A Family Tree: Roots Run Deep For Messina Touring Group

The country and pop artists who work with Louis Messina and his  Austin-based concert promotion company Messina Touring Group, a partner of AEG Presents, are an elite troupe of musicians – part of a small artist roster that could appear, quite convincingly, like a top tours list for any given year. If one of Messina’s artists is on the road, chances are it will be one of the year’s most impactful tourings at the box office.

There is an interconnectivity among  the MTG acts – a family, if you will – which Messina himself described as “six degrees of George Strait” earlier this year in an interview with Pollstar. “Everything that I do in some way, with the exception of the Lumineers, is connected to George Strait,” he remarked regarding how, through working with the country legend, he developed his relationships with others who have supported Strait such as Kenny Chesney, Tim McGraw, Faith Hill and Taylor Swift. 

He met Eric Church through Chesney, and then as he began working with Swift, he met Ed Sheeran, Shawn Mendes and Vance Joy – all show openers for her at one time or another. He also promotes Blake Shelton as well as the Lumineers.

In 2018, eight headlining tours with artists promoted by Messina Touring Group were on tour with overall grosses worldwide registering well into hundreds of millions of dollars. First and foremost are pop music titans Sheeran and Swift who headlined two of the year’s most successful tours based on money earned from ticket sales. With stadiums as their playground during the past year, more than 7.7 million tickets were bought at their concerts around the globe since the beginning of January. Combined grosses from all of the shows performed by these two superstars in 2018 surpass $778 million, according to Pollstar’s Boxoffice tallies. That total includes both MTG-promoted events as well as international dates handled by local event producers.

Chesney added a few coins to the company’s overall sales total as well this year with a record-breaking turn on the road that saw 1.3 million tickets purchased at 42 concerts. The longtime Messina colleague earned $114.3 million from this year’s Trip Around the Sun tour, marking the second time he has broken the $100 million mark in sales on a North American tour. His Big Revival trek in 2015 reached $116.3 million in sales and still reigns as his highest-grossing tour.

Continuing in the country vein, another Messina-promoted tour to make an impact in 2018 was Tim McGraw and Faith Hill’s Soul2Soul: The World tour, which wrapped in July with a final 27-city North American leg. It had already racked up $79.3 million from 931,959 sold tickets last year in a seven-month opening leg that featured 79 concerts in the U.S. and Canada. Adding this year’s final trek, the tour’s overall box office revenue from both years tops $100 million from 1.2 million total tickets at 107 concerts. It was the pair’s third co-headlining effort under the Soul2Soul moniker, the first being 2000’s Soul2Soul followed by Soul2Soul II that ran in 2006-2007.

Strait, who retired from long-term, multiple-date touring after his Cowboy Rides Away farewell trek in 2013-2014, played a handful of dates this year. He performed two concerts in February at T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas where he maintained a limited residency during 2016 and 2017. He also played two nights in Tulsa and one in Austin, both during June. Earlier on May 27, he headlined the Bayou Country Superfest held at Mercedes-Benz Superdome in New Orleans that grossed $8.8 million from a packed stadium crowd of 53,518.

Blake Shelton hit the road during the first quarter of 2018 with his Country Music Freaks tour that also featured country veteran Trace Adkins along with Brett Eldredge and Carly Pearce. The 14-show run produced a sold ticket count of 178,612 with a $13.9 million box office take. However, his first tour with Messina was in 2017 – the Doin’ It To Country Songs tour that played 13 dates during the early months of the year. With “The Voice” contestants Sundance Head and RaeLynn onboard as openers, last year’s tour scored a gross of $9.3 million from 151,329 sold seats.

Indie-pop singer-songwriter Vance Joy had 52 headlining performances reported in 2018, primarily in North America although he also appeared in his native Australia this fall along with a handful of appearances in Europe and Latin America. Altogether his combined gross reached $9.1 million from 222,193 tickets.

Eric Church only had two shows this year – sellouts in Austin and Houston during April, but in 2017 the country star’s Holdin’ My Own tour was No. 18 on Pollstar’s ranking of the Top 200 North American tours. He performed 71 shows in 66 cities, moving 942,111 tickets during the year. His overall gross from U.S. and Canadian markets was $58.1 million.