TJT
Active topics
2019-11-08 - Auckland
 Tour: Joshua Tree Tour 2019
Songs played: 25
Audio recordings: 0
Videos: 1
  1. Originally posted by deanallison:[..]
    I’m not being negative I’m just stating that the figures are misleading at times with sell outs that aren’t actually sell outs. If you look at what I wrote at the end of my comment I said that they’ve outsold plenty of other big artists and I do believe that they seem to be capable of selling 40k+ just about anywhere for at least 1 show and capable of far exceeding that in certain locations so that is impressive compared to most but u2 have there own standards to keep up with.
    They've months to sell those tickets 2nd nights are usually a slow burner.
  2. The Queen show in Wellington which is 1 night STILL has loads of tickets left and was announced a good year before the actual show. Hard to sell tickets at the moment for anything. We perceive U2's sales as a failure when 2 shows in the current market in NZ is actually a massive success and there are not many acts who could actually do it.
  3. Also fans & getting older, & are probably gravitating to seats, but baulking at the prices


    That's exactly the position for my brothers who have both attended all tours in the past. Add dinner, drinks and a t-shirt and they're looking at $500 or more for a night out with the wife. That's a fair chunk of a week's wage never mind a few weeks worth of the entertainment budget. I'll be keeping an eye on last minute cheap tickets for them.
  4. Maybe they should have done an Elton John on it by pretending it's a farewell tour ,the guy turned round and said he wants to spend more time with his kids then announces a 3 year world tour (note to Elt they will probably have moved out by the time it finishes)

  5. That's mad what happened there? Isn't she one of the most popular pop stars on the planet or was it a case of one bad album and you're history .
  6. Originally posted by deanallison:A lot of the North American shows didn’t sell too well at all in 2017, if you look on Wikipedia even though it appears every show was a sell out you only need to compare to what the real capacity of the venues were to see a lot of shows had thousands of tickets unsold. The NRG stadium in Houston for example holds 80,000 for concerts yet sold just over 47,000 tickets. Edit: 80k is a massive exaggeration on Wikipedia’s part that was at a rodeo event where all stands were available a Taylor swift concert however did sell 53,800 tickets, there’s plenty of other examples similar or worse to this. They have outsold plenty of other big artists playing in the same venues though to be fair so it’s all relative.


    Since you mention Houston, I'll just focus on that. U2 selling 47,000 and Taylor selling 53,000 in the same venue is splitting hairs in the scheme of things. Not enough of a difference to really be a big deal. Taylor also had a seating configuration that allowed more seats to be sold to the sides of the stage. Guns n Roses sold 49,000 there. Metallica sold 46,000. Beyonce 43,000. U2 were pretty much in line with other shows at that particular stadium. It's true, U2 are not as big as Taylor Swift in the US... but they blow her away everywhere else. And U2 still made almost $6 million off that Houston show... THAT is the number that will prompt them to return to Houston again.

    The only Northern American U2 shows in 2017 that were disappointing sales wise were Pittsburgh (41,000, $4.2m), Buffalo (41,000, $4.2m), Kansas City (39,000, $4.2m), New Orleans (34,000, $3.8m), and the St. Louis show that was cancelled I heard had roughly 35-40,000 tickets sold. Even those aren't total disasters either. Of those, only Pittsburgh was undersold to the point that they had to tarp off sections and move people around. Not many other artists could sell 39,000 tickets in Kansas City, or 41,000 in Buffalo. GnR sold 40,000 in KC, so the same. And they sold only 32,000 in Buffalo, same stadium. My point is that the concert industry is different now. Less emphasis is put on sellouts, and more on earning maximum dollars.

    By the time of the shows, all of these shows will be sold out or close to it, with the exception of Auckland 2. Even the great Taylor Swift only managed to do 1 show at Mt. Smart Stadium last year, with only 35,000 in attendance. U2 are still one of the largest drawing acts in the world... they're just no longer the largest.
  7. I think a lot of popstars that get like insane views on Youtube (T Swift, Rhianna, Ed S) ..their fanbase do not always want to consume their music live. Hence the reason a lot of the stadium fillers tend to be older acts..U2, Stones, Coldplay. Youtube views doesn't always mean 1. They are that popular and 2. that their fans want to see them live.
  8. Good post podiumboy. So what do you predict they will do with Auckland 2 and how many tickets will they sell for that show?
  9. Tommybanny it's difficult to say at this point. IMO the sooner they slash those prices, the better. They also need to put a little effort into local advertising, something that U2 have never really done much of. I know it's not U2's job to sell the tickets, but whoever's job it is needs to get on it.

