Journey/Def Leppard Tour Hits $50 Million (And Counting), $20 Million In Stadiums

Getty Images – Journey
Journey’s Arnel Pineda and Neal Schon at the Classic West festival at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles July 16, 2017.

Journey and Def Leppard are once again sharing the spotlight on the road in North America with concerts planned in 58 cities this year. It is the first joint effort since their previous co-headlining trek in U.S. and Canadian markets 12 years ago. The current tour is just over the halfway point and already surpasses $50 million in sales, based on boxoffice totals from 33 shows reported to Pollstar.

The veteran rockers have played to more than half a million fans since launching on May 21 at Hartford’s XL Center, the first of 41 arenas booked on the 20-week jaunt. Along with concerts at six outdoor amphitheaters on the schedule, the bands also booked shows at 11 stadiums.

Seven of those stadium dates have been reported so far with a combined gross reaching $20.4 million, and Denver’s Coors Field can claim the top boxoffice counts among them. The home ballpark of the city’s Major League Baseball franchise, the Colorado Rockies, hosted the tour on July 21 and logged $3.8 million in sales from a sellout crowd of 44,928.

Also topping the $3 million mark was Target Field in Minneapolis, Chicago’s historic Wrigley Field and SunTrust Park in Atlanta in its second year of operation – all with sold-out July performances. Toronto’s Rogers Centre and Comerica Park in Detroit scored a gross total right at $2.5 million, and Hersheypark Stadium in Hershey, Pa., the third date on the tour, enters the mix with a $1.9 million take.

The bands just returned to the road following a two-week break beginning with a concert at Boston’s Fenway Park on Aug. 11. Earnings from that show have not yet been reported but should appear on Pollstar’s Live Boxoffice database soon.

Coming up during the remainder of the tour are the final stadium shows at Busch Stadium in St. Louis on Aug. 24, San Francisco’s AT&T Park on Sept. 21 and Petco Park in San Diego two days later. The final stop will be a two-night engagement at the Forum in Inglewood, Calif., on Oct. 6-7.

Pollstar’s boxoffice archives show a gross of $38 million for Def Leppard and Journey’s 2006 co-headlining North American run that spanned five months. On that tour, the bands played outdoor sheds and arenas with 834,516 total tickets sold at 72 shows.