By The Numbers: Winter Jam Tour Sees Three-Year Highs At The Box Office

Premier Productions’ “Winter Jam” tour with its diverse lineup of Christian music artists, including the event’s founder NewSong, has been a mainstay on the road in American cities during the opening months of the year since its inception in 1995. The annual event, first presented as a one-night performance in a 6,500-seat venue in South Carolina, has grown into a multiple-date arena tour during its almost three-decade history.

This year the tour played 38 venues in eastern and midwestern U.S. cities from Jan. 12 through March 24, grossing over $7.13 million from 294,577 fans in attendance during a 10-week run. Reported box-office figures show that the 2024 jaunt produced the best box-office results of the past three years. The overall gross reflects a 19 percent jump over the gross from last year’s “Winter Jam” and a 79 percent increase over the 2022 gross, while this year’s ticket count surpassed the 2023 total by 12 percent and the previous year by 42 percent.

Yet, it is the gross average that makes history as it sets an all-time record for the “Winter Jam” franchise. The tour averaged $187,711 per show in 2024, topping 2016’s average gross of $179,059 which remained the highest on record for eight years. 2017’s tour averaged $166,225 per show and 2018’s, $164,430, but those were the two years that came closest to the 2016 total until this year. The average gross produced in every other year since 2000 landed below $160,000.

This year’s average number of tickets moved per show peaked at 7,752, beating the averages from the previous two years. It is 15 percent higher than the ticket average in 2023 and 46 percent more than in 2022. Historically, however, even higher attendance averages were the norm during many of the pre-COVID years. From 2006 through 2017, ticket averages ran from a low of 7,953 (2006) to a high of 12,587 in 2013. In that record-setting year, Knoxville, Tennessee’s Thompson-Boling Arena drew a crowd of 19,571 on Feb. 15, the largest crowd for a single performance in 2013. But the highest attendance on record for a “Winter Jam” concert was recorded at a stadium during the 2014 tour with a crowd of 28,154 at Atlanta’s Georgia Dome.

On this year’s tour, Greensboro Coliseum in North Carolina stands out as the most successful at the box office, producing both the highest gross and attendance tally of any venue on the 2024 tour. The arena welcomed 13,156 attendees for a concert on Feb. 24 and logged a gross of $369,258. Then, the second highest ticket count was 12,912 recorded at Thompson-Boling Arena on Feb. 18, and the third best was 11,715 at Nashville’s Bridgestone Arena, Feb. 16.

Two more arenas with over 10,000 in attendance were Gainbridge Fieldhouse in Indianapolis (11,117) and Legacy Arena in Birmingham, Alabama (10,952). Others were Greenville, South Carolina’s Bon Secours Wellness Arena (10,322), Gas South Arena in Duluth, Georgia (10,152) and PNC Arena in Raleigh, North Carolina (10,106).

Two other tours in the Christian music genre with box-office success during the first three months of 2024 were TobyMac’s “Hits Deep Tour” and Elevation Worship’s “Elevation Nights ’24 Tour.” Like “Winter Jam,” the TobyMac tour is also a multi-artist arena trek that runs annually. Produced by Awakening Events, this year’s tour grossed $6.39 million from 180,847 tickets sold at 30 performances. And the Elevation Worship trek, also produced by Premier Productions, brought in $5.57 million from 93,399 tickets at eight shows.