HITS' 2024 SPOTLIGHT ON LIVE: ALL THE WORLD'S A STAGE

You can’t spell “Taylor” or “touring” without the letter T, one of many reasons why they’ve been synonymous with the overall health of the live-music industry for the better part of the last two years. Indeed, as her Eras Tour returns to action for a final swing of U.S. stadium dates this fall, Swift remains the top touring artist on earth by a wide margin, breaking record after record on a run that’s been pegged for a total gross in the $1.6b region and is bringing in as much as $15m nightly.

Swift and her team, led by 13 Management’s Robert Allen and Louis Messina’s Messina Touring, do not report their box-office numbers, but beyond such feats as selling out eight AEG-promoted Wembley Stadium shows this summer, the Beatlemania scale of Eras is evident in its outsized economic impact on each city it has visited.

Stockholm officials reported that every single one of 40,000 available hotel rooms in the city was booked when Swift came to town, while Los Angeles County saw a $320m boost in its gross domestic product following summer 2023 shows at SoFi Stadium. Beyond the box office, Swift and her fellow Swifties emerged safe after Austrian authorities foiled a terrorist attack planned at her July appearances in Vienna, exemplifying the level at which the artist influences our modern-day culture.

Eras has also proved a major launching pad for its opening acts. Paramore (UTA), which was inactive from 2018-22, became a bona fide arena and festival headliner in tandem with its multiple Swift support slots, while Sabrina Carpenter (CAA), formerly a club-level act, warmed up for the much larger venues on her ongoing, sold-out Short n’ Sweet arena tour while opening for Swift in Asia and Australia this spring. And Gracie Abrams will follow her support slot on the final Eras tour dates this fall by jumping to arenas of her own in Europe and Australia next spring.

Aside from Swift, hundreds of major tours circled the globe in 2024, with established stars such as Coldplay (Wasserman), Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band, Madonna, Luis Miguel (WME) and U2 jockeying for position amid a new breed of mega ticket-sellers such as UTA Latin titans Bad Bunny and KAROL G, country upstarts Luke Combs and Zach Bryan and rapper Travis Scott (Cara Lewis Group/WME ex-U.S.).

Per Pollstar, Coldplay’s two-year Music of the Spheres Tour (Live Nation) became the first rock tour to exceed $1b in gross and has shifted more than 9.6m tickets. Newly announced 2025 dates in North America, the United Arab Emirates, India, South Korea and the U.K. will only add to the coffers, which showed receipts of $237.4m through Q3. At a time of great despair over the environmental impact of touring on this scale, it’s also worth noting that the tour set a new benchmark for sustainability by cutting its greenhouse gas emissions by nearly 60%.

Despite a fall 2023 postponement so Springsteen could recover from a peptic ulcer condition, the Boss’s first trek with his E Street mates in six years has blown out at worldwide stadiums and arenas. He and Madonna ranked #4 and 5, respectively, on Pollstar’s Q3 roundup, with the former grossing $201.5m from 1.38m tickets sold and the latter bringing in $178.8m of her own from the Celebration Tour.

A more surprising name amid the top tours is 54-year-old Puerto Rican singer Miguel, whose Q3 numbers ($223m gross, 1.62m tickets) alone are larger than the entirety of his previous 150-show run in 2018-9. Colombian vocalist KAROL G has taken a giant leap thanks to her Live Nation-promoted MAÑANA SERÁ BONITO Tour, which drew 1.57m fans to 48 shows, while Bad Bunny continued his dominance with nearly $211m in grosses on the Most Wanted trek.

Combs and Bryan are leaders of a youth movement of country acts making quick leaps to stadium status, with the former bringing in $165m from 25 shows and the latter surely in that neighborhood thanks to 76 AEG-promoted dates this year at a combination of ballparks, arenas and festivals. Although he doesn’t report numbers either, Morgan Wallen was no slouch himself, with two hometown stadium shows in Knoxville, Tennessee, in late September grossing an astonishing $27m.

