Boxoffice Insider: Super Bowl Music Fest Concert Stars To Shine After Strong 2022 Tours

One of the marquee events of Super Bowl week in Phoenix, Arizona, will be the fourth annual Bud Light Super Bowl Music Fest to be held on three nights, Feb. 9-11, at Footprint Center. The concert stars to be featured all excelled at the box office in 2022 and are on target to shine in the months ahead as the upcoming year of live concert entertainment begins to take shape.

Paramore will head up the first night of the indoor festival event with Bleachers as the opening act, while Dave Matthews Band will top the bill for the Friday performance that includes DJ Pee .Wee (aka Anderson .Paak) as special guest. Then, the Saturday night concert will feature Imagine Dragons along with Kane Brown to cap the three nights of musical entertainment leading up to Super Bowl Sunday.

All three headliners toured in 2022 and have robust touring plans for this year, primarily in North and South America and Europe. Imagine Dragons, though, kicked off the year with shows in Asia and Africa prior to their Phoenix appearance, and will begin a South American trek in Brazil on Feb. 28. Paramore will be right on their heels, launching their own South American run in Peru on March 2, while Dave Matthews Band will play a March festival in Tampa and May shows in Mexico before their next summer tour.

Last year, Imagine Dragons and Dave Matthews Band both ranked among the Top 200 Worldwide Tours, the former with the No. 24 ranking based on $79.2 million earned at 57 reported shows on the group’s “Mercury” tour. The trek began with North American arena dates early last year before heading to Europe during the summer and back to the U.S. and Canada for shows in August and September.

A sold-out Sept. 10 performance at Allegiant Stadium in Las Vegas was Imagine Dragons’ top-grossing North American event with a box-office take of $3.8 million from 40,262 sold tickets. In Europe, the band’s highest reported gross came from a two-show stint in the Czech Republic at Prague’s Letnany Airport, June 5-6, with over $8.6 million in sales and more than 115,000 sold tickets.

Dave Matthews Band ended 2022 with the 34th best ranking among the top tours based on a $62.7 million gross from 54 concerts. The opening leg of the tour, booked primarily at North American amphitheaters from May 11 through Sept. 20, produced a gross of $54 million. It wrapped with a finale at the Hollywood Bowl that earned $3.8 million from 26,779 sold seats at two shows.

The L.A. gross ranked second only to the band’s traditional Labor Day engagement at Gorge Amphitheatre in central Washington that racked up a $4.2 million total. The three performances drew 53,088 fans during the weekend run. Historically, the group has performed 60 concerts at the Gorge, according to Pollstar Boxoffice archives, beginning with a headlining date there in July 1997 through this past September. In 25 years, they have grossed $60 million at the venue from almost 1.2 million sold tickets.

After the summer trek, the band played U.S. and Canadian arenas during a two-and-a-half-week span that saw over 108,000 tickets sold at 10 shows. New York’s Madison Square Garden hosted the finale on Nov. 18-19, and was the only venue with two performances during the fall run. The $3.5 million gross there was Dave Matthews Band’s third highest of the year behind the Gorge and Hollywood Bowl.

Paramore is currently on the road with “This Is Why,” the band’s fifth headlining tour that kicked off last fall playing North American venues, primarily theaters. Reported box office figures show an average of 2,978 sold tickets per show on the trek that grossed about $264,000 per night. In the months ahead, though, the group will broaden the scope of the tour with larger venues on tap for 2023 beginning with the Latin American run in March in both stadiums and arenas. April features a stretch of arena dates in Ireland and the U.K. followed by a second North American jaunt from May until early August. Along with headlining shows, Paramore will appear on the final night of Bonnaroo, June 18, and at three other U.S. festivals in May.