U2Man said:
Since I just saw that our national football stadium (with a capacity of 45.000-50.000 people) here in Denmark wasn't big enough for the Stones (although it was for U2. The Stones will instead play at an open venue with a capacity of 75.000, quite impressive in such a small country), I was wondering, is it likely that Stones will top U2 once again?
Its difficult to know precisely since the Rolling Stones won't release their concert statistics until their tour is finished. A rather strange thing to do if your the #1 or #2 touring artist in the world. The Stones always released their concert statistics information as soon as it became available until the 2002-2003 Licks World tour where nearly half of the concerts did not sellout.
The Stones have never had to top U2 before in terms of Worldwide Concert Grosses. The Rolling Stones have been the #1 touring Artist worldwide since 1975, but the Vertigo Tour is the first tour that will achieve a GROSS higher than any tour in the history of the planet, including any Stones tour.
The current Stones tour from a commercial standpoint is designed to do one thing, and that is top the Vertigo Tour and regain or keep the position as the Top Grossing touring artist in the world. U2 are going to end the Vertigo tour in mid April, but the band had the option to play stadiums all across Europe and North America in the summer of 2006.
When the Vertigo Tour finishes in April 2004, the GROSS will be around $400 million dollars making it the highest Grossing tour in History. U2 could add another $200 to $300 million tour if they continued and played stadiums in Europe and North America. But the band has decided they want to take a break and then get back in the Studio and begin recording the next album. All of U2's 32 stadium shows in Europe soldout on the day of release in 2005.
By contrast, there are several Rolling Stone shows that have not soldout in their home country, the United Kingdom, a week after tickets went on sale. In Denmark I would presume the Rolling Stones would be the bigger concert draw since the Danes tend to be more like the Germans when it comes to the Stones. Germany in fact may be the strongest market for the Stones on a per capita basis in terms of selling concert tickets.
The Rolling Stones will likely GROSS $500 million to $600 million by the time their tour finishes towards the end of 2006. Its debatable though about which tour will have the higher attendance.
When it comes to album sales, there is simply no contest. HTDAAB has sold almost 10 million copies worldwide while A Bigger Bang has only sold about 2 million copies worldwide.
Going back to the two tours, the number of people played to for both tours will be very similar. The Stones will get the higher GROSS figure because of their higher ticket prices.
Its difficult to say who is the stronger concert selling act as U2's Vertigo tour is stopping early from a comercial standpoint without fully satisfying demand in both Europe and North America. One thing is for sure, this is the closest and most competitive the two artist have ever been in terms of GROSS figures.
Try and make some sense out of that nonsense 
