Boxoffice Insider: BTS Joins Ranks Of Multi-Night Stadium Stars

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It’s a long time coming for BTS fans, as the international superstar K-pop group has announced four nights at SoFi Stadium in Southern California. The group is pictured at the Times Square New Year’s Eve celebration in New York City on Dec. 31, 2019.

The four recently announced BTS concerts at SoFi Stadium in Inglewood, Calif., booked for Nov. 27-28 and Dec. 1-2, will mark the South Korean group’s first stadium performances since having to cancel its “Map of the Soul Tour,” which was planned for 2020. BTS was scheduled to be on the road last year, playing stadiums worldwide from April through early September, but the pandemic forced postponements of all the dates just weeks before launch. Ultimately, the tour was officially canceled this past August.

BTS’ most recent tour, which spanned from August 2018 to October 2019, consisted largely of stadium dates, although the group played arenas in North America and Europe during the trek’s first two months. The first portion of the tour, titled “Love Yourself,” began at Seoul’s Jamsil Olympic Stadium on Aug. 25-26, 2018, and continued through April 7, 2019, ending with two nights in Bangkok.
A six-month extension dubbed “Love Yourself: Speak Yourself” that stretched from May to October 2019 began at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, Calif., on May 4-5, and was followed by events at nine more stadiums, including U.S. plays at Chicago’s Soldier Field and MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, N.J., both of which also featured the band for two shows. Two-night stands were booked in São Paulo, London, Paris, Osaka and Shizuoka, Japan as well as a single performance in Saudi Arabia. Then, the Olympic Stadium in Seoul again hosted the band, for a tour finale consisting of three shows.
According to reported box-office figures for all 10 of the venues during the “Speak Yourself” tour extension, the combined gross from 20 performances topped $115.7 million. The sold ticket tally from all dates topped out at 976,283 for a per-show ticket average of 48,814.
That average is higher than the 37,032 average per show at stadiums during the opening segment of the tour in fall 2018 and spring 2019, perhaps due in part to venue size. Stadiums during the last half of the tour were major sports facilities that offered ticket availability ranging from 37,000 to 56,000 per show, yet the reported stadium dates earlier in the run before the tour extension had ticket availability from 12,000 to 24,000. Among the arena dates on the first half of the tour, the per show ticket average was 19,835.
Top box-office results were found at two different venues on the tour, with the best attendance recorded at the Seoul Olympic Stadium. The band’s final three shows held Oct. 26-29, 2019 drew 129,268 hometown fans, the most on the tour at one venue engagement. The highest reported gross, though, was recorded at the Rose Bowl. The two shows in Pasadena logged a box-office haul of $16.6 million.
Pollstar’s archives include many artists who have made an impact with multiple shows at stadiums around the world, but three of them have scored massive box-office results from eight or more performances at a single engagement.
Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band head up that group with 10 nights at Giants Stadium in East Rutherford, N.J., in the summer of 2003. The total ticket count was 566,560 from sellout crowds at each show occurring July 15 through Aug. 31. Overall, the gross total was $38.7 million.
Roger Waters follows with a nine-show 2012 stadium event in Argentina. He drew 430,678 fans to Estadio River Plate in Buenos Aires, March 7-20, and grossed more than $37.9 million.
English pop group Take That has two stadium events in the archives with eight performances during their “Progress Live” tour in 2011. They played London’s Wembley Stadium with 623,737 in attendance, June 30-July 9, as well as Manchester’s Etihad Stadium earlier that June with 443,223 attendees. With grosses of $62.8 million and $44.9 million, respectively, the two U.K. engagements remain the highest grossers of all-time for a single concert headliner.