Boxoffice Insider: Luke Bryan Is Proud To Be Back On Stage

With more than 35 dates booked primarily in outdoor venues in American cities through mid-October, the tour kicked off with a crowd of 11,229 at the Syracuse shed. Bryan performed 20 songs at the opener including a number with fellow country artists Dylan Scott and Caylee Hammack who opened the first show. They also stayed on as tour support with DJ Rock on select dates along with Runaway June who joined the tour in August.

With boxoffice results from the ongoing tour’s first 17 performances reported to Pollstar, the running sold-ticket count sits at 260,978 from the first concert through the most recent show stored in the database: his Aug. 14 concert at Darien Lake Performing Arts Center in Darien Center, N.Y. Gross revenue from those 17 shows totals $16.3 million which averages $957,204 per show from an average of 15,352 sold seats.

Those averages are higher than those from Bryan’s last pre-COVID touring effort: 2019’s “Sunset Repeat” tour that averaged $845,570 and 15,241 tickets per show at the sheds and arena-sized venues on the schedule. The average ticket price has also grown this summer in contrast to the 2019 trek, averaging $62.35 per ticket compared to the previous tour’s $55.48 ticket price.

Those averages come from the amphitheaters and arenas on the 2019 tour, as well as shows at fair grandstands or any venue in the 20,000-seat range. But he also played two NFL stadiums on “Sunset Repeat” that moved 93,603 tickets, about 15% of the overall ticket count that year. The venues were Gillette Stadium in Foxborough, Mass., on June 21, 2019 and Detroit’s Ford Field on Oct. 25 with boxoffice grosses from both topping $6.7 million. That total accounted for over 18% of the tour’s overall gross.

Although no NFL stadium dates have been announced for Bryan’s 2021 tour, his touring history does include more than 40 stadium performances as a headliner set in venues with capacities as high as 70,000 seats and smaller stadiums in about the 25,000 range.

Gillette Stadium was responsible for two of his personal attendance records, first as the stadium with the highest overall ticket total of 76,450 when he headlined there on his “Kill the Lights” tour in 2016. It was a two-show engagement on July 15-16 and one of only two stadium dates that included two performances that year, the other being Dick’s Sporting Goods Park near Denver with two September concerts.

Gillette also has the record for the most tickets for a single stadium show by Luke Bryan, according to the archives. The NFL venue welcomed 56,048 fans during the singer’s first headlining appearance on Aug. 10, 2014, one of four major U.S. sports stadiums he played on his “That’s My Kind of Night” tour that year. The others were Heinz Field in Pittsburgh, Lincoln Financial Field across the state in Philadelphia and Chicago’s Soldier Field.

Bryan’s overall reported boxoffice totals show a gross of $443 million from 520 headlining performances dating back to October 2007 (not including festival appearances or shows as a support act). The total number of tickets sold at his concerts during that period is 8,068,712.

He is set to launch his annual outdoor “Farm Tour” on Sept. 9 in Marshall, Wis., with six locations tapped in midwestern U.S. states through the 18th. Then “Proud to Be Right Here” will resume with a Sept. 23 performance in San Diego and run through the end of October.