Rolling Stones Reschedule Tour, Add New Orleans Date

AP Photo / Michael Euler – The Rolling Stones
Mick Jagger struts his stuff when The Rolling Stones play U Arena in Nanterre, France, Oct. 22.

The Rolling Stones announced rescheduled dates for this year’s “No Filter” tour on Thursday.

The iconic British rockers will now begin their North American trek on June 21 at Chicago’s Soldier Field and conclude it on Aug. 31 at Miami’s Hard Rock Stadium.

The tour’s first three dates – June 21 and 25 at Soldier Field and June 29 at Burl’s Creek Event Grounds, outside of Toronto – are unchanged. The “No Filter” tour will hit every city where it was originally booked; original tickets will be honored, while fans unable to attend rescheduled shows can receive refunds through Ticketmaster.

The trek will also make an additional stop, at New Orleans’ Mercedes-Benz Superdome, on July 14. Tickets for that gig go on sale to the general public May 31 at 10 a.m.

The new dates arrive after frontman Mick Jagger underwent heart valve surgery in early April, forcing the band to postpone a tour that was set to begin April 20 in Miami. “I really hate letting you down like this,” Jagger said in a statement at the time. “I’m devastated for having to postpone the tour, but I will be working very hard to be back on stage as soon as I can.”

Shifting the tour resulted in one high-profile cancellation: The Stones were forced to withdraw from their headlining spot at New Orleans Jazz Fest.

But, generally speaking, “it was never a conversation about cancellation, it was always a conversation about postponement,” according to Jeff Apregan, a consultant for the Gridiron Stadium Network, which had six NFL member facilities on the Stones’ original route.

Still, in an interview with VenuesNow, Apregan said that the NFL preseason, which starts in August, might complicate the tour’s rescheduling. “It definitely gets challenging, but it’s not impossible,” he said.

The Stones seem to have largely steered clear of the problem. The band will hit several NFL stadiums – Chicago’s Soldier Field, Washington, D.C.’s FedExField, New Orleans’ Mercedes-Benz Superdome, Jacksonville, Fla.’s TIAA Bank Field, Philadelphia’s Lincoln Financial Field and Houston’s NRG Stadium – before the preseason’s first snap.

Though shows at East Rutherford, N.J.’s MetLife Stadium and Denver’s Broncos Stadium at Mile High occur once the preseason has started, they’re scheduled prior to the first home games by the New York Giants and Denver Broncos, respectively.

That leaves Seattle’s CenturyLink Field (Aug. 14, home of the Seahawks), Santa Clara, Calif.’s Levi’s Stadium (Aug. 18, home of the 49ers), Glendale, Ariz.’s State Farm Stadium (Aug. 26, home of the Cardinals) and Miami’s Hard Rock Stadium (Aug. 31, home of the Dolphins).

Though all those teams will make their 2019 home debuts before the Stones come to down, the band will have buffer periods of several days between the prior and subsequent football game in every market. For instance, the Stones’ Seattle date on Aug. 14 sits squarely between Seahawks home games on Aug. 8 and Aug. 29. In fact, the gap between the Aug. 8 Seahawks game and the Aug. 14 Stones performance is the shortest such buffer in any of the four markets.

Demand remains exceedingly high for The Rolling Stones. Despite only staging 28 shows over 2017 and 2018 – 14 in each year – the Stones grossed a gaudy $236.6 million over that period, landing the band at Nos. 9 and 10 on Pollstar‘s Year End Top 100 Worldwide Tours chart in those respective years. Last year, the Stones had an average gross of $8.97 million, second only to Taylor Swift’s $9.58 million.

“We continue to find the sweet spot,” Concerts West co-CEO John Meglen told Pollstar in late 2017. “It’s not about how much can we charge, it’s about how can we find what these seats are worth.”

The Stones, meanwhile, haven’t performed in the U.S. since October 2016, a month that included two concerts at Desert Trip, two Vegas shows and a gig at Gillette Stadium in Foxborough, Mass.

Find rescheduled dates for the Stones’ upcoming tour below.