Rolling Stones help pack US stadiums this year

Concert attendance in the United States jumped by 24% in the first half of the year as acts like the Rolling Stones, the Dixie Chicks and Cher helped reverse a two-year slide in ticket sales.

Fans bought 13.1 million concert tickets to the top 50 concert tours from January to June, compared with 10.6 million sold during the same period last year, according to industry magazine Pollstar.

Gross receipts were up 26% to €585m, up from €464m in 2001.

“We are back up to kind of where we were in 2000,” said Gary Bongiovanni, Pollstar’s editor-in-chief. “We had progressively been selling fewer tickets as the prices escalated.”

Concert attendance had been declining steadily since 2000, when 12.9 million tickets were sold.

The average ticket price for the first six months this year was approximately €46 – up only about €1 from the previous year, according to Pollstar.

Yet for the biggest acts, prices continue to rise. Tickets for the top-grossing tour – Elton John and Billy Joel – cost an average of €98. The Rolling Stones’ average ticket cost €137, up from €102 when they toured last year.

“The really expensive tickets are largely being bought by the ageing baby boomers,” said Bongiovanni.

Baby boomer acts such as the Stones, Fleetwood Mac and Cher represented half of the top 10 concerts for the first six months of the year. But country acts such as the Dixie Chicks, Kenny Chessney and Tim McGraw also performed strongly.

“The Dixie Chicks were one of the few acts that seemed to do great business just about everywhere they went,” Bongiovanni said of the female trio, which was not hurt by the President George Bush-bashing controversy that engulfed them earlier this year.