Year In Europe: What’s Next After The Year Of the stadium?

2023 has been the year of the stadium. Giant entertainment temples are the main reason the top artists on Pollstar’s Year-End Top 200 Worldwide Tours did the numbers they did.

The world’s biggest acts have been performing on the world’s biggest stages ever since production allowed for it. But the sheer number of artists stringing together entire world stadium tours all in the same year is a novelty, as is the amount of mini-residencies setting up shop in one building for anything between two and 10 dates. As Nils Hoch, deputy CEO of Munich’s Olympic Stadium, explained in Pollstar’s recent Germany Focus in September, “Most are choosing to play twice or three times, which wasn’t the case a few years ago. But they’re selling out, and it makes sense for artists and their teams from a production and cost standpoint.”

Even stadiums that haven’t hosted concerts in a while decided to make the most of it. Birmingham’s Villa Park hosted P!NK (June 13), and Bruce Springsteen (June 16) – the first concerts at the historic stadium since 2013.

Pollstar reached out to Phil Bowdery, executive president of touring international at Live Nation, who’s been touring with Coldplay for almost 20 years, and who first worked with Harry Styles when putting together the One Direction tours of Europe in the 2010s. Bowdery said the key to a great stadium show was the artist’s ability to connect with the audience, “and both have that in huge amounts. In turn, the audience relates to them very well. You’d think in a setting as big as that, it would lose the intimacy, but it doesn’t at all. They still connect with every single person in there, whether they’re down on the floor, or up on the highest bleachers.”

Since there are no buildings on earth that could accommodate more spectators than stadiums, it seems fair to ask where the top-end of this business is headed? How, in Coldplay’s case, do you surpass four nights at Stadio San Siro in Milan, Italy, in front of 249,560, grossing $29,439,180; 10 nights at Estadio Monumental Antonio Vespucio Liberti in Buenos Aires, Argentina (626,841 tickets, $49,695,814 grossed); or four nights at Ullevi Stadium in Gothenburg, Sweden (267,180, $26,242,821)?

How do you top Harry Styles’ four sold-out Wembley Stadiums in London last June, moving 335,394 tickets for $37,341,665? More dates, longer mini-residences, more old stadiums revived as concert locations? “It’s a case of all of those things,” said Bowdery.

“We’ve seen the launch of Sphere this year. It’s not a stadium, obviously, but it’s something different, just as the stadium shows are. Taylor Swift, The Weeknd, they’re putting this incredible spectacle on.” He thinks it likely “that people are going to play more dates in one place, so that you actually go to see them, rather than them touring around. There are certain acts that can do that. And then there’s other acts that want to go and play everywhere, because they love that. It’s all part of being on the road.”

There are concerns stadium shows take away business from smaller venues. Music fans may not be able to afford another concert ticket after spending an amount on a stadium show that could have covered multiple concerts at a smaller venue – the very buildings where everything began for the headliners of today, or, as Music Venue Trust’s Rebecca Walker said, when speaking for her Impact International honors this year: “Without our building blocks here at the beginning, where will the next Coldplay, Ed Sheeran, Arctic Monkeys or Adele come from?”

Not to worry, said her fellow Impact International 2023 honoree Mike Malak, senior vice president at Wasserman Music: “I firmly believe that talent finds its way to the top no matter what. Things take time and we have to learn to have more patience in artist development but overall any concerns about artists not growing is more a reflection on the artists connecting with the audience than it is about stadium business taking away their opportunities.”