Mid-Year Top Tours: No. 2 Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band’s ‘2023 Tour’

Mid-Year Top 100 Worldwide Tours
No. 2 Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band
Gross: $142,605,835
Average Ticket Price: $211.80
Average Tickets Sold Per Show: 18,702
Total Tickets: 673,277
Average Gross: $3,961,273

There may be no better example of a true blockbuster tour than Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band’s “2023 Tour.” Pollstar has crowned 2023 the Year Of The Blockbuster, which comes after the pent-up demand of The Great Return in 2021 and follows up on 2022’s stadium onslaught. The Boss and Co. are examples of all three, really.

With Springsteen & E Street back on the road for the first time since 2016-17, The Great Return continues in some respects and builds on the momentum of 2022. The “2023 Tour” kicked off at U.S. arenas but hits stadiums in Europe for a whopping 30-plus dates and returns Stateside in August, doing not only arenas but MLB parks and NFL stadiums including Gillette Stadium (two nights) and MetLife Stadium (three nights).

“The reason for the outstanding response to this tour is simply the quality of the show and production,” longtime Springsteen manager Jon Landau told Pollstar via email during the European tour, which continues through July. “Bruce and the E Street Band get better and better.”

As of last summer, Springsteen & E Street (booked by BPB Consulting and CAA) was the No. 4 all-time ticket seller – based on gross and attendance – since Pollstar began tracking such data. With 90 dates total in 2023, Springsteen appears poised to remain among the highest tier. Sure to boost the hard numbers is a hefty average ticket price – something the general public and pundits may have criticized but which are well in line with the rest of the business, especially when considering the relative cost of entertainment post-COVID.

It’s fitting that insiders remain just as impressed by the tour.

“I’m speechless. I have no words to describe what I saw,” says Spanish promoter Neo Sala, one of the co-promoters involved in Springsteen’s two concerts at Estadi Olimpic Lluis Companys in Barcelona April 28 and April 30. “I thought the first concert, which was the opening night for the European tour, could not get any better, but I was wrong. The second show was, for me, the best rock concert I have ever seen in my 40 years in the live music industry.”

The annual POLLSTAR ranking of the concert industry’s top performing artists is tabulated for all Worldwide shows played between 11/17/22 to 5/17/23. All ticket sales figures are calculated in U.S. dollars and are based on reported information and extensive research by POLLSTAR.