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Boxoffice Insider: North America Tells Demi Lovato It Loves Her
Joel Ryan / Invision / AP – Demi Lovato
Demi Lovato sings “Sorry Not Sorry” and “Tell Me You Love Me” during the MTV European Music Awards at The SSE in Wembley, London, Nov. 12.
Demi Lovato is the first artist to get a full-tour profile in 2018, as her team turned in extensive reports from the U.S. and Canada leg of her “Tell Me You Love Me” tour from late February into early April.
The leg consisted of 20 shows, grossing more than $20 million from 20 submitted reports, an average of $1 million per show, with an average attendance of 12,448.
On the Global Concert Pulse chart, that puts her at No. 9 below stadium acts like Bruno Mars and a few arena acts like Kendrick Lamar, whose average attendance was about 3,000 higher, and Lady Gaga and Queen + Adam Lambert because of their higher ticket prices. She does have more reports than any other artist in the Top 10 of the April 23 chart.
Average ticket prices hovered around $80, with lows for most shows bottoming out around $25-30 and topping out at $150, except for performances like Capital One Arena in Washington, D.C., March 24; Allstate Arena in Rosemont, Ill., March 9; American Airlines Center in Dallas March 7; and the Forum in Inglewood, Calif., March 2, all of which had prices capped around $500, likely because of VIP offers.
The biggest payday on the leg was Barclays Center in Brooklyn, N.Y., March 16, which moved 13,814 tickets grossing nearly $1.6 million. Fun fact: that is the highest-grossing headline show ever on record for her.
The grosses on this tour actually vary widely, with the smallest gross being at Bell Centre in Montreal, with $571,864.
While a half-million dollars is certainly nothing to sneeze at, it was only one of two shows that grossed less than $700,000, the other being the opener at Viejas Arena in San Diego Feb. 26. Those two shows were the only two configured for less than 9,000 tickets (with 8,244 and 7,269 moved for each, respectively).
Demi’s best attended show in North America this year was Nashville’s Bridgestone Arena, with 14,725 tickets moved for a $1.05 million gross. Nashville is clearly a place for much more than country these days, and Bridgestone Arena was named Arena of the Year at the 29th annual Pollstar Awards in February.
Considering this is just the first leg of a world tour, Demi is poised to make 2018 her biggest touring year ever. She has already out-grossed a solid year of touring in 2016, when she came in at No. 97 on 2016’s Year End Top 100 Worldwide Tours chart on the “Honda Civic Tour” with Nick Jonas. That endeavor grossed $17.4 million.