Pollstar’s 2017 Year-End Figures Are In

POLSTAR’s 2017 Year-End figures are in and live music continues to demonstrate its growing popularity, making 2017 a record-crushing year for the concert business.

The Top 100 Worldwide Tours alone generated a record $5.65 billion in revenues. That represents a huge, 15.8% increase over the previous year. The total tickets sold by the Top 100 was also a record at 66.79 million. That’s up a remarkable 10.4% over 2016. And it was all done with a record average ticket price of $84.63, which is an increase of $3.97, or nearly 5%. U2 did the highest grossing tour worldwide at $316 million and the band’s North American segment also topped that chart at $176.1 million. There were 11 tours that generated more than $100 million worldwide as compared to seven tours in 2016.

The most successful artists are clearly getting better at recapturing some of the revenue that had leaked into the secondary ticket market. The importance of the growing global concert market is readily evident in an examination of the top 20 venues on the Arena Ticket Sales chart. Only seven are located in the U.S. while five were from the U.K., including The O2 London at No. 1. Two are in Mexico, and there’s one each in Germany, Spain, Canada, France, Netherlands, and Belgium. Live Nation was by far the world’s largest concert promoter and reported to Pollstar a record 52.5 million tickets sold around the globe. AEG was again a solid No. 2 among promoters reporting 14.4 million tickets sold. OCESA/CIE was No. 3 at about 4 million tickets. SJM was the top U.K. based promoter with nearly 2.4 million tickets sold.

So, how did Cirque du Soleil shows do in 2017?

World  Gross   Show    AVG Tix  AVG Tix  Total      AVG      Cities 
Rank   in Mil  Title    Price    Sold  Tix Sold    Gross    / Shows
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26     $61.8   Kurios	$80.66  15,324  766,179  $1,236,000  50/411
28     $60.1   Luzia	$84.89  14,448  707,975  $1,226,531  49/403
29     $60.0   Toruk	$79.38	24,393  756,191  $1,936,367  31/169
35     $54.2   Ovo	$72.52	16,986  747,380  $1,231,818  44/308
41     $48.2   Amaluna	$79.97	15,848  602,239  $1,267,336  38/290
47     $41.8   Varekai	$61.99	16,458  674,764  $1,020,282  41/282
50     $39.7   Kooza	$85.41	12,232  464,816  $1,044,737  38/293
59     $35.9   Volta	$74.66	16,042  481,274  $1,197,760  30/246
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      $401.7 Million Gross	      5,200,818 Tickets Sold