New Giants Stadium Record

[STING2]

Of course everyone new this but the results are finally in for Bruce Springsteens 10 date stand at Giant Stadium in July and August.

GIANTS STADIUM : East Rutherford N.J. : July 15, 17-18, 21, 24, 26-27, August 28, 30-31. GROSS: $38,684,050 ATTENDANCE: 566,560 SHOWS: 10 SELLOUTS: 10

This is probably the record worldwide for the amount of money and attendence generated from playing one city. At the peak of U2s popularity, they could have probably of done 6 of these. During ATYCLB I think they could have managed 4.

Bruce Springsteens base of popularity is north of the mason dixon line, east of the Mississippi and South of the Canadian border. In that area, no one is more popular when it comes to concerts. In other area's of the USA though, Springsteens popularity falls off enough in that he can have difficulties filling a 17,000 seat arena in some places.

 

[Popmartijn]

Hello,

Great to see those figures for The Boss! If you add to this his 2 concerts in Shea Stadium you probably get a combined attendance of 650,000+ for the New York area. (Am I right in saying that East Rutherford can be considered New York, is it not?)
On a mailing-list I (provokingly) said that Bruce has probably played to more New Yorkers this year than U2 did in their whole carreer. With the help of the U2 Live book I came to a total attendance of ~495,000 and this excludes only Popmart and Elevation.

So these figures by Bruce are mighty impressive!

C ya!

Marty

 

[STING2]

East Rutherford is indeed apart of the New York City Metro area. I'll be interested to see the results of the Shea Stadium shows. All this creates the question of, how many shows would Springsteen have to play in order to see half empty stadiums in the New York area?

 

[Popmartijn]

All this creates the question of, how many shows would Springsteen have to play in order to see half empty stadiums in the New York area?

I think just as many U2 need to play at Slane.

 

[Vox02]

According to Pimm's book ( from 1976 to May 1997) and Billboard's figure attendances from PopMart and Elevation Tour, U2 attendance in the NY area ( NY + East Rutherford ) is over 1million tickets sold!

I think that U2 could fill 6 Giants' shows in 1987 or 1992.

Vox!!

 

[Popmartijn]

According to Pimm's book ( from 1976 to May 1997) and Billboard's figure attendances from PopMart and Elevation Tour, U2 attendance in the NY area ( NY + East Rutherford ) is over 1million tickets sold!

How do you get to this number of more than 1 million tickets? I also looked up the attendance in U2 Live, but I only got a combined attendance of 495,000 (~205,000 in NYC and ~290,000 in East Rutherford). I have a hard time believing that more than 500,000 tickets were sold during Popmart and Elevation. IIRC, Elevation had 8 shows in that area (5x Madison Square Garden and 3x Meadowlands (or Continental Airlines Arena as it's called today)), which would average about ~160,000 tickets (assuming a capacity of 20,000 per venue). This still leaves ~340,000 tickets unaccounted for and Popmart did not sell that many.

Wondering...

Marty

edit: I just realised that U2 also played 1 show in East Rutherford on the 3rd leg of the Elevation tour. Corrected it in the text above.

 

[STING2]

U2 did 129,644 tickets sold at Giants Stadium on POPMART.

 

[Popmartijn]

That's still quite a good number!
Not everyone can be like Bruce in New York.

 

[STING2]

In LA on POPMART U2 did 65,000 in ticket sales from one show. Bruce on his recent tour did 47,000 in ticket sales from his show there.

 

[Vox02]

I count every single show in NY area or cities in NY state!! From Boy Tour to Elevation Tour!! Even shows in Buffalo or Albany hehe

Vox!

 

[Popmartijn]

Ah, I see then where the difference is. I never counted Buffalo, Albany, etc. Only NYC and East-Rutherford.

C ya!

Marty

 

[womanfish]

Bruce is getting pretty light attendance in most other areas around the country. kinda surprising.

 

[STING2]

Thats true, the Los Angeles figure for Springsteen I posted before is actually 42,000 instead of 47,000. Springsteen is a strong Stadium artist any where North of the Mason Dixon Line, East of the Mississippi River and South of the Canadian border.

 

[Headache in a Suitcase]

i know this thread has been dead for a while, but i rarely go in this section and just now discovered it...

you failed to bring up that springsteen's LA show was at Dodger Stadium, a baseball stadium very similar in size and design to shea stadium in new york. dodger stadium has a capacity of 56,000 for baseball... take away about 5,000 bleacher seats, which are blocked off by the stage, and about 5,000 seats on the far reaches of the left and rightfield stands, which weren't offered for sale durring most of springsteen's baseball stadium shows because the stage design made viewing the concert near impossible from those seats... and you're down to about 41,000 seats... the concert was listed as a sell out with 42,000 sold, so there ya go...

as you can see in the pictures, the seats i mentioned with limited views of the stage are empty...

... but for the rest of the stadium, there isn't a single seat empty.

u2 played the LA coliseum for popmart... which has a capacity of 100,000 for football.. nearly twice that of dodger stadium. the listed capacity for concerts is 70,000, but for popmart it was listed at around 65,000 and was a "sellout."

so while u2 sold more seats at their one LA popmart show, both u2 and springsteen sold every seat that was for sale, even though both still had room for more if they so desired.

 

[STING2]

i know this thread has been dead for a while, but i rarely go in this section and just now discovered it...

you failed to bring up that springsteen's LA show was at Dodger Stadium, a baseball stadium very similar in size and design to shea stadium in new york. dodger stadium has a capacity of 56,000 for baseball... take away about 5,000 bleacher seats, which are blocked off by the stage, and about 5,000 seats on the far reaches of the left and rightfield stands, which weren't offered for sale durring most of springsteen's baseball stadium shows because the stage design made viewing the concert near impossible from those seats... and you're down to about 41,000 seats... the concert was listed as a sell out with 42,000 sold, so there ya go...

as you can see in the pictures, the seats i mentioned with limited views of the stage are empty...

... but for the rest of the stadium, there isn't a single seat empty.

u2 played the LA coliseum for popmart... which has a capacity of 100,000 for football.. nearly twice that of dodger stadium. the listed capacity for concerts is 70,000, but for popmart it was listed at around 65,000 and was a "sellout."

so while u2 sold more seats at their one LA popmart show, both u2 and springsteen sold every seat that was for sale, even though both still had room for more if they so desired.

I'll have to look to see if I still have the Boxscore, but I don't think Springsteens LA show was a full sellout. Pictures can be mis-leading because tickets are sold in a way to make the stadium look full even if there are still thousands of unsold tickets.

In 1992, U2 played Two shows at Dodger Stadium to 54,000 people each night for a total of 108,000. They then added another 48,000 attended (Sellout) show at Anahiem Stadium.

Its difficult to estimate what demand would have been on Elevation if U2 had played Stadiums in LA. Best guess would be somewhere in between the level of demand for POPMART and ZOO TV.