Boxoffice Insider: June Events In American Venues

Eli Young Band
Omar Vega / Getty Images – Eli Young Band
performs at the Globe Life Field parking lot June 4 in Arlington, Texas.

Live events in American cities are growing in number as the summer progresses, although still under pandemic-defined circumstances with social distancing as part of the scenario. Yet box office results from U.S. events – originally nonexistent after the mid-March industry shutdown – have begun to arrive at Pollstar, with ticket and revenue tallies reported from live shows during the month of June.

Payne Arena in Hidalgo, Texas, is among the U.S. venues that began staging live shows earlier this summer with a series of drive-in concerts in the facility’s parking lot. During the first weekend of June, the arena hosted three acts for its “Drive-In RGV (Rio Grande Valley)” concert series: country artists Eli Young Band and Kevin Fowler, along with Texas-based Tejano band Grupo Intocable. Box office results reported by the venue show that the latter drew the largest crowd on June 7, the last of the three nights. 

The show was a sellout with 517 tickets purchased – one ticket per vehicle with up to four people admitted in each car. (Two additional people per vehicle were allowed for an extra cost.) With ticket prices ranging from $80 to $300, the event grossed $66,615. Eli Young Band, the opener on June 5, saw 363 cars admitted with a total gross of $27,385, while Fowler’s second-night appearance logged 263 sold tickets and revenue of $24,385.

Elsewhere in Texas, Scottie’s Grill in Texarkana staged a live concert the following weekend featuring Oklahoma Red Dirt/rock act Read Southall Band.
The June 12 performance was one of a handful of concerts booked at the local eatery and live performance venue this summer. With Denton, Texas-rocker Kody West on the bill as show opener, Southall and his band moved 848 tickets for a gross of $16,336. Tickets were priced at $17 and $27. 

Past box office counts at Scottie’s in pre-COVID times include a sellout crowd of 1,313 to see Texas country artist Koe Wetzel on May 4, 2018, with sold ticket revenue hitting $23,465. In 2017, sold-out shows were reported at the Texarkana establishment for two other Texas-born country singers: Cody Johnson on March 25 with 1,382 sold tickets and a $30,775 gross and Cody Jinks on May 13 with a packed crowd of 1,616 and $42,485 in sales. Continuing in the country genre, veteran recording artist T. Graham Brown headlined a recent special event celebrating Father’s Day at Vortex Spring Adventures in Ponce de Leon, Fla. The live concert on June 20 at the northwestern Florida tourist resort drew a crowd of 1,500 with general admission tickets set at $10 and a VIP price of $25. 

Brown appeared on Pollstar’s Live Boxoffice charts twice earlier this year, first on Jan. 23 with a show at Palms RV Ballroom in Yuma, Ariz., which grossed $17,100 from 450 tickets, and then on March 7, when he played the Mill Town Music Hall in Bremen, Ga. with 560 fans in attendance for a gross of $19,925.

Two more late June events stateside with reported box office results are a June 25 show by organist and session musician John Ginty, who formerly played with Robert Randolph and the Family Band.
Ginty’s concert, held at Fosterfields Living Historical Farm in Morristown, N.J., sold 138 tickets. Two days later, Cleveland band Tropidelic’s performance at Cincinnati’s Riverfront Live attracted a crowd of 706.