Boxoffice Insider: Highlights of Mid-Year Recap Include Familiar Top-Grossing, Best-Attended Concert Venues

With the first half of 2025 completed, the highest rankings reflected on the Pollstar venue charts belonged to facilities that often appear at No. 1 in quarterly recaps. And, as is often the case, their chart-topping success is seen in the rankings based on gross dollars earned as well as the chart determined by ticket sales. This year, of the five venue categories: arenas, theaters, clubs, amphitheaters and stadiums/outdoor venues, four of them have the same venue ranked at the top on both charts.

Only the arena category features different venues at the top. Sphere in Las Vegas earns the No. 1 position on the chart ranked by gross, and Movistar Arena in Madrid, Spain (formerly WiZink Center) heads up the chart ranked by ticket sales.

At Sphere, three headliners were on stage with concert residencies during the mid-year eligibility timeframe, Nov. 14 through May 14. Eagles led the way with $93.4 million from 327,230 tickets sold at 20 performances over a four-and-a-half-month period beginning Dec. 6, while Dead & Company’s 15 shows in March, April and May brought in $61.9 million from 244,457 tickets. And with 12 shows between late December and early March, Anyma grossed $31.5 million with a ticket count of 203,977.

Among Movistar Arena’s best-attended concert engagements were multiple show runs by Spanish singers Melendi, who played four non-consecutive nights in December, and Quevedo with three February shows. Their sold-ticket totals were 60,461 and 43,754, respectively. Colombian artist Maluma also performed on three nights and moved 45,459 tickets. Then, also in December, Paul McCartney appeared at the arena for two nights with 31,018 in attendance, and Dua Lipa sold 29,797 tickets at two recent concerts on May 11 and 12.

Overall, Sphere’s mid-year gross reached a whopping $186,812,748 from 775,664 tickets sold, topping Madison Square Garden in New York, the arena with the second highest gross, by more than $88.5 million. Likewise, the Madrid arena’s final ticket total from the first two quarters was 904,158, which was 66,425 more than the ticket count at K-Arena in Yokohama, Japan, ranked second.

On the two charts ranking stadiums and other outdoor concert sites, Mexico City’s Estadio GNP Seguros was No. 1 on both with a total gross of $177,739,418 from 1,916,627 tickets sold through Q2. Women were the most popular among solo headliners and drew the largest crowds, as the three best-attended concert engagements during the mid-year time period came from female headliners.

At the top of that short list is Shakira with her massive seven-night event that racked up $46.6 million from 396,000 sold tickets during March. Then, at two concerts, Lady Gaga welcomed a total of 117,174 fans on back-to-back nights in April. Her revenue figure peaked at $15.6 million. Then, Olivia Rodrigo sold 114,168 tickets at her own two-show run in April, grossing $11.7 million.

Red Rocks Amphitheatre in Morrison, Colorado, grabbed the spotlight among outdoor amphitheaters, dominating the top 50 charts in both gross and attendance at mid-year. Concert attendees from the Denver area numbered 301,055 at the venue and produced a gross of $20,758,817 to top both charts.

Turnpike Troubadours, one of three headliners with two-show engagements at the venue, had the largest gross recorded with a $1.6 million take from 15,627 sold tickets, May 8-9. Robert Earl Keen and Waylon Wyatt opened the two shows. But the largest ticket count came from Subtronics with a two-night event, April 24-25. The Philadelphia-born DJ sold a total of 18,559 tickets and brought a different slate of opening acts for each show. Among those in the lineup were INFEKT, Levity, Syzy and Ivy Lab.

Leading the list of clubs that earned a mid-year ranking is Boston’s MGM Music Hall at Fenway, No. 1 in both tickets and gross from 42 reported performances. Grosses from the shows totaled $9,165,851, with an overall ticket count numbering 166,211. With Lake Street Dive, Lucy Dacus, Nathaniel Rateliff & The Night Sweats and Sturgill Simpson all booked for two shows, Simpson logged the largest box office totals of the four. He grossed $782,519 from 9,926 tickets sold. Rateliff’s ticket count was a close second, just 40 tickets less than the Americana artist, while Dacus sold 9,432, and Lake Street Dive’s ticket total was 8,863.

The only headliner with a three-show stint at the Boston club was Dropkick Murphys. The band played there March 14-16, leading up to St. Patrick’s Day, and drew a total of 14,082 fans. With revenue totaling $607,885, the shows featured opening performances by The Menzingers and The Bouncing Souls, among others. The band’s St. Patrick’s Day run also included a performance at Citizens House of Blues on the 17^th with a sellout crowd of 2,138 and a $99,120 gross.

Among the theaters featured in the mid-year recap, New York City’s Radio City Music Hall typically holds a tight grip on No. 1 in both metrics, fueled by the venue’s annual “Radio City Christmas Spectacular” that stretches multiple weeks beginning each November. The 2024 event included 191 performances, kicking off on Nov. 8 and running through Jan. 5. With a total of 1,063,162 tickets sold, it grossed $134.2 million, accounting for 83 percent of the theater’s total gross and 84 percent of its ticket count. Overall, for the mid-year, the venue’s total gross was $160,718,799, while the number of sold tickets totaled 1,269,471.

Elsewhere at Radio City, Hugh Jackman had the top gross and ticket tally with a pair of three-show engagements, the first in January and the second in April. The six shows were the first of 24 performances the Tony Award winner has planned for 2025 as part of his “From New York, With Love” concert series, booked through October. At the first six concerts, he grossed $6.4 million from 30,967 sold seats.