Boxoffice Insider: Austin Venue Raises Capacity For Favorite Son

Parker McCollum
Danielle Del Valle / Getty Images – Parker McCollum
performs at Exit / In on April 17, 2019, in Nashville.

With the live entertainment industry responding to even newer normals in a world which has seen several new ones since the arrival of COVID-19, many concert venues are beginning to adjust their pandemic protocols as more and more people become fully vaccinated and government restrictions on capacity allowances loosen.

In Texas, for example, the governor lifted mask mandates and other pandemic constraints in early March, giving performance venues the go-ahead to begin allowing larger crowds for concerts. Nutty Brown Amphitheatre in Austin did just that this month, increasing the number of available tickets to pre-shutdown levels for popular local act Parker McCollum, a Texas-born Americana artist based in Austin who sold out two concerts at the amphitheater on April 16-17 with 3,710 tickets offered for each performance.
According to box office stats the venue reported to Pollstar, the shows were the first non-socially distanced events at Nutty Brown in over a year. The last reported large-capacity concert there had been a headlining appearance by Ice Cube prior to the shutdown on March 7, 2020, which drew a crowd of 2,598 and earned $160,733. McCollum’s two recent April concerts earned a box office haul of $317,570 with 7,420 tickets sold and a full house each night – a much-welcomed new normal.
McCollum was also a trailblazer last year as the first artist to appear live at the venue after the March shutdown, performing for 2,671 fans on June 12-13. Originally, he was scheduled for a single show on the evening of the 12th, but after the pandemic forced social distancing procedures, he opted to play four shows over two nights with only 667 tickets offered for each performance. Ultimately each one was a sellout, and his combined gross during the run totaled $130,480.
He returned again in the fall for another 2020 engagement and added a fifth show for that stint, performing for 3,289 attendees from Nov. 5 through 7. The seating configuration remained socially distanced with only 657 tickets available for each performance, but he sold them all and racked up a $184,865 box office take.
After those first four McCollum shows last June, the amphitheater hosted more socially distanced events in 2020 that featured headlining sets by Robert Earl Keen, Pat Green, Aaron Lewis, Eli Young Band, Old Crow Medicine Show and Randy Rogers Band. Each artist performed two shows except for Rogers who played three during a two-day run in November. The best attendance recorded among those with two concerts was 1,298 by Lewis at shows on Sept. 26.
A look at the box office archives shows that McCollum’s April concerts with 7,420 in attendance logged the highest number of sold tickets for any artist at one engagement, based on the amphitheater’s reported box office history. Bobby Bones & the Raging Idiots holds the record, though, as the act with the largest ticket count for a single show. Their performance on Nov. 5, 2016 moved 3,769 tickets.
Cole Swindell follows with the second highest number of tickets for one show based on his 3,714-ticket total at a Sept. 24, 2016, event. Next is the Eli Young Band with 3,700 total tickets for a concert on Aug. 19, 2011, to rank third in the attendance tally. They are the only other artists with three shows on record at Nutty Brown Amphitheatre in the archives. They also played there on Aug. 20, 2014 for a crowd of 3,620.