Concert industry experts generally thought 2024 would be a down year – or at least less busy than 2023, when Taylor Swift and Beyoncé catapulted the industry to new heights and challenged its staff to keep up with its explosive growth .
But so far, 2024 hasn't been much of a rest for the weary. The touring business enters the summer fueled by record-breaking mid-year concert revenue, according to Billboard Boxscore.
At mid-year, revenue for the top 10 entries on the Top Tours chart totaled $1.5 billion, up 83% from last year's figure of $814.9 million. This is the first time the combined gross of the top 10 tours has surpassed $1 billion at the halfway point. Last year, only two tours – Elton John and Harry Styles – had grossed more than $100 million by mid-year. This year, eight of them have.
Topping the chart period, which ran from October 1, 2023 to March 30, 2024, is U2, who opened the new Sphere venue in Las Vegas with a residency that earned $231.6 million from 38 shows in that period. (U2's full 40-date Sphere run grossed $244.5 million, although the first two shows, on September 29 and September 30, were held just before the start of the chart period.)
On the strength of her fall North American tour along with February and March dates in Oceania, P!nk ranks second midway through the year with $196 million in grosses from 42 shows. At No. 3, Madonna scored 67 of her 80 Celebration tour dates during the period and earned $190.6 million for a No. 3 spot (the trek ended in early May). Rounding out the chart's top 10 are three Latin acts (Luis Miguel, RBD, and Enrique Iglesias, Pitbull and Ricky Martin), three pop and rock acts (Coldplay, Depeche Mode and the Eagles) and Travis Scott, the only hip-hop artist . chart-topper, who grossed $96 million from 44 North American shows on his Circus Maximus tour — marking the rapper's first outing since 2021's deadly Astroworld festival.
The big revenue gain for the chart period's top-grossing tours during the slowest half of the year is further evidence that — driven largely by international growth in Asia, South America and Australia — the concert has increasingly become a year-round business.
Topping the interim chart of top promoters with $2.8 billion in revenue is Live Nation, which has long championed steady, incremental international growth. Its main competitor, AEG — No. 2 on Top Promoters with $976.8 million in revenue — produced Taylor Swift's ongoing The Eras tour through its partnership with Messina Touring Group and also continued to expand its global footprint. Swift did not mention the dates of her The Eras tour Advertising sign during the chart period, when he played 26 shows in South America, Australia and Asia.
THE SPHERE IS HERE
Single venues rarely change the entire touring landscape, but few venues have captured the public's imagination like Las Vegas' Sphere. With its innovative indoor audio and video display – not to mention its bright, commanding exterior – the venue has essentially created a new level of high quality concert experience.
U2's No. 1 ranking on Top Tours came solely from U2:UV Achtung Baby Live's 38 shows at the Sphere from October 1, 2023, through the end of the residency on March 2, 2024. Those concerts grossed $231.6 million, sold from 60 tickets with U2 averaging $6.1 million gross per show from an average ticket price of $368. While some big stars have earned more from Vegas residencies, no one has earned so much from so few shows.
While those in the industry largely view fans' willingness to pay more and more for premium concert experiences as a net positive, some live executives predict that other parts of the industry — festivals in particular — may begin to feel competitive pressure.
“It's already hard for festivals to find headliners,” says Wasserman Music's agent Sam Hunt, who represents major acts like Diplo, Run the Jewels and The xx, noting that artists used to make significantly more money headlining festivals than they did in headlining arenas. But new ticket pricing tools have greatly increased what artists can do playing the latter.
This change in the financial position for the tour business comes amid increasingly frequent festival cancellations, and those woes have extended to the top of the market: This year, Coachella was slow to sell out after its initial sell-out and ended up with attendance down about 20% compared to 2023.
Given the choice between festivals and groundbreaking gigs in arenas and stadiums, fans are increasingly choosing the latter. “There's no more comfortable way to enjoy a show than an arena – especially the newer facilities,” he says Mark Shulmansenior vice president of programming at the UBS Arena in Elmont, New York, just outside of Queens, which opened in late 2021. “The modern arena is a concert palace, with incredible acoustics, comfortable seats and lots of bathrooms, and all kinds food and drink options.”
DOJ PROCEEDING BEGINS
Industry momentum may be hampered by the lawsuit filed by the US Department of Justice (DOJ) in late May to break up Live Nation and Ticketmaster 14 years after the government approved the merger of the two companies. Twenty-nine states and the District of Columbia joined the lawsuit, which alleges an illegal monopoly in the live entertainment industry. “It's time to break up Live Nation-Ticketmaster,” Attorney General Merrick Garland he said in a statement announcing the lawsuit.
In order for the government to prove that Live Nation is a monopoly, it must prove that the company has a dominant market share. Although Advertising signThe house's interim report measures only the top line of the concert market – during the two slowest quarters of the year – and does offer context on the big promoter's influence.
Get the top supporters chart. Live Nation and AEG rank first and second, respectively, followed at No. 3 by OCESA — the Mexican promotion company Live Nation bought in December 2021 — with $403 million in sales. Of the $5.4 billion spent worldwide on concert tickets at events promoted by the top 20 promoters during the interim period, according to Boxscore, Live Nation and OCESA accounted for $3.2 billion in sales — roughly 60% of the total.
This follows the Top Tours chart, where 31 tours – nearly two-thirds of the total list of 50 – were created by Live Nation. Of the top 10 tours, only one, Luis Miguel, was produced by another company. (Had Swift reported data for her AEG-produced The Eras tour, it would undoubtedly have increased the number of non-Live Nation producers in the top 10 to two. Advertising sign(Its analysis is based only on global data voluntarily reported to Billboard Boxscore by promoters, venues and artists.)
A large part of the Justice Department's investigation into Live Nation will revolve around the company's ownership of Ticketmaster, which it acquired in 2010, along with the platform's current market share of the concert ticketing business. On this front, Advertising sign found that 69 of the top 100 venues on Boxscore's five largest mid-year capacity charts were Ticketmaster customers.
from our partners at https://www.billboard.com/pro/u2-sphere-top-billboard-boxscore-midyear-concert-touring-recap/
