Are Stadium Shows quickly becoming a thing of the past?

Most of the big name bands of the past 50 years I've seen in a stadium

• Pink Floyd
• Bruce Springsteen
• Rolling Stones
• The Who
• Bowie
• Grateful Dead
• etc

curious if other have noticed that there are almost no new acts who have drawing power to play at a stadium? And along those lines, is concert promotion at a Live Nation scale a sustainable business over the next 20 years?

 

Stones still do. Maybe Macca too. Probably all I can think of.

 

I think Metallica recently did a stadium tour. They're not really a "new act" though.

 

Yeah, Stones, but also Taylor Swift and Justin Timberlake and a few years back One Direction.

 

Ed Sheeran, Beyonce, Taylor Swift, and Coldplay have all played the local football stadium in the past few years.

 

There are several more recent artists/acts that could and do still pull it off, including some of the ones mentioned above... Pearl Jam, Beyonce/Jay-Z, Bruno Mars, and a several country acts come to mind.

 

It's in reduction mode, for sure. All of the remaining acts left, who could still receive bookings, have already been listed.

 

No, but I think they're transitioning from rock shows to either pop shows or bro-country shows. There will always be acts to play and promoters willing to throw sick money at those acts, but the acts that fill stadiums nowadays are Taylor Swift and Kenny Chesney and the biggest names in their genres. This Summer we will see Billy Joel, The Who, and The Stones playing baseball and football stadiums, but when you look a few years down the road, it points to the pop genre, the classic rockers are riding off into the sunset.

 

They are for me. I don't like big gigs.

 

Dead & Company...........though usually baseball stadiums instead of footfall stadiums.

 

same for me, i've missed some favorite artists i would have seen otherwise, i'm so much more about the SQ than the spectacle

 

For me they are. I no longer enjoy hearing music in a stadium setting.

 

There are many artists still playing to stadium-sized audiences:

Taylor Swift just completed the most lucrative tour of the decade (perhaps of all-time)
Jay-Z/Beyonce
Pearl Jam just played baseball stadiums
Ed Sheeran plays stadiums with just a single guitar, it's remarkable - no band at all
Dead & Company just played Dodger Stadium last summer
Foo Fighters, though seemingly happy to play arenas, could do a successful stadium tour
BTS - if promoted properly, could surely fill stadiums in certain cities
Metallica could do it
Billy Joel played Dodger Stadium the year before last
Coldplay recently played the Rose Bowl
Phish, if marketed correctly could fill a stadium in certain markets
Guns and Roses played Dodger Stadium 18 months ago
Roger Waters, when he gets the notion, can fill stadiums
U2 filled stadiums for their recent Joshua Tree tour

and with McCartney and The Rolling Stones playing the summer, I begin to think your premise entirely incorrect; perhaps more artists than ever can fill a stadium.

Then they're are artists who have been quiet, but may be roaring back to life this year: AC/DC, Green Day and Madonna all of whom could fill a stadium (though Madonna has always shown a preference for playing indoors.)

And finally, the last decade, artists have preferred playing festivals - perhaps an easier and more lucrative payday (they are certainly not paying for promotion.) Oftentimes the main stage of a festival accommodates as many fans as a stadium.

 

I hope so. No one should have to see a concert in a stadium. (Especially a baseball stadium, those are even more awkward)

I like arena shows...I get that a lot of the artists I love... U2, Springsteen, Phish, etc, aren't going to be playing tiny clubs or theaters near me, and if they did, there's almost no way I'd be able to get tickets (or the tickets would be more than my mortgage payment). You can still get a good experience in an arena if the performers are good and know how to play to the whole crowd instead of just the first few rows. Plus there's something you get with big sound and production and the energy of 15,000 people that you don't get in a small gig, and that has its merits too.

But a stadium show...arena prices but 2-3x farther away from the stage? So you're paying $200 to watch a big TV? No thanks. That can't die fast enough.

 

I also saw Bowie on the Sound + Vision tour of 1990. However, that seems like the only time he played a stadium, it was a special farewell-to-the-hits arrangement. For the rest of his life he played much smaller venues, in fact on his last tour I saw him at The Shrine which isn't even an arena, just an auditorium.

As long as Live Nation signs 360 deals and gets a piece of merch, I'd have to imagine that their model is lucrative. Seems like social media, if anything, has made promoting a concert cheaper.

 

They pretty much instantly sold out three consecutive nights at Dick's Sporting Goods Park, a soccer-specific "stadium" in Colorado. I put stadium in quotes because the capacity isn't on the order of what I think the OP intended (27k according to Wikipedia).

Could they sell out Mile High (capacity ~60k according to Wikipedia)? Maybe...as you said if it were marketed correctly they might. It would have to be a special event, though, and not just another stop on their tour. If there's anywhere Phish could have a shot at selling out a stadium, Colorado is probably one of their better bets.

 

His '83 and '87 tours were mixed bags and market-dependent. In the US, '83 leaned towards arenas and '87 towards stadiums.

Just read in Chris O'Leary's new book that his '87 tour cost $20mil. up front for staging and carried a payroll of $1mil/week. Can't cover that playing arenas, I think.

 

Forgive me if I drift off topic, but there are certain bands that just get swallowed up in massive stadiums. I saw Billy Joel a few years ago and although HE was amazing, the stadium really swallowed up his music. It was just too damn big. Few bands can get (or have gotten) the stadium spectacle right - I think U2 has had it down since 92, Pink Floyd, Genesis, Queen, The Stones, all know how to present the all out assault on your senses that a stadium show needs. The Grateful Dead played some amazing stadium shows when they were active, but their light show on stage often got swallowed up (and Garcia hated playing stadium shows.) The Who provided the volume necessary to rock a stadium in the 70s, but Townshend would have preferred to not have played them. It's not easy, you need the sound, the lights, the stage and damn powerful music to do it right.

 

could reverse. the chargers are now playing in a high school soccer facility (and not filling it). let the downsizing begin.

 

Stadium tours were never as common as this thread implies. They've always been limited, as there's never been that many acts who can do full stadium tours.

Even some of the artists you list had limitations in that regard. The Stones could do stadium tours 40 years ago and still can, but Bruce could only really do stadiums across the US in 1985. He's done limited stadium tours since then - with 2003 being the widest - but now he only plays stadiums in a handful of markets loyal to him.

Bowie did a decent # of stadiums in 1987 but not a wide tour of those venues.

The Who only had one true stadium tour: 1989.

Could the Dead play stadiums US-wide? Don't know their history well enough to say.

The Floyd were able to do wide stadium tours - and still could if they reunited.

There are a few acts you left off, but those events covered a wide span of years.

Stadiums were never the norm for any acts beyond a couple of biggies...

 

That speaks to the decline in popularity of the NFL, with is off topic, but also something that I find fascinating.

 

Taylor Swift
Ed Sheeran

 

His '90 S+V tour wasn't better. I saw him at the AccorHotels Arena in Paris, it was the worst concert i ever saw. 90 minutes and don't remember there was an encore.
But that's another story.

 

Last fall, Garth Brooks played Notre Dame Stadium, the first musical act not associated with a marching band to perform a full-length concert there.

 

Phish has played Wrigley and Fenway, so it's possible in the biggest markets. I can't imagine a baseball stadium show being much fun from the seats, but it seems to be happening more and more.

I dunno if 3 nights at Dick's = 1 night at Mile High, seeing as how many people go to multiple nights.