Guns N Roses, Live Nation, The O2 Top Pollstar’s 2017 3Q Charts

The O2 – The O2 London

With more than 2 million tickets sold so far this year, Guns N’ Roses (2,244,721) and U2 (2,138,160) were significantly ahead of Disney On Ice, (No. 3 with 1,511,953 tickets), Depeche Mode (1,270,637) and Coldplay (1,255,282) who rounded out 2017’s year-to-date top tours. 

The Pollstar database has total tickets sold for the 2017 Q3 period at 26,425,635, with a total YTD of 100,259,175. The Top 100 tours tickets sold totals 48,192,381.

Click here for Pollstar’s full 3Q TYD Worldwide Ticket Sales Charts.

The monster GNR Not In This Lifetime Tour started the year in Japan and took in the south Pacific including New Zealand and Australia. Then Axl and Co. hit Europe before heading back to the U.S. in July, where our 3Q data begins.

The tour sold 900,903 tickets just from July 1 to Sept. 30, according to Pollstar data, with an average gross of $3.47 million and total gross of $90.48 million.

Highlights included 48,740 tickets sold to U.S. Bank Stadium in Minneapolis, good for a gross of $5.56 million. Other notable dates include Aug. 30 at Commonwealth Stadium in Edmonton, Alberta, which sold 44,393 tickets ($4.76 million gross), Aug. 8 at Marlins Park in Miami (37,834, $4.1 million), and Sept. 8 at the Alamodome in San Antonio (38,490, $3.85 million).

The GNR tour stretches into the end of November, ending at the Forum in Inglewood on Nov. 29.

Coldplay has been on a tear with its Head Full Of Dreams tour, with 12 headline records reported to Pollstar for the third quarter, and 617,213 tickets sold. That’s a total gross of $56.28 million for the quarter. Coldplay was No. 3 on the 2016 Year-End Top 100 Worldwide tours.

The mighty U2’s The Joshua Tree Tour 2017 sold a total of 1,146,595 tickets for the quarter, good for a total gross of more than $127 million. Bono and the gang hit land in the U.S. in September, making quick work of stadiums, including a gross of $6.46 million at one show at Qualcomm Stadium in San Diego Sept. 22, with 54,221 tickets reported sold. Other massive shows included University of Phoenix Stadium in Glendale, with 42,814 tickets sold grossing $4.17 million.

Coldplay’s extreme tickets-per-show figures come from European stadiums, such as Principality Stadium in Cardiff, Wales (235,611 tickets sold, three shows), Croke Park Stadium in Dublin (80,398 tickets, $8.97 million) July 8, and Stade de France in Paris, (235,611 tickets, three shows, $19.88 million) July 15-18.

Once again AEG’s The O2 in London was the top arena, with 1,248,871 tickets sold for the year.

3Q highlights include two Celine Dion dates, which sold 29,352 tickets and a whopping $4.305 million gross for the AEG Presents / Concerts West / Marshall Arts co-promote.

The O2 just hosted three Micky Flanagan dates Sept. 14-16, with 46,723 tickets sold reported to Pollstar for a gross of $2.08 million (1.61 million UK pounds).

AEG Presents, which operates The O2, is No. 2 on the Top 100 Promoters chart with 11,019,295 tickets sold. One of the major tours from the promoter/venue operator was Ed Sheeran, co-promoted with The Messina Group. He’s No. 6 our Top 100 Tours chart with 1,222,948 tickets sold YTD. He still has 94 dates coming up, putting him anywhere and everywhere into November 2018.

Next on the Top 100 Promoters Chart are OCESA / CIE in Mexico, with 2,412,168 tickets sold, Feld Entertainment (2,162,389) and UK-based SJM (1,6882,754).

They are all far behind Live Nation’s 33,156,207, with major tours by artists such as Guns N’ Roses, Coldplay and U2.

Pollstar 3Q data is compiled from box office reports received between Jan. 1 and Sept. 30. There are no box office estimates for data in this quarter.