Boxoffice Insider: Debbie Gibson– On Stage Three Decades And Counting

Boxoffice records show that her first reported concert in Worcester that July in 1988 was a near sellout with an audience of 8,079 fans who purchased about 98% of the available tickets. With her 1980s-era ticket prices ranging from $15.50 to $17.50, the show grossed $135,188 which is valued at about $312,000 today.

Pollstar’s database includes 13 reported concerts from the “Out of the Blue” tour in 1988 including her three-show engagement at New York City’s Radio City Music Hall in September. Gibson, who grew up on Long Island, drew a total of 17,622 fans to the Manhattan performance venue with gross sales hitting $345,840 (now almost $800,000). All three shows, beginning with the Sept. 9 opener, were sold out.

That tour also featured another New York-area concert staged near her Long Island hometown. She performed outdoors at Jones Beach Theater in Wantagh (now with naming rights by Northwell Health) on July 5, 1988. The amphitheater event logged a gross of $185,000 (about $427,000 today) with some 10,000 fans present for the sold-out show. It was the largest headcount reported for a single headlining performance during the tour.

Then the following year, there are 15 performances by Gibson stored in the archives beginning with another show at Worcester’s Centrum Centre on July 28, 1989. In the second year she sold 590 more tickets at the arena than in the previous summer for a $160,377 boxoffice take (now valued at $353,000), but once again, the New York crowds made the biggest splash at the ticket counters.

On two consecutive evenings, Sept. 21 and 22, she performed at both Madison Square Garden and the now-defunct Meadowlands Arena (then called Brendan Byrne Arena) in East Rutherford, N.J., selling out both concerts. The show at the Garden on the first night was attended by 14,665 ticket holders with gross revenue of $293,300 (now $646,000), while the Meadowlands show drew her largest crowd on record from that summer: 16,501 with sales reaching $307,138 ($676,000 now). She had one other reported arena show with attendance topping 10,000 on that year’s schedule. On Aug. 1, 1989, she moved 12,690 tickets at Philadelphia’s Spectrum which was closed for business two decades later and subsequently demolished.

From 2000 going forward, Gibson has just a handful of headlining dates stored in the archives as her concert touring became more interspersed with theater, film and television work, as well as a variety of album projects and other endeavors. But among her stints on the road were opening slots on two high-profile boy band tours, the first in 2001 when she appeared on the bill for *NSYNC’s “PopOdyssey” stadium tour. Her dates came during August as the tour was in its homestretch.

The largest crowd she entertained with *NSYNC was at an Aug. 18 event at Pittsburgh’s Heinz Field. With Christina Milian and Lil’ Johnny also on the bill, the show drew 48,118 fans. She followed with sets at Columbus (Ohio) Crew Stadium, Louisiana (now Caesars) Superdome in New Orleans, Mississippi Veterans Memorial Stadium in Jackson and the Sun Bowl Stadium in El Paso, Texas.

Then, most recently, she was a featured artist on New Kids on the Block’s 2019 “MixTape” tour along with Salt-n-Pepa, Tiffany and Naughty By Nature. The archives have 55 shows reported from the tour with overall grosses topping $52.6 million from 655,643 tickets. Set in North American arenas, the tour ran from May 2 through July 14.