    Realistically, given the amount of tickets currently unsold, I can see Auckland 2 getting to about 80% full. They can do things like sell every other row, or not all of the seats in a row, to make the stadium appear fuller than it is. If you have a row that seats 20 people, and they only sell 15 seats in that row, then those 15 people will naturally spread out to fill the space available. Replicate this all over the whole stadium, and it'll give the illusion of being fuller than it is.
  10. Originally posted by podiumboy:[..]


    Since you mention Houston, I'll just focus on that. U2 selling 47,000 and Taylor selling 53,000 in the same venue is splitting hairs in the scheme of things. Not enough of a difference to really be a big deal. Taylor also had a seating configuration that allowed more seats to be sold to the sides of the stage. Guns n Roses sold 49,000 there. Metallica sold 46,000. Beyonce 43,000. U2 were pretty much in line with other shows at that particular stadium. It's true, U2 are not as big as Taylor Swift in the US... but they blow her away everywhere else. And U2 still made almost $6 million off that Houston show... THAT is the number that will prompt them to return to Houston again.

    The only Northern American U2 shows in 2017 that were disappointing sales wise were Pittsburgh (41,000, $4.2m), Buffalo (41,000, $4.2m), Kansas City (39,000, $4.2m), New Orleans (34,000, $3.8m), and the St. Louis show that was cancelled I heard had roughly 35-40,000 tickets sold. Even those aren't total disasters either. Of those, only Pittsburgh was undersold to the point that they had to tarp off sections and move people around. Not many other artists could sell 39,000 tickets in Kansas City, or 41,000 in Buffalo. GnR sold 40,000 in KC, so the same. And they sold only 32,000 in Buffalo, same stadium. My point is that the concert industry is different now. Less emphasis is put on sellouts, and more on earning maximum dollars.

    By the time of the shows, all of these shows will be sold out or close to it, with the exception of Auckland 2. Even the great Taylor Swift only managed to do 1 show at Mt. Smart Stadium last year, with only 35,000 in attendance. U2 are still one of the largest drawing acts in the world... they're just no longer the largest.
    Perhaps I was being unkind saying a lot of the shows didn’t sell well at all, it’s more to do with the incorrect use of the sold out term but I think you are right as long as they’re bringing in the right figures and falling in line with most other artists then they’ll be happy with that and not particularly worried about a few thousand tickets that to go unsold. I also feel like they’ll get decent enough sales for the shows on this tour to make it more than worth there while, Auckland 2 is obviously the stand out case of struggling sales but they’ve had some impressive sales for 1st nights Auckland included.
  11. I still think come showtime Auckland 2 will look a lot different.
  12. Originally posted by deanallison:[..]
    Perhaps I was being unkind saying a lot of the shows didn’t sell well at all, it’s more to do with the incorrect use of the sold out term but I think you are right as long as they’re bringing in the right figures and falling in line with most other artists then they’ll be happy with that and not particularly worried about a few thousand tickets that to go unsold. I also feel like they’ll get decent enough sales for the shows on this tour to make it more than worth there while, Auckland 2 is obviously the stand out case of struggling sales but they’ve had some impressive sales for 1st nights Auckland included.
    Agreed. I remember that Houston show you mentioned had a lot of unsold tickets at first as well. But eventually those little blue dots disappeared. If you watch a video of the "money shot" during Streets from that show, you get a pretty clear picture that it was mostly full.

    And like I mentioned earlier, the Indianapolis show I went to looked pretty awful at first. But by the day of the show, they had 51,000 tickets sold. There were still some empty seats I could see in the upper corners, but not too many. Like I said, people tend to fill in the spaces available to them, so by about halfway through the show the whole stadium appeared to be full.

    It should be alright. If anything, maybe on the next tour, each city will just get 1 show.
Contribute to the U2 community with uploading photos or by telling us which shows you have visited.
Contribute to the U2 community with uploading photos or by telling us which shows you have visited.
Contribute to the U2 community with uploading photos or by telling us which shows you have visited.
Contribute to the U2 community with uploading photos or by telling us which shows you have visited.