Carrie Underwood Among Pollstar’s Top 50 North American & Worldwide Tours Of 2010

By On 12/30/2010 · 23 Comments · In AI Tour 2009, AI Tour 2010, Carrie Underwood, Danny Gokey, Kellie Pickler, The Clark Brothers

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Carrie at the Palace Of Auburn Hills 12-22-10 credit: countrymusicfever.com

Carrie at the Palace Of Auburn Hills 12-22-10 credit: countrymusicfever.com

Each year Pollstar compiles a list of the top grossing North American and worldwide tours of 2010. Carrie Underwood comes in with the #18 top grossing North American tour of 2010 in all genres (#5 country), with $38.3 million grossed and 778,930 tickets sold over 102 reported concert dates. That also means Carrie had the #31 top grossing worldwide tour of 2010.

These numbers do not include several summer concerts but they do include all shows that were officially part of the 2010 Play On tour, which concluded on December 22nd with a concert at the Palace Of Auburn Hills in Michigan.

Links to Pollstar’s analysis, the numbers, Idol-related appearances on Pollstar’s list, and a note about Season 9′s American Idol Tour compared to Season 8′s American Idol Tour after the jump.

Pollstar’s Top 50 North American Tours Of 2010
Pollstar’s Top 50 Worldwide Concert Tours Of 2010

According to Pollstar’s analysis:

The Top 50 Tours North America grossed a combined $1.69 billion which was down about 15% from last year’s $1.99 billion. Total tickets sold was 26.2 million which was down about 12% from 2009′s 29.9 million. Total show count was down about 3% to 2,114. Unlike the Worldwide chart, the average ticket price in North America dropped $1.55 or about 2%.

Despite 2010′s downward trend in a tough economy, Carrie’s Play On Tour improved on the numbers from her 2008 Carnival Ride Tour which reported 90 dates, grossing $27,161,237 and selling 569,213 tickets (Carrie also coheadlined a 27 date tour with Keith Urban that year that grossed $18.5 million and sold over 275,000 tickets).

Carrie’s 2008 Carnival Ride Tour averaged 6,325 attendance and $301,792 gross per night. Her 2010 Play On Tour averaged 7,637 attendance and $375,490 gross per night. That’s a 20.7% improvement in average attendance and a 24.4% increase in average gross.

The Season 9 American Idol tour did not make this year’s Top 50 list. The Season 8 American Idol Tour featuring Kris Allen, Adam Lambert, Danny Gokey, Allison Iraheta and the rest of the Season 8 finalists ranked #28 on Pollstar’s Top 50 Tours Of 2009 list, grossing $30.1 million. The #50 tour on 2010′s Pollstar list grossed $14.3 million.

There are a few other American Idol-related appearances on Pollstar’s 2010 lists. Kellie Pickler opened Taylor Swift’s North American tour (#19 on Pollstar’s North American Tours List) in spring 2010 and she opened the fall leg of Rascal Flatts’s tour, and they came in at #22 on Pollstar’s North American Tours List and #47 on Pollstar’s Worldwide Tours List for 2010 with $28.4 million grossed. Danny Gokey opened a number of dates on Sugarland’s tour which came in at #38 on Pollstar’s North American Tours list with $19 million grossed. Also Steven Tyler‘s band Aerosmith came in at #33 on Pollstar’s Worldwide Tours list.

 
  • Lucy1234

    Great news for Carrie.