Sad? Anyone who thinks they were going to pull in attendance and gross numbers in the same league as U2360º needs to wake up. I think it's great that they're still able to sell a million tickets for 70 shows.
Actually, it would not be surprising given ticket demand on the Vertigo Tour as well as 360 tour. Just looking at North America specifically, the rapid sellouts of the Vertigo Tour in all arena's within an hour or two of going on sale suggest that if U2 had toured with 360 stages on Vertigo, the same sales levels would have been seen.
So demand for U2 tickets has been extremely high for nearly a decade in North America. Current demand on this tour is a fraction of what it was on Vertigo and 360. The Denver show on 360 sold 78,000 tickets. The two Vertigo Denver shows soldout rapidly in just a few hours, both shows. These were sellouts at full capacity of the arena venue.
By comparison, the SOI tour Denver shows at 28,200 are less than the total attendance at the single POPMART show in 1997 which was considered at the time to be a heavy disappointment for the band and promoter given U2's past history in Denver.
So the decline in at least the United States is shocking although thanks to playing arenas, the impact is masked from much of the public unlike POPMART where huge empty areas of stadiums were impossible to hide from the general public.
This shows that U2's popularity at least in the United States is very dependent on hit albums, hit songs, good radio airplay, and when the band don't get that, there is a huge drop off in attendance at concerts.
I think there were some in the band that thought they could continue in stadiums in even the United States, but Fogul wisely talk them down and made sure they were booked in arenas. As it turns out, even Fogul overestimated how much demand there would be as there was supposed to be 8 LA shows at the forum and the band were only able to fill 5, and those 5 were not complete sellouts of the total physical capacity available in the venue.
In the United States the band needs to go back to their ATYCLB/Elevation tour playbook as far as promoting album, songs, tour etc.
Their numbers are great and the intent of the tour was not to smash records bit rather reconnect with their fans in a more personal setting(and of corse make money too
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When his tour wraps up(assuming it continues into next year) it will be in the top 10 easy and actually should be top 5, which would mean north of 300 million.
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The numbers relative to other artist are still great, but relative to what U2 had done on the past two tours in the United States, it is a disappointment.
If the band eventually gross $300 million worldwide on the I&E Tour, that will put the tour in the top 13, not top 5. There are currently 12 tours that have grossed $300 million or more worldwide on the all time list. U2 would need to gross north of $400 million to make the top 5 of the all time list.
Hahaha what a joke these statistics can be sometimes.
The LA shows at an average of 16,700 per night are not full sellouts in the physical sense either. But the promoter sets capacity whether its at 10,000 or 18,000 and if that capacity is sold, the concert is marked as a sellout.
Yep. They do that all the time if huge touring acts fail to sell out venues.
All artist do this, and you can see below full physical capacity results marked as sellouts going all the way back to 1976, 40 years. Its standard industry practice.
