Box Office Insider: Matchbox Twenty Grosses $35M On ‘Slow Dream Tour’

This year has been jam-packed for Matchbox Twenty with new music, a new studio album – the first in 11 years – and a headlining tour that played North American venues after surviving three years of pandemic-related delays. The tour was originally planned as a 2020 trek with The Wallflowers, but COVID-19 led to one-year postponements in 2020, 2021 and again last year. Then, after The Wallflowers pulled out of the lineup, Matt Nathanson was added as support. Now dubbed “Slow Dream,” the revamped tour ultimately kicked off on May 16 at Rogers Arena in Vancouver and continued through Aug. 6.

On the trek’s opening leg through U.S. and Canadian markets, the band performed 51 shows, primarily at outdoor amphitheaters but also mixed with a handful of indoor arenas in select cities. With box-office figures reported by the tour’s promoter, Live Nation, grosses from the North American dates hit $35 million from a total of 583,492 sold tickets.

The tour preceded the release of the band’s new studio album on Atlantic Records, Where the Light Goes, by 10 days, arriving on May 26. The album also came on the heels of the first two released singles from the project: “Wild Dogs (Running in a Slow Dream)” and “Don’t Get Me Wrong,” debuting in March and May, respectively.

Among the most successful venues on the tour, determined by reported box-office results, the highest-grossing performance was a July 3rd event held at Bridgestone Arena in Nashville, Tennessee. The venue recorded a gross of $1,116,379 from 12,097 sold seats with tickets ranging from a low of $21.75 to a top price of $139.50.

Likewise, the best ticket count on the North American stretch of shows was logged in the Indianapolis market with 23,821 visitors in attendance at Ruoff Music Center. The outdoor amphitheater in Noblesville grossed over $1.03 million from a sold-out performance on Aug. 5.

Then, the final stop on the tour’s opening leg came the next day when the band performed at Credit Union 1 Amphitheatre in Tinley Park, Illinois, in the Chicago area. The concert drew a crowd of 16,990 for a gross totaling $842,676 to cap the North American run.

Earlier this year in May, Matchbox Twenty announced that the “Slow Dream” tour would be heading to Australia and New Zealand in 2024, marking the group’s first shows in Oceania since the “North” tour in 2012. Also on the bill will be Goo Goo Dolls as the opening act for the upcoming trek, set to begin in mid-February in Perth, Australia, and wrap on the 2nd of March in New Plymouth, New Zealand.

Goo Goo Dolls also joined Matchbox Twenty as co-headliners on the road one decade ago on a North American summer tour that ran from June through August of 2013. Together, the bands grossed over $15 million at 41 concerts that year. The sold-ticket tally on the tour totaled 406,769 from performances mainly at sheds and arenas.

The top grosser on the 2013 summer tour was a three-show engagement at Ravinia Park in Highland Park, Illinois, July 2-4. Originally just two shows went on sale, but a third performance was added on the 4th due to brisk sales. Together, the bands drew 42,780 fans and grossed $1.93 million. For a single show on the trek, Northwell Health at Jones Beach Theater in Wantagh, New York, had the top gross of $653,676, while Atlanta’s Lakewood Amphitheatre sold the most tickets with a total of 17,517.

The most recent Matchbox Twenty tour, though, was “A Brief History of Everything,” another co-headlining jaunt that ran in 2017 from July through early October. Joining the band was Counting Crows for a total of 50 performances. The tour’s attendance came to 467,289 during the run that grossed $19.7 million.

Individual venue results on the 2017 tour mirror the current tour as the group saw Bridgestone Arena also claim the highest gross on the trek. The Music City arena logged box-office revenue totaling $783,689 from 11,917 sold tickets for a single August performance. Then, Ruoff Music Center (then called Ruoff Home Mortgage Music Center) also had the most sold tickets on the earlier tour with 16,170 moved at a late September event.