The casuals may not give two shits about the band but most of them have bought into the Bon Jovi brand. Jon has worked hard to build the brand. Seeing 'Jon Bon Jovi live' will put people off, well enough people to make stadium shows a hard sell.

Definitely not stadiums. He played Rod Laver Arena in Melbourne and entertainment centre in Sydney just 2 shows.
I don't think Jon played any huge venues for his solo tour especially in the US. Europe was arenas too.

I think he would struggle.

Actually, DA in Europe was not in arenas in most countries but in small or medium-sized venues (say 1,000/3,000 people and it wasn't sold-out in many countries.). He did just about the same circuit as Richie touring to support his solo albums... with the same (lack of huge) success.

Solo acts don't attract big crowds as a rule, every record company and tour promoter know that. That's why they prefer to aim at smaller venues that will sell out or close to and keep the option of adding dates later in case there's a big ticket demand. Business is business!


PS: too bad Jon isn't touring at the moment: he could have offered the job to The Edge since U2 will be on a hiatus for a very long time!
http://www.rollingstone.com/music/ne...#ixzz3JXY7UZAc

I went to 7 of the Europe ones and from what I recall they were all decent size shows the ones I saw anyway definitely more than 3000 maybe with the exception of the show in Austria on the ski mountain. I cannot imagine Jon would ever try and sell stadiums unless he was pretty sure of himself.

I heard Richie had to put his own money in to keep his tour going in the 90's but Richie doesn't seem to have any sense at all.

Richie made a good tour, he filled some sites. In Spain, he came only with his voice and acoustic guitar, and it was fantastic. Jon did not come to Spain.


Richie in Tokyo 1998

He played some great shows I don't think he has any head for business though.

I don't understand the "RICHIE OR DETH" part of the vote, but I went with no. "Jon Bon Jovi" and "Bon Jovi" are different propositions, but in performance and consumer perception.

Proof is in the Destination Anywhere tour. Arguably the height of popularity and awareness, Jon's solo shows were smaller venues, if he or promoters didn't think he could sell out stadiums on his own then, they sure as hell wouldn't now.

But again, I'm not saying Jon Bon Jovi as a solo property (Touring off the solo albums, doing songs from D.A, Glory and a handful of Jovi songs). I'm saying the man touring the band's hits with a different backing band, on the same level as they are now. He's gotten a lot of corporate shows with Kings of Suburbia, and on his own, and its not like he's being booked because people dug Santa Fe.

Aloha !

Yeah, it was so fantastic that the entire European tour never broke even, Richie lost money with it and a subsequent tour was cancelled because of a record company backing out of supporting him. It was that fantastic.

Jon never came to Spain because he never really tried to do a real tour, it was only because of the huge success of Destination Anywhere in Germany that a string of dates were booked. Pretty much everything else were promo shows, and Jon was booked for a lot, lot more festivals and award shows than Richie was.

If Jon would've told promoters back then he was willing to do small stadium shows, he'd have been able to. You just don't set up a stadium tour in a few months, like you do with smaller arena shows. The difference there isn't the popularity, it's the production and organizing that takes a lot more time.

Jon will always be able to play venues holding 5.000 to 10.000 people. And as soon as he's selling it as a Bon Jovi show and do a bit of promo for it, he'll most likely will be able to sell out the smaller stadiums 15.000-30.000 as well. But as for the really big venues? Bon Jovi haven't sold those out for over a decade, so that's certainly not going to change once Jon starts handling business on his own.

Salaam Aleikum,
Sebastiaan

Since he even does not sell out stadiums with Bon Jovi anymore he for sure will not sell them out solo.