Boxoffice Insider: Janet Jackson To Commemorate ‘Rhythm Nation’ Anniversary Down Under

Jackson will headline Australia’s fourth annual RNB Fridays Live concert series, which is booked in five markets in November and will also feature The Black Eyed Peas, 50 Cent, Jason Derulo and other R&B and hip-hop artists. 

Perth’s HBF Park will host the first event on Nov. 8, followed by Melbourne’s Marvel Stadium, the Adelaide Showground, the Brisbane Showgrounds and Sydney’s Giants Stadium. On Nov. 17, Jackson will head to New Zealand to head up the slate of artists at ZM’s Friday Jams Live, held for the second consecutive year at Auckland’s Western Springs Stadium.

The tour comes on the heels of Jackson’s first Las Vegas residency, “Metamorphosis,” which commemorated the Rhythm Nation anniversary and included performances of some of her biggest hits. The production at Park Theater at Park MGM paid homage to the album as a highlight of Jackson’s longstanding career and grossed almost $13 million from 18 shows – six in May and another 12 in July and August – with a total of 76,813 tickets sold during both runs. Tickets ranged from $79 to $500.

The Oceania jaunt will mark eight years since Jackson last toured Australia during 2011’s “Number Ones, Up Close and Personal” tour.

Rather than stadium-sized venues, that Aussie run of six shows was set in theaters and smaller venues with an average of 2,732 sold seats per show. She had a 96% sellout average, moving 16,389 tickets for a box office take of $2.7 million. The Auckland show will be her first in New Zealand since 1998’s “Velvet Rope” tour when she played arenas in Christchurch and Wellington along with Ericsson Stadium (now Mt Smart Stadium) in Auckland.

The new tour – officially dubbed “Janet Jackson: A Special 30th Anniversary Celebration of Rhythm Nation” – also includes a handful of U.S. appearances this fall. 

The first was a concert at Treasure Island Resort & Casino in Welch, Minn., on Sept. 14, followed the next weekend by a show at the Chase Center, the new San Francisco arena that opened for business just 15 days prior to her Sept. 21 performance.  

“Having Janet Jackson for the 30th anniversary of Rhythm Nation is another event unto itself,” Chase Center executive director Eric Bresler told Pollstar just ahead of the sold-out show. “There’s  a lot of good buzz with this tour.” 

Jackson’s Bay Area concert drew 12,613 fans and racked up a gross of $1.6 million, the third-highest among the seven September concerts at the venue that were reported to Pollstar. (Metallica’s two-show stint took in $4.1 million, and a John Mayer concert grossed $1.7 million).

Jackson will wrap the tour with a series of concerts in Hawaii in late November directly following her Oceania dates. She is booked for three nights at Honolulu’s Neal S. Blaisdell Arena on Nov. 20, 21 and 23.