was Motley Crue, and they are only drawing an average of 3.492 people per show. Next up is Rush at #69. Then Def Leppard at #96. Country, Cirque De Solay and even comedians are doing better business than heavy metal or hard rock. At least the Cirque guys and gals risk their lives every night! I give them some credit.
But bands should be lining up to kiss Eddie Trunk’s you know what, cause he’s the only one keeping it alive. I also give credit to Ted Nugent/Styx/Reo for keeping their ticket prices down. They also did pretty good. But in terms of a serious concert draw, hard rock is a shell of its former glory. Bottom line is that style of music appeals most to younger people, the oldsters grow out of it. Young people can’t afford it. Dead, dead, dead.
metal never dies it just goes underground
Mainstream metal isn’t dead–Metallica’s tour in support of their next album will be huge. If the big 4 ever got their shit together, they could really sell some tickets (certainly in the US). I’ve found as of late, metal has gone small stage (club shows), which is great for fans–we get to see great bands in small venues–but the money simply isn’t there for the artists.
I’m finding newcomers to the metal scene are really no good at all–they are simply cliches (Halestorm being a perfect example). I saw them play at the Golden God Award show–if this is the future of metal, we’re up the creek without a paddle. These people were simply going through the motions–dressing up and pretending to be “angry”. What a joke….
EDM was underground. Electronic dance music is filling venues and festivals. If metal was underground you wouldn’t be hearing it on the radio but it’d be filling stadiums and halls. It’s barely in the Top 200 grossing tours! Pathetic. So what if Metallica and the big 4 tour – that’ll be a total of 5 heavy/hard bands/tours in the Top 200!!! That ain’t good. And you’re talking 4 of the biggest bands around needing to join forces. It’s dead. It’ll be like Big Band music was. Us old geezers will be talking about the days of metal. Hey, “Remember when Judas Priest toured small halls with Scorpions and Def Leppard opening in 1980? Yeah man, what about the 1981 tour when Iron Maiden and Whitesnake opened? Ha ha.
I get a kick listening to Eddie’s callers asking about some obscure or low level metal band. You know – “Uh, hey Eddie, what’s going on with Angelwitch?” or something like that. The top ones barely sell tickets! Lesser bands couldn’t fill a club.
Matt has a point. A lot of the new bands seem angry, and tough and all, but that’s not what the music is really about. The songs just aren’t there in my humble opinion.
I agree 100%. Everything sounds re-hashed. I’ve heard every lick before, and done better by the originators. Guitarists need to stop worrying about playing so fast and start writing better material. The level of instrumental proficiency is tremendous out there now, but it comes with a huge price.
I think Eddie Trunk, for lack of a better comparison, will wind up being the Lawrence Welk of heavy rock/heavy metal when he’s in his 60s and 70s.
I was lucky enough to be a photographer when the Gigantour rolled into town last week. All the bands sounded great–Newsted, Hellyeah, Black Label Society and Megadeth. So sad they played a venue that could have held 10,000. Even with a GA floor, the place was only half full. I also found it interesting that Megadeth came on stage looking more preppy than metal. As a side note, you can view my pictures at http://www.RockShotsPhoto.com
Nice job with the photos!
I think some of you guys are crying in your beer for no reason. Remember this is Pollstar’s info that they’ve been able to get. This is also just the first half of this year. How many major Metal tours were out there during that time period? KISS/Crue did very well last year, Metallica did very well, GNR the same. Rob Zombie, Alice Cooper, Def Leppard, etc. all toured extensively in 2012 and did very well. I’m just happy that rock n roll still was at the top in 2013 (Stones, Fleetwood Mac, Bon Jovi). Even if it’s not metal, at least guitars are still at the top over boy bands and lipsynchers.
I hear you. But if there was money to be made, the bands would be out there touring. If promoters don’t want to fill Pollstar in, there will be suspicions. Promoters and people that book shows aren’t stupid, they know who’s doing what out there. The few bands like Def Leppard that seem to tour every year are going to hit the skids, like Aerosmith. The market can only take so much and Bon Jovi is finding that out now. I’d love to see Aerosmith now that they’re playing at such a high level, but I ain’t paying $100 a ticket. Sorry.
Can’t disagree with you John, and respect your opinion. But bands can’t just tour and tour and tour. Eventually fans won’t show up. If Bon Jovi tried to tour this extensively all the time, they’d be playing theaters eventually. I agree most of these bands must tour to earn money. But as we grow up our spending dollars need to go elsewhere (to your comment about $100 for Aerosmith. My point is, at 44 years old, I am a true metal head, been one since the 70’s when I saw KISS in ’77. Can’t tell you how many shows (good and terrible) I’ve been to in the past 35 years. This year alone I’ve seen Maiden, KISS, VH, and Megadeth. I passed on some other metal acts. But with a wife and 2 kids, I also spent money on Sarah Brightman, Cirque du Soleil, and will be seeing Paul McCartney in a month. So almost half my ticket budget went to non metal concerts. On Pollstar’s list there is a huge selection of genre’s on it and its not dominated by one single genre. Metal dominated in late 70’s and 80’s. It came back in the late 90’s and again in the 21st Century. Its not going to come back forever though because our heroes are going to die or retire unfortunately. We lost Dio and even the unkillable Lemmy is having issues. So I’m going to enjoy the metal now – cause the version of metal I like won’t be here forever. God bless the new metal bands, but it ain’t my thing.