Very nice. St. Louis would have brought it to $320 million.
But lost on overall attendance, and would have done so even if St Louis had gone ahead.
Boxscore: TOP 25 TOURS (2017) (Billboard Year-End Charts)
ARTIST(S) - TOTAL GROSS - TOTAL ATTENDEES - NO. OF SHOWS
1 - U2 - $316,990,940 - 2,713,136 - 50
2 - GUNS N' ROSES - $313,691,061 - 2,904,270 - 80
3 - COLDPLAY - $278,179,596 - 2,708,420 - 57
4 - BRUNO MARS - $159,305,612 - 1,567,230 - 106
5 - DEPECHE MODE - $123,491,472 - 1,565,455 - 60
6 - ED SHEERAN - $122,286,051 - 1,496,352 - 105
7 - THE ROLLING STONES - $119,957,689 - 755,345 - 14
They did it ,only just 3 million in it
To think the nearest were 3 million dollars away but played 30 shows more then u2. Guns and roses played to 200k more people but that was always going to be the case seeing as they did 80 shows compared to U2's 50
The true measure of success is gross, always has been. Attendance is a nice feather in your cap but gross is the only thing that matters.
True, just imagine if u2 had done 80 shows like gnr. There wouldn't have been any competition
Boxscore: TOP 25 TOURS (2017) (Billboard Year-End Charts)
ARTIST(S) - TOTAL GROSS - TOTAL ATTENDEES - NO. OF SHOWS
1 - U2 - $316,990,940 - 2,713,136 - 50
2 - GUNS N' ROSES - $313,691,061 - 2,904,270 - 80
3 - COLDPLAY - $278,179,596 - 2,708,420 - 57
4 - BRUNO MARS - $159,305,612 - 1,567,230 - 106
5 - DEPECHE MODE - $123,491,472 - 1,565,455 - 60
6 - ED SHEERAN - $122,286,051 - 1,496,352 - 105
7 - THE ROLLING STONES - $119,957,689 - 755,345 - 14
I just noticed on the Wikipedia site that GNR is listed as grossing $430,380,000
But apparently they are taking into consideration that the GNR tour kicked off in 2016 and adding that to the 2017 gross (and counting).
From just a top grossing perspective, it would have been interesting if U2 had gone all out and covered the globe with the JT30 tour to see where it would have ended up.
The true measure of success is gross, always has been. Attendance is a nice feather in your cap but gross is the only thing that matters.
speaking of tours, how badly did Guy O' fuck up on this current tour. Jesus. It really pisses me off. I have spent years defending U2's ticket prices, because - they have always been reasonable. But now, I just can't. The prices are stupid, and to price them this way after just touring through 6 - 10 months earlier is absurd.
They have half sold ARENAS!!! Guy O' is trashing the bands value and status for a couple hundred thousand per more per show
Don't blame it on "Guy O'". He works for U2.
Oseary wasn't hired to manage U2 the way Magoo did. U2 is already an established act. Ossuary was hired because he's supposedly is plugged in with how the industry works now, and how to maximise profits from it Sadly the ugliness you're seeing now is just the product of that.
I'm no fan of Oseary (I never thought they should have ditched Magoo) but blaming him and not U2 for their ticket prices & promotional strategy is the system working exactly as its designed to work.
There's an unwritten rule in setting ticket prices...the artist is absolutely insulated from blame. That's how it's set up to work. The entire secondary ticket market, which most big artists profit from, is specifically designed so that acts can have the appearance of keeping ticket prices relatively low while actually moving a substantial number of tickets at exorbitant prices. If U2 wanted to sell tickets at a lower price, they could. But it would obviously hurt their bottom line significantly. And we all know it's touring where they make their money.
Oseary wasn't hired to manage U2 the way Magoo did. U2 is already an established act. Oseary was hired because he's supposedly is plugged in with how the industry works now, and how to maximise profits from it. Sadly the ugliness you're seeing now is just the product of that.
Seems to be a new tactic now where they put ticket prices as high as possible then as the gig gets closer they put the prices down and they sell.
