Only the brave still book stadium tour dates

By Steve Jones, USA TODAY

After taking an economic pounding last year, the music concert business will be exercising a little more caution with tours in 2011. But a handful of acts ? U2, Kenny Chesney, Taylor Swift, Brad Paisley, New Kids on the Block ? are boldly forging ahead with higher-risk stadium dates and making it pay off.

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  By Kin Cheung, AP

  Taylor Swift added a second June show at Gillette Stadium in Foxborough, Mass., after the first one sold out in five minutes.

By Kin Cheung, AP

Taylor Swift added a second June show at Gillette Stadium in Foxborough, Mass., after the first one sold out in five minutes.

"Not many acts can play stadiums in any year, and the ones that can are generally not (hurt) by cyclical downturns in business," says Ray Waddell, Billboard's senior editor for touring.

"You have to be pretty confident that you can fill the place up," says Gary Bongiovanni, editor of the tour industry publication Pollstar. "Then it takes a lot of time to load in and load out the equipment in a football stadium. If you can sell 30,000 to 40,000 tickets, it's just simpler to play two shows at an arena."

For Swift, who tested the waters last year with a sold-out show at Gillette Stadium in Foxborough, Mass., it is a confident step up. She has eight U.S. stadium dates on her global, 90-date Speak Now tour, including two at Gillette on June 25-26. The first one sold out in five minutes, so a second was added.

U2's all-stadium 360 tour is on its way to being the biggest ticket-selling and top-grossing tour of all time. By the time it wraps up July 30 in Moncton, New Brunswick, the tour will have sold 7.1 million tickets and grossed $717 million for 110 shows in 30 countries. This summer's North American leg includes 16 dates rescheduled from 2010 while Bono recuperated from back surgery.

Chesney's 52-date Goin' Coastal tour includes 11 stadiums, and those shows will feature the Zac Brown Band. They'll play Tampa's Raymond James Stadium on Saturday. Chesney sold 1 million tickets for eight straight summers before taking a break from touring in 2010 to record his latest album, Hemingway's Whiskey.

Paisley's H20 II kicks off May 28 at Pittsburgh's Heinz Field, one of four stadiums on his 33-date itinerary. Like Swift, Paisley headlined his first stadium (a sold-out Gillette) in 2010. Boston natives New Kids on the Block will play hometown stadium Fenway Park on June 11 as part of their arena tour with the Backstreet Boys.

Last year, gross revenue for the top 100 tours dropped 13% (from $2.5 billion in 2009 to $2.2 billion in 2010) while ticket sales fell 12% (40.5 million to 35.7 million), according to Pollstar. But elite stars such as Paul McCartney and Jay-Z still filled stadiums.

"In the simplest sense, playing stadium shows is just about popularity, but it takes more than that," Waddell says. "In country music, these big shows are about having a good time, as with Chesney, or empowered young females, as with Swift.

"That said, I'm pretty sure Lady Gaga could sell out at the stadium level. Sometimes a stadium show just isn't the right fit aesthetically."

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