Boxoffice Insider: By The Numbers, Miranda Lambert’s Two Decades Of Live

Kevin Mazur / Getty Images, Roadside Bars and Pink Guitars 2019 Tour – Miranda Lambert
performs onstage during her “Roadside Bars And Pink Guitars Tour” at Mohegan Sun Arena in Uncasville, Conn., on Sept. 14, 2019

Miranda Lambert has notched her place among the country music elite during her two-decade career that has produced numerous industry awards – she has more Academy of Country Music Award nominations than any other woman – along with hit songs and Platinum-selling albums.

As a concert performer, she has excelled among the best of the genre with grosses from her live appearances reaching $395 million from 6.8 million sold tickets at 548 reported events. She ranks among the 25 highest-grossing country touring artists in the past 20 years and joins Taylor Swift, Shania Twain, Carrie Underwood, The Chicks and Dolly Parton as one of only six female headliners on the list.

Lambert’s box-office history stretches back to the early 2000s when she gained national attention with her third-place showing on the first season of the singing competition “Nashville Star” in 2003. Over the next several years she supported headliners like Keith Urban, George Strait, Dierks Bentley, Toby Keith, Alan Jackson, Kenny Chesney and Brad Paisley before hitting the top of the marquee herself with her first headlining tour in 2010.

Following the release of Revolution, her 2009 album that ultimately won Album of the Year awards from both the Academy of Country Music and the Country Music Association, she headlined in the spring of 2010 and played a fall headline trek under the “CMT on Tour” banner with Eric Church. Among their shows was a sellout at Terminal 5 in New York on Sept. 29 with a crowd of 2,836.

The next year, 24 reported dates from her 2011 “Revolution” tour set mainly in outdoor sheds and arenas saw ticket sales hitting 140,542 with a $5.9 million gross, an average of 5,856 tickets and about $246,000 per show. Averages were higher the following year with her ”On Fire” tour that saw tickets averaging 9,227 per show for a gross of $372,000 with most of 2012 performances booked at indoor arenas.

Ticket and gross averages increased for both her solo and co-headlining tours over the next decade including 2018’s “Bandwagon” trek with Little Big Town that averaged about $684,000 in grosses per show with tickets averaging 13,398. They are set to hit the road again later this year for a second round of the co-headlining tour, kicking off on May 6 at Houston’s Cynthia Woods Mitchell Pavilion and running through mid-June.

Lambert’s most-recent tour was her “Wildcard” trek that launched on Jan. 16, 2020, but was interrupted by the pandemic. She played her final show on March 2 at Denver’s Ball Arena with a crowd numbering 8,609. Her best-attended date on the tour was a Jan. 24 performance at Nashville’s Bridgestone Arena with 12,651 fans in the house. Overall, the tour grossed $10.2 million from 137,567 sold seats at 17 concerts.

Among her highlights in the box-office archives, her top attendance on record was a headlining stint at the Houston Livestock Show & Rodeo on March 16, 2011, with a stadium crowd of 73,811 and a gross of $1.5 million, also her highest. Her top ticket count for a tour performance was recorded in Indianapolis in 2014 during her “Platinum” tour. She played for 23,622 attendees at one show on Aug. 16 at Ruoff Music Center (then known as Klipsch Music Center).