It did seem to work on the jt tour
I do agree guy is one of the worst things to happen to the band though
I am an old 80s fan who has recently got into the band again, so the current tour is the first time I’ve bought tickets in ages. For any concert really, so I’m out of the loop on these things. Are you saying that for the past tour, ticket prices started high and went down as the show date approached? If so, that seems like another way of punishing hard core fans, who are the most likely to buy early, I would think.
Yeah it happened a lot on the Joshua tree tour and I'm pretty sure they did it on the i&e tour.
If there's higher priced tickets left they get reduced. The shows that didn't look like selling out on the Joshua tree tour more or less all sold out by the day of the gig.
We only know this cause ticketmaster maps would be checked regularly by people on here, to see how ticket sales are going. It's not just a u2 thing it happens with all artists.
I'm no fan of Oseary (I never thought they should have ditched Magoo) but blaming him and not U2 for their ticket prices & promotional strategy is the system working exactly as its designed to work.
There's an unwritten rule in setting ticket prices...the artist is absolutely insulated from blame. That's how it's set up to work. The entire secondary ticket market, which most big artists profit from, is specifically designed so that acts can have the appearance of keeping ticket prices relatively low while actually moving a substantial number of tickets at exorbitant prices. If U2 wanted to sell tickets at a lower price, they could. But it would obviously hurt their bottom line significantly. And we all know it's touring where they make their money.
Oseary wasn't hired to manage U2 the way Magoo did. U2 is already an established act. Oseary was hired because he's supposedly is plugged in with how the industry works now, and how to maximise profits from it. Sadly the ugliness you're seeing now is just the product of that.
huh?! The band makes no money from jacked up prices on the secondary market. Scalpers snatch them up at normal price and then if the show sells out quickly, can make a huge profit by selling their stash of tickets at high prices. If they show stalls out and doesn't sell well, then the scalpers get left holding the bag and probably will lose money in the end.
But neither scenerio effects the bands profit.
Lets just get something straight here. If the band and Guy O' had priced this tour reasonably, they would have sellouts right now in every arena and probably an extra night or two in the major markets.
So what you have now is this:
Ticket prices jacked up by 25 - 30%
they play to 75% full arenas in some markets meaning they end up making the same amount on tickets, but make far less on merchandise, and end up getting negative press that U2, the biggest band in the world can't sell out a fucking arena.
In a major market, they are playing 2 shows!! So instead of playing 4-6 shows in LA or NY (EIGHT shows last tour!!!) , and at least 3 in Chicago, Boston, etc... they are playing 2 shows each, which is amazingly stupid, if they are looking at the bottom line.
So with high ticket price, you have Avg. price of $145 for 2 shows = about 5.2 million
With pricing of i&e tour - avg price of $115 for 3 shows = 6.2 mill
and 4 shows = 8.3 mill
6 shows = 12.4 mill
And of course anywhere from 1 to 6 extra nights of merch sales. And of course the perception that U2 is still selling out multiple shows easily instead of - hey, they played 6 shows here last time and now they are playing 2. They are old news.
huh?! The band makes no money from jacked up prices on the secondary market. Scalpers snatch them up at normal price and then if the show sells out quickly, can make a huge profit by selling their stash of tickets at high prices. If they show stalls out and doesn't sell well, then the scalpers get left holding the bag and probably will lose money in the end.
But neither scenerio effects the bands profit.
So if you want to see Star A playing at Arena B, you may well find Arena B sells tickets only through Ticketmaster. Ticketmaster, in turn, owns the resale sites GetMeIn! and Seatwave. Arena B has an interest in Ticketmaster making the most money possible from the show, because it helps it with its contract. Ticketmaster has an interest in getting tickets on to GetMeIn! and Seatwave, because it takes a cut of those sales. The only one who loses out is you.
The real issue here – and you probably don’t want to hear this – is that the most popular artists do not charge enough for their tickets. The resale sites have proved that the market will support much higher pricing, but the artists don’t want to be the ones who look like greedy moneygrabbers by asking for those prices. So other people do the dirty work, and the artist still gets the guaranteed fee they asked for – from the sponsors who presold tickets, from revenues from resale sites, or – in Swift’s case – from the purchases her fans made to get in the ticket queue. If artists hiked the price of tickets, people would moan at them, but far fewer tickets would go to touts, because the margins would discourage them.