No. 12 – Metallica

Per Ole Hagen / Redferns –

No. 12
Metallica
Decade Gross: $661,907,247 

Tours:  Vacation Tour (2011), European Black Album Tour (2012), Full Arsenal Tour (2012), Summer Tour (2013), By Request Tour (2014), Lords of Summer Tour (2015), WorldWired Tour (2016-2019).
The Team: Agency: Artist Group International / Adam Kornfeld, Dennis Arfa Management: Q Prime / Cliff Burnstein and Peter Mensch.

Ever the road dogs, the metal gods earned their rightful place on this list, with 245 shows played over the decade, during which they were on the road every year. “In the last 10 years since we started this model, we have found a way for it to work for us in terms of how we tour, the amount of shows that we play, and how we play them,” drummer and co-founder Lars Ulrich told Pollstar in a recent interview. 

“We played these shows in sort of two-week increments, which gives us a chance to sort of look at the long game rather than how we’d go out and play, you know, 100 shows over 130 days, and then we all fall over and can’t deal with the physical and mental fatigue of it. I don’t necessarily look at it like the tour’s never-ending, you know, it’s just this tour will just roll over into something else, which will roll over into something else.”