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The Growing Impact Of The Live Business
Photo by Timothy Norris / Getty Images / Coachella – Impacting:
The live music business continues to experience massive growth and with newly minted superstars like Billie Eilish, seen here performing on April 20 at 2019’s Coachella Valley Music And Arts Festival in Indio, Calif., this year looks to be another banner year.
The sound of jubilation and optimism one often hears coming from those working in the world of live entertainment these days (see the inaugural Impact 50), centers around a concert business undergoing robust and unprecedented growth. Aside from a few anomalies and a challenging period here or there (notably 2008’s “Great Recession”), the live experience has prospered through most of this century.
Recent barometers, such as Live Nation’s record-setting 2019 Q1 financial reports released earlier this month, continue showing positive gains in ticket sales, sponsorships and overall butts in seats as well as its highest-ever first-quarter adjusted operating income at $115 million – are all indicators of continued growth in the concert industry.
At Pollstar, we add to those metrics with a look at touring data based on combined grosses from the top five tours in four basic genre classifications – pop/rock, R&B/hip-hop, country and Latin – for the past five years. We can quantify concert box office activity showing the levels of surging growth and financial success.
Certainly, each year has challenges, and the popularity of touring artists covers a wide spectrum, but even with variations in individual genres, the numbers portray a thriving business with overall movement upward. According to Pollstar Boxoffice data, there was a 42.43% increase in overall gross sales from the top five tours in each of the four genres in 2018 compared to the top five in 2014.
Five years ago, the combined gross from 20 tours – top five in each genre – was $1.579 billion, bested in 2015 with a gross that reached $1.642 billion. Revenue jumped to $1.948 billion in 2016, then dipped by about $19 million the following year to land at $1.929 billion overall. But 2018 saw a leap up to $2.249 billion from the 20 acts scoring top grosses in their genre groups.
Each of the four groups showed a higher overall gross from its top five acts in 2018 compared to 2014, but the pop/rock category is the only one that increased consistently each year. In 2014, One Direction led the pack with $282.2 million reported from the boy band’s Where We Are tour followed by Justin Timberlake, The Rolling Stones, Katy Perry and Michael Bublé, all grossing more than $100 million in sales for the year. Together, the five headliners produced a gross of $890.4 million. The next year’s $920.4 million take saw an increase due in part to Taylor Swift’s 1989 tour that played both arenas and stadiums along with One Direction’s On the Road Again trek. Those two pop headliners contributed to just over 50% of the overall total, while the remainder was added by AC/DC, U2 and Foo Fighters.
The 2016 total surpassed $1.02 billion with sales from the bulk of Bruce Springsteen’s The River tour that occurred that year as well as world tours by Coldplay, Guns N’ Roses, Adele and Justin Bieber.
In 2017, the $1.19 billion gross came from GNR, Coldplay and Metallica, all with tours that launched the previous year, along with Bruno Mars and the top artist that year, U2, which set a new one-year gross record with $316 million – only to be topped in 2018 by both Ed Sheeran and Swift with $432.3 million and $345.6 million, respectively. With Pink, the Eagles and Timberlake added to the mix, last year’s overall gross from the Top 5 tours reached $1.26 billion.
Looking at the R&B/hip-hop totals, one can tell the years when Beyoncé was on the road, especially co-headlining with Jay-Z during their On the Run treks in 2014 and 2018. The Carters amassed a combined gross of $164.2 million in 2014 that includes their first On the Run stadium tour as well as individual totals from his Magna Carter tour and her Mrs. Carter Show trek during the first quarter of that year.
The 2014 numbers also include the joint stadium effort by Eminem and Rihanna that summer which, added with his solo dates, totaled $66.2 million. The tours by John Legend, Drake and Kanye West brought the genre’s 2014 total gross to $278.8 million. Sales from 2015 tours by Chris Brown, The Weeknd, Nicki Minaj, Charlie Wilson and J. Cole dropped to $134.5 million, but the following year’s gross bounced back and hit $478.7 million from Beyoncé’s Formation tour, Drake and Future’s joint run along with solo treks by Rihanna, West and Macklemore & Ryan Lewis.
In 2017, The Weeknd, Drake, Kendrick Lamar, Jay-Z and Cole racked up $254.4 million between them, but last year’s revenue leaped back up to $440.7 million with help from the Carter’s On the Run II tour along with treks by Drake, Lamar and Cole as well as Travis Scott who owned top tour honors in Pollstar’s Q1 report this year.
Country’s biggest road warriors make their presence known with expected appearances throughout the five-year period. Kenny Chesney had the No. 1 country tour in 2015 and 2018 while Garth Brooks took that title in 2016 and 2017. Luke Bryan, who appears in the top five during all five years, reigned at No. 1 in 2014. Joining him that year were George Strait with the second half of his Cowboy Rides Away tour, Jason Aldean, Brooks and the Zac Brown Band for a combined gross of $267.9 million.
A $418.1 million jump in 2015 was the highest cumulative gross of all five years with headlining jaunts by Chesney, Brooks, Bryan and Brown along with Shania Twain. The past three years have all ended with grosses in the $300 million range from the top five country acts. Artists in 2016 were Brooks, Bryan, Chesney, Carrie Underwood and the Dixie Chicks followed the next year with headlining runs by Brooks, Bryan, Tim McGraw & Faith Hill, Eric Church and Florida Georgia Line. Last year’s top country tours were led by Chesney, Bryan, Twain, Keith Urban and Chris Stapleton.
A glance at the Latin music artists on the road also include multiple appearances by top acts in the genre. Marc Anthony appears in the top five in every year except 2018, taking the top slot in 2014 and 2016. Romeo Santos ranks three times, showing up in 2014, 2015 and 2018, while five artists appear twice: Enrique Iglesias (2014, 2017), the late Juan Gabriel (2014, 2015), Luis Miguel (2015, 2018), Chayanne (2015, 2016) and Marco Antonio Solís (2016, 2017). Sales during the first year included in this tally reached $141.9 million, but last year’s final counts topped out at $227.8 million, an increase of 60.5%.