Awakening Events Moves From The Drive-In To Indoors

Two days later, Awakening Events owner Dan Fife, the promoter of TobyMac’s “Deep Hits Tour,” knew the team would have to “hit pause” for an indeterminable amount of time.

“That Sunday, I heard this voice say, ‘Hey, you’d better circle up your team,’” Fife says.  “We’ve got about 19 full-time employees in the company. And I told them, ‘I don’t know what’s going to happen, but just know you’re going to be all right.’ I look back at that and go, well, that was crazy and bold, but it’s helped us grow.”

After seeing photos of a drive-in show in Europe, Fife started making calls to see if that might be possible to replicate with his idled artists. Come June 22, TobyMac opened the first show of his “Drive-In Theater Tour” June 22 at the Highway 21 Drive-In in Beaufort, S.C. The show sold out its capacity of 1,536 tickets for a gross of $37,497. 

Awakening Events and TobyMac were back in business. By the end of the year, Awakening Events staged three additional tours with Zach Williams, Steven Curtis Chapman and Skillet each headlining, for 122 shows in all. 

The drive-in series was successful enough to land Awakening Events in Pollstar’s Year End Top 20 Promoters in worldwide ticket sales chart with 373,476 sold and a gross of more than $13 million. 

But winter is not exactly drive-in weather and Fife and his team knew they had to pivot somehow going into the new year. With the NBA and NHL professional sports leagues showing that indoor events could take place safely, they did their research, called their friends in arena management, and found out where and how they might be able to stage socially distanced shows indoors.

Following strict COVID protocols and limiting capacity, the H-E-B Center At Cedar Park in Texas hosted the return of the “Hits Deep Tour” Feb. 5-6. Normally a 8,700-cap building, the arena was cut to 2,552 capacity for two shows that sold a total of 3,897 tickets. 

“Seven of the 18 shows were in Florida where it’s warmer in February, and they were all filled,” Fife says. “We were consistent regardless of local guidelines – masks, six feet of distance. The beauty  of working with the buildings was it was consistent for us, and the NHL and NBA were looking at us before they brought fans in the buildings. 

“We worked hand in hand with the buildings to get seating maps and protocols approved, and we had a tour bubble in every city. We had our own catering, our tour accountant settled by Zoom in the building. You didn’t have building people in your bubble. It was so energizing for arenas, artists, and crew to be doing what they’re doing and have done their whole lives.”

Awakening Events and TobyMac also managed to give back to the communities they were in, continuing a two-year partnership with Altrua HealthShare and the Salvation Army to support local food banks. 

In addition to the 18 TobyMac concerts in the first quarter of 2021, Awakening Events also promoted three shows at indoor church venues with comedian Chondra Pierce. 

On the quarter, the promoter reports 16,759 tickets sold for a gross of $685,209 or an average of $85,651 per show.

“It wasn’t about wanting to be the first,” Fife explains. “But we did feel there was a need to say this can be done and done safely. It was a stepping stone for the fans in coming back as opposed to us waiting until we could do 100% cap. 

“To have these social distance shows and see the ticket scanners welcoming people you would think it was their first day on the job. As they were thanking people, you could see the smiles in their eyes.”