Box Office Insider: Cher To Wrap Big-Time Tour, Residency In 2020

There’s a light at the end of the tunnel. We’re in the homestretch. You can pick your nearing-the-end cliché for Cher, who is nearing the end of a particularly busy three-plus-year period of her enduring career. Indeed, since early 2017, the Oscar-, Grammy-, and Emmy-winning diva has performed a theater residency in multiple venues, toured worldwide with an arena trek, starred in a movie and released a new album.

Her “Classic Cher” theater residency launched at Park Theater at Park MGM in Las Vegas in February 2017, but also included additional performances at a second MGM venue, the Theater at MGM National Harbor in the Washington suburb of Oxon Hill, Md. With only six shows left, she’s set to complete the production in February in Las Vegas after a three-year run.

For about half that time, though, Cher has balanced the residency with “Here We Go Again,” her arena tour that has covered markets in North America, Europe and Oceania since fall 2018. With 102 theater show performances and 81 arena concerts now in the books, the legendary artist is nearing the final stages of both. After the residency’s February finale, Cher will wrap the arena tour in May.

The current trek supports her latest album, Dancing Queen, which debuted one week after the tour launched on Sept. 21, 2018. The tour – which also followed her July 2018 appearance in the film “Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again” – played Australia and New Zealand in fall 2018 and North America and Europe in 2019. Current box office tallies show an overall gross of $111.6 million so far from 930,995 sold seats at 81 performances in 70 arenas. The final leg of the tour, booked in 26 U.S. cities, begins March 6 and wraps May 6.

During the past 20 years of Cher’s five-decade career, box office averages tracked by Pollstar show consistent increases in both gross and ticket prices in her tours – from 1999’s career-jolting “Believe Tour” (June 1999 to March 2000) through the current jaunt. The average gross from “Believe” was about $714,000 with a ticket price average of $56.78, while her “Living Proof Tour” (June 2002 to April 2005) saw a slight rise to $717,000 per show with a ticket price average of $69.82. Her next tour, 2014’s “Dressed to Kill,” saw a jump in the gross average to more than $1.1 million along with a $90.04 ticket price average. Cher’s current tour has produced her highest gross average with $1.4 million per show from an average price of $119.87.

The “Classic Cher” residency has grossed $51.6 million from 338,701 sold tickets so far with 76 performances in Las Vegas and 24 at the Maryland venue. (She also took the show to the Borgata Event Center in Atlantic City for two nights in August 2018.) Per-show averages are about $506,000 from 3,321 tickets, just slightly less than her residency at the Colosseum at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas from May 2008 through February 2011, which averaged about $507,000 with 3,641 seats per show. Ticket price averages, though, show a jump from $139.36 for the Colosseum’s three-year run to $152.22 at the MGM venues.