Scott was the biggest hip-hop act in the marketplace through Q3, as his UTOPIA: Circus Maximus Tour broke numerous box-office and merch records in Europe. A 10/9 one-off at New Jersey’s MetLife Stadium drew 65k, featured surprise appearances from Playboi Carti and Future and broke Swift’s single-day merch record there—all while literally shaking the venue from the ground up.

Also strong through Q3 were tours from Ed Sheeran (AEG), Nicki Minaj, Justin Timberlake, P!nk, Pearl Jam, Kenny Chesney, Foo Fighters, Noah Kahan, blink-182, Carin Léon, Niall Horan, Olivia Rodrigo, Kane Brown, HARDY and comedian Nate Bargatze, who routinely pulled in $1m a night with nothing but a microphone. ’90s faves Creed (UTA) and Green Day turned back the clock in a big way, with the former averaging nearly 18k tickets per night on its first tour in 12 years and the latter filling stadiums with a show featuring complete performances of its albums Dookie and American Idiot.

For a select echelon of artists, standard venues simply won’t do. That’s why Adele and her partners at WME, Live Nation and Jonathan Dickins’ September Management created the largest temporary structure ever built for her 10-show summer residency at Munich’s Sonderfreifläche Messe, which shifted more than 730k tickets—a record for any such engagement outside of Las Vegas.

The bespoke venue also boasted a record-breaking, Stufish-designed 220-by-30-meter LED video screen. More than 500k fans visited the 75k-square-meter Adele World, which housed a pop-up pub in the style of classic English watering holes, a cover-band stage and vendors hawking specialty cocktails. According to Munich official Clemens Baumgärtner, the run generated more than €540m ($588m+) for the local economy.

At Las Vegas’ jaw-dropping new Sphere, box-office receipts were as large as the venue’s 366-foot screen, with inaugural residents U2 hauling in $135m from 23 shows during the quarter and Dead & Company posting $131m from 30 nights of their own. Current tenant the Eagles haven’t reported numbers yet from their Sphere run, which concludes next March, but they’d already grossed $70m from their global arena shows through Q2, likely pushing their 2024 total into the $200m range. The venue will soon spawn its first sibling in Abu Dhabi.

Meanwhile, Bruno Mars made nearly the same amount as Dead & Company through a combination of his own residency at Las Vegas’ Dolby Live at Park MGM and a handful of international stadium shows—all before dropping a worldwide smash with Lady Gaga, “Die With a Smile.” He also inaugurated Los Angeles’ sparkling new Inuit Dome in August with a little help from Gaga herself.

The proliferation of stadium gigs has naturally led to a need for greater venue inventory, which companies such as Jonathan Shank’s Terrapin Station Sports have been able to supply thanks to partnerships with 16 pro sports venues eager to fill open dates on their calendars. The 4/12-13 shows they organized for Combs at Milwaukee’s American Family Field broke the park’s concert-attendance record by drawing a combined 86k fans, and Terrapin also brought Billy Joel, Stevie Nicks, Sting, Chesney and Zac Brown to stadiums that otherwise would have been sitting empty.

On the festival front, oversaturation remains a big issue as promoters fight tooth and nail for dollars and eardrums, with dozens of established brands enduring cancellations or in some cases folding up their tents for good. Among the casualties: Lollapalooza Paris; Sudden Little Thrills in Pittsburgh; Made in America in Philadelphia; Desert Daze in Lake Perris, California; Australia’s Splendour in the Grass; Music Midtown in Atlanta; Beale Street in Memphis; Firefly in Dover, Delaware; Format in Bentonville, Arkansas; Pharrell Williams’ Something in the Water in Virginia Beach, Virginia; and a traveling Latin American version of the beloved Primavera Sound.

Sure, great biggies such as Goldenvoice/AEG’s Coachella still posted huge numbers at Empire Polo Club, although the 24-year-old behemoth did not sell out, with attendance hovering around 80K for both of its weekends, according to a report from the city of Indio. By contrast, Stagecoach sold out in advance for the first time and reported attendance of 89k at the same venue, on the strength of the country-heavy zeitgeist and headliners Post Malone (CAA), Miranda Lambert, Eric Church and Wallen.

