Billboard: Bon Jovi, Spice Girls Top Midyear Touring Chart

18 July 2008
Bon Jovi, Spice Girls Top Midyear Touring Chart

The touring landscape may be tough this summer, but Billboard Boxscore's midyear numbers illustrate that many tours have enjoyed significant success already.

And, with major tours underway after the cutoff dates for our midyear charts, more help is coming. The time frame for Billboard's midyear touring charts runs from Nov. 14, 2007, until May 13 of this year, and during that period Bon Jovi ruled the roost. Promoted worldwide by AEG Live, the tour sold out arenas and stadiums in North America and the Pacific Rim during this period, grossing $112.4 million.

"The fact is that [Bon Jovi] are still current musically and have consistently delivered a live show that has very few equals in terms of musicianship, spectacle and gigantic hits," AEG Live CEO Randy Phillips says. "Whatever concerns I had initially that they might have chosen to go back on the road too soon after the last equally successful tour were quickly dispelled by the early public on-sales."

AEG Live also produced the second-highest-grossing tour of the period, the Spice Girls reunion, which took in more than $70 million from 45 shows. Coming in third for this time period is the Police reunion tour, which topped all touring charts in 2007 and likely will top others before 2008 is done.

Produced by Arthur Fogel at Live Nation and Bill Zysblat at RZO Productions, the Police will follow up a summer amphitheater run (the band's first) with a final gig Aug. 7 at Madison Square Garden in New York. At that point, the Police will have played 146 shows (not including festivals), moved 3.3 million tickets and grossed $359 million, enough to make this the third-highest-grossing tour of all time.

Rounding out the top 10 are the Hannah Montana/Miley Cyrus tour ($45.3 million), the holiday blockbuster Trans-Siberian Orchestra ($44.8 million), Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band ($42 million), the Van Halen reunion tour ($40.2 million), Michael Buble ($36.6 million), Take That ($32.5 million) and Jay-Z/Mary J. Blige ($30.3 million).

As always, the top tour rankings will change substantially by year's end, though the Police, Bon Jovi and Springsteen will still be near the top. But with tours just getting underway by Coldplay, Celine Dion, Kenny Chesney, Rascal Flatts, the Jonas Brothers and Tim McGraw, and upcoming tours by Tina Turner, Madonna and Neil Diamond, some different names will grace the list.

There will also be some unexpected appearances in the rankings, like the surging New Kids on the Block reunion tour.

Source: Billboard

I thought on the 60 minutes piece they said the LH tour was gonna gross about $250 million but it says in the article they grossed $112.4 million through May 13. Doubt they more than doubled that between May 14 through the MSG shows.

I think this grossing is just for North America or something like that

Dont forget that LH tour grossed about more then $40 million in 2007! And after May 13 came stadium shows!

Yeah after May 14 it was all stadium shows until the final leg in the U.S. i can see it coming to around that figure when all the numbers come in. The stadium shows brought in big numbers.

box office concert sales and concert goross are 2 different things, the tour number that 60 mins was estimating includes MERCHANDISE, something the boys sell very well, which is not part of the ticket sales that billboard reports
Dave

How disconcerting to be lumped in with the Spice Girls

^^^ I thought you loved Spice Girls?

That's what I was thinking.

How sad to see Hannah Montana doin' better than Bruce...

I feel like quoteing Jon now: "I blame this world for making a good man evil"
It's no wonder people get evil in a world like this