360 Tour Australia Question

[The_acrobat]

While sitting outside the grocery waiting for my wife to come out, I was reading the stats on the 360 tour. What shocked me was how "low" the Australian numbers were. A little comparing to Vertigo's numbers show that despite greatly increasing the stadiums capacity, the attendance on 360 is lower in Sydney and Melbourne.

Melbourne both times had 2 shows at the same stadium. Vertigo had 127,000 while 360 had 105,000.

Sydney on 360 had only 107,000 of 2 nights, while vertigo had 206,000 over 3 nights. The first 2 Sydney shows on vertigo must have had at least 150,000.

Brisbane on 360 "only" had 85,000 spread over 2 nights. Youtube videos clearly show the 2nd Brisbane show having the upper level being empty and having the sections curtained off.

Perth had 108,000, surprisingly having the best attendance of the Australian leg.

I guess my question why was this? Did the 2nd show in Sydney and Melbourne have scores of empty seats too?


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[cobl04]

Probably because we knew they were going to play boring setlists.

 

[The_acrobat]

What about them bringing back "love rescue me"??!!?!!

Oh wait...


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[Axver]

I can't explain that discrepancy in numbers. I was at both Melbourne shows on both tours and I don't recall thinking on night two of 360 that the crowd looked smaller.

As far as Sydney goes on Vertigo, I went to the second and third nights, and the third night definitely had lower attendance than the first two (despite all three technically being sold out), with some of the uppermost seats empty on the third night even though they had been filled at the previous shows.

Perth had 108,000, surprisingly having the best attendance of the Australian leg.

This was helped by the fact that U2 hadn't been to Perth since 1998. Though as it happens, they had never played a stadium gig there before.

 

[dan_smee]

I think there is some confirmation bias in the numbers. You have to remember that vertigo came at a time where australia was skipped on elevation, and popmart was seen as a hit or miss affair by the non diehards. So the casual fans hadn't seen full force U2 since 1993. 360 came only 4 years after vertigo.


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[The_acrobat]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=74Jj8OXENuo

You can tell in this video that the upper level seats behind the stage have been curtained off, so that would explain where some of the unsold seats were.

 

[ChargedVT]

I was at the first Melbourne show and the top 10-12 rows of the upper ring were not used. That's anywhere up to 10,000 just there... Maybe the $300 seated tickets put people off.
Brisbane and Perth had amazing attendances for their population.

 

[intedomine]

2nd night 360 in Melbourne looked pretty packed to me - the stage seemed much fatter than Vertigo so I'm pretty sure that would have taken out a fair chunk of potential GA space. Maybe this had an influence on attendances? Hard to say.


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[chocky]

I was in the Red Zone for 1st night of Sydney 360 so it was hard to really see how packed the stadium was.

But for 2nd night I was behind the stage in the cheapest seats. I had an entire row to myself; in fact there was no one in the 3 rows in front of me either, and only 4 people in the row behind me. I was staggered at how empty this bay was.


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[AndrewCowley]

It's a good thing. If the trend continues it means Australia is a chance of getting arena shows. But I fear by the time this next tour hits Australia we'll get another greatest hits stadium show where the original idea behind these multiple arena shows per city (whatever it turns out to be) has been completely lost.

If you look back to 1984 you'll find that Sydney and Melbourne were the very first cities in the world where U2 did arena 'residencies'. Would be nice for them to commemorate this in 2016.

 

[ChargedVT]

You want low turnouts, check out the Popmart Australia stats... yeesh, they are bad.
Melbourne went from 80,000 in 1993 to 24,000 in 1998. I was at that Popmart gig and it seemed a lot fuller than that. Maybe they "papered the house".

 

[The_acrobat]

Yeah Popmart in Australia and Japan were pretty much on par with where the United States were. And Germany, which is odd because the rest of Europe did fine.


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[arzcrack]

For vertigo, just about everyone I knew went to a show.

For 360, hardly anyone I knew went to either show, so I'm not surprised by the figures. Plus, the first 360 show was on a Wednesday, a strange choice, and not particularly enticing. Night 2 felt fuller on the Friday.

Hopefully this tour will be arenas, but to be honest, I just hope they come at all. Maybe they'll play aami in Melbourne, saw Bruce there and it was great.


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