Live Nation-owned C3 Presents is having a very strong year, highlighted by Lollapalooza in Chicago, Austin City Limits, the Springsteen-headlined Sea.Hear.Now. on the beach in Asbury Park, New Jersey, and Eddie Vedder’s Ohana on its own stretch of sand and surf in Dana Point, California. Top C3 festival buyer Huston Powell added to his purview with single-day mega-fests such as Las Vegas’ Sick New World and When We Were Young, which were the brainchild of since-departed Live Nation wunderkind Jeffrey Shuman and have become juggernauts of the calendar in just a couple of years.

The Bay Area’s Another Planet Presents and Live Nation put a similar spin on the idea with a one-off System of a Down/Deftones show 8/17 in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park, which sold out of its 50k tickets in 90 minutes. Another Planet also scored with Outside Lands, which netted $40m and drew 200k fans to witness Carpenter’s first-ever festival headlining set and another star-making performance from her Island labelmate, Chappell Roan (Wasserman). Elsewhere in the Bay, AEG's Portola EDM festival welcomed a sizable crowd to Pier 80 to enjoy Four Tet, Disclosure, Justice and M.I.A., among dozens of others.

Seemingly immune to the economic vagaries plaguing his competitors, Danny Wimmer’s Danny Wimmer Presents had its largest event ever with Welcome to Rockville in Daytona Beach, Florida, which drew 200k people to take in 150 artists across five stages. Bourbon & Beyond in Louisville attracted 210k and also set a state record for highest single-day music festival attendance with 60k.

The U.K.’s ageless Glastonbury Festival also pulled in 200k to Wilton Farm in Somerset for a weekend headlined by Coldplay, SZA, Dua Lipa and Shania Twain.

EDM hotshot Fred again.. (Wasserman) continued his rise to superstardom, co-headlining such festivals as the U.K.’s Reading and Leeds, Paris’ Rock en Seine and Belgium’s Pukkelpop amid a year that also saw him sell 77.5k tix as a headliner at Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum. Sources say he’s a lock for a certain Palm Springs-adjacent festival next April, so start hydrating now.

As the weather turns chillier, observers have their eyes on such in-progress tours as Malone, Charli xcx’s maiden arena jaunt with Troye Sivan, and treks by Billie Eilish, Kacey Musgraves (AEG), Jelly Roll, Rod Wave, Usher and Shakira. Adele will also conclude her Weekends With Adele residency at Las Vegas’ Caesars Palace on 11/23—and take a long, well-deserved break afterward.

And while most major 2025 tour and festival announcements are still a ways off, the robust sales for Oasis’ first shows in 16 years are providing some early good news (despite grumbling from fans who got shut out). The band’s Live Nation-organized summer U.K. run went clean of 1m-plus tickets in a matter of hours, and additional North American stadium shows were added to the itinerary before the original ones had even gone on sale. Those have since sold out too.

Kendrick Lamar (Wasserman) will tour stadiums at some point next year, but he won’t be at Coachella due to his commitment to the Super Bowl LIX Halftime Show in New Orleans on 2/9. A Lady Gaga (CAA) outing is also a reasonable expectation as an accompaniment to her next studio album, due in Q1, and insiders are speculating whether she might also turn up at Empire Polo Grounds for the first time since 2017.

The reunited Linkin Park (WME) is tipped to tour widely next year, after easing back into the marketplace with a handful of international arena and stadium shows this fall, including Dallas’ 40k-capacity Globe Field and a double at the 43k-capacity Allianz Parque in São Paulo. Fellow hard rockers Metallica (IAG) have also extended their M72 stadium run into 2025 after hugely successful runs in 2023 and this summer.

And, paying off the power of intellectual property, Disney and AEG will assemble talent from Descendants: The Rise of Red and Zombies 4: Dawn of the Vampires for the Worlds Collide tour, which will hit arenas in summer 2025.

For the past two-plus years, the post-COVID rebound has rocketed the concert industry to dizzying new heights. A comedown was inevitable, as was seen this spring through slightly lagging attendance and grosses, but with so much major talent in the marketplace at the same time, the live business is still booming in a big way. See you in the pit.