The third quarter of 2024 brought mixed results for the live business, as revenues scaled new heights despite a near 4% drop in ticket sales.

According to Pollstar data for the period up to mid-August, the average ticket price for the top 100 tours reached an all-time high of $126.55 – up 11.2% on 12 months ago, when the figure stood at $113.85 – continuing the trend seen in the last five years.

As a result, total worldwide grosses for the top 100 rose 14.1% to a record $5.68 billion (€5.1bn), although ticket sales were up just 2.6% to 44.9 million.

The volume of shows and show gross averages both advanced 6.8%. However, the sole negative saw ticket sales averages dipped 3.9%, from 15,365 to 14,766, compared to 2023.

“The nearly 4% drop in ticket sales YoY is concerning, but it’s trending in the right direction”

“While most of this quarter’s data points are positive, there is reason for cautious optimism,” concluded the publication. “The nearly 4% drop in ticket sales YoY is concerning, but it’s trending in the right direction coming off last quarter’s almost 15% decrease.

“Also concerning this year were myriad reports indicating a softer live market for both festivals and tours with a number of high-profile cancellations for a variety of reasons – but which more often than not boiled down to softer ticket sales. Some smaller venues and touring acts, too, faced economic hardship, finding it more difficult this year to make ends meet with such negative factors as increased prices, lower demand and weather maladies.

“Still, the fact that the top of the industry saw significant growth in revenue, overall ticket sales and average ticket prices with strong consumer demand for live events bodes well for other segments of the market going forward.”

Coldplay’s Music of the Spheres was the top-grossing tour for the period, which covered 16 November 2023 to 14 August 2024, taking $237.4 million from 1,881,411 tickets sold across 34 dates. The top 5 was completed by Luis Miguel ($222.9m), Bad Bunny ($210.9m), Bruce Springsteen and The E Street Band ($201.5m) and Madonna ($178.8m). Estimated grosses for Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour were not included in the rankings.

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Taylor Swift’s ever-expanding Eras Tour is on target to become the first concert tour in history to gross more than US$1 billion, according to a new report.

The current benchmark was set by Elton John’s Farewell Yellow Brick Road Tour, which grossed $887 million from 5.7 million ticket sales from its first 309 shows, and is expected to settle on around $925m upon its conclusion.

The Eras Tour was comfortably the highest-grossing tour of H1 2023, based on Pollstar data. It generated $300.8m in revenue from its first 22 nights on total ticket sales of 1,186,314 and an average ticket price of $253.56. The run currently amounts to 117 shows up to August 2024, with the potential for further dates to be added.

While a number-crunching report by the Wall Street Journal notes that top tickets in the US tend to cost 20% to 30% more than in the rest of the world, the trek still has every chance of breaking through the $1bn barrier.

“What we’re seeing on this particular Taylor tour is almost like a once-in-a-lifetime phenomenon,” International Artist Group EVP and head of global music Jarred Arfa tells the WSJ. “It’s pretty astonishing.”

“For production reasons, she will only come to Amsterdam”

Swift’s recently announced 2024 European leg goes on sale in mid-July, but will not stop off in Belgium. Greenhouse Talent, which is staging Swift’s Amsterdam stadium shows in the Netherlands, addresses the omission, telling Het Laastse Nieuws a Brussels date at King Baudouin Stadium was “not an option” because of noise concerns.

“For production reasons, she will only come to Amsterdam,” says the promoter. “The stage had to be on the short side and that is not possible in Brussels due to noise nuisance for the neighbourhood.”

The Manila Bulletin reports that eight million people have applied for tickets for the 33-year-old’s concerts in Asia, while tickets for the singer’s four Japan shows at the 55,000-cap Tokyo Dome will be allocated by a lottery system. Fans must submit an application for the lottery by 10 July and then wait for the results.

More than four million users attempted to buy pre-sale tickets for her Sydney and Melbourne concerts in Australia earlier this week. The New South Wales and Victorian governments moved to crack down on touting after resale prices in excess of $3,000 were listed, with the latter designating the concerts as “major events,” triggering anti-scalping provisions in state legislation.

Elsewhere, in Brazil, a congresswoman has tabled the “Taylor Swift Act”, which would increase the maximum sentence for ticket touting from two to four years in prison, and fines of up to 100x the original price of the tickets.

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