Boxoffice Insider: Drive-In Divas Drag Race Stars Play The Parking Lots

Aquaria (Giovanni Palandrani)
Gary Miller / Getty Images – Aquaria (Giovanni Palandrani)
performs during the Voss Events Drive N’ Drag show at HEB Center on March 5, 2021, in Cedar Park, Texas.

Leave it to the traveling drag queens from RuPaul’s Drag Race to bring the party to the masses during pandemic times with the touring production “Drive ‘N Drag Saves 2021.” It was the second tour since the COVID-19 outbreak last year featuring performers from the hit VH1 television show in a drive-in concert setting.

The first tour last summer came during the height of the drive-in touring craze and featured 61 shows set in nine American cities during a 15-week span. This year’s winter tour was also staged on parking lots in nine cities stateside but launched with an announced, tongue-in-cheek mission to “save us from 2020.”

Like last year’s “Drive ‘N Drag” trek, the recent tour was the brainchild of Voss Events in New York City, the event’s producer that specializes in LGBTQ-marketed entertainment. Among other road shows mounted by Voss are the “Werq the World” tours that bowed in 2017, also starring performers from the Emmy Award-winning competition reality series.
The socially distanced, winter drive-in trek featured former Drag Race winner Bianca Del Rio and a slate of other performers who have appeared on the show. It began with an opening engagement on Feb. 19-20 on the parking lot at the Sugarloaf Mills shopping mall in Lawrenceville, Ga., located in the greater Atlanta area. The event drew 4,707 fans with both general admission and VIP tickets sold for two performances on each day. The total number of automobiles admitted on the concert site was 1,569.
Shows followed in Florida in the Tampa and Ft. Lauderdale markets prior to the production heading to Texas for events in Houston, Austin, San Antonio and Dallas. A four-show stand in Phoenix was next and led to the tour’s final performances in the parking lot at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, Calif. The finale was the top grosser during the winter tour with ticket revenue hitting $379,752. The L.A.-area stadium also hosted the most performances on the jaunt with seven shows that played March 19-21.
Final sales figures produced on the winter trek show an overall boxoffice haul topping $1.6 million at 41 performances in all nine cities from Feb. 19 through March 21. The attendance count from all markets hit 41,733, and the Rose Bowl again tops the field with the largest number of attendees recorded on the tour at one venue. With 10,920 fans counted at the Pasadena stadium, it was the only venue to pass the 10,000 mark in attendance.
The Rose Bowl was also one of the destinations on the 2020 summer tour and one of three venues with eight performances booked. Only one engagement, though, offered nine shows – the tour’s opening run from July 17 through 19 booked in another shopping mall parking lot. The Westfield Garden State Plaza in the New York City suburb of Paramus, N.J. hosted the opening concerts. Tickets were sold for 2,715 vehicles at all nine shows with the combined attendance at the site recorded as 8,145.
Altogether during the 2020 summer tour, 93% of the available tickets were sold for a headcount totaling 63,192 at all 61 shows. Grosses topped $2.1 million at the nine-city run that continued through Halloween night, wrapping at Westfield Sunrise Mall in East Massapequa, N.Y.
On May 7, Voss Events will kick off a third “Drive ‘N Drag” tour with multiple shows booked in 13 U.S. cities through late June. San Francisco’s Southland Mall will be the site for the opening series of shows, followed by additional dates planned in the western U.S., the Midwest and the east coast. Currently, the final stop is scheduled to be New York City during Pride festivities, June 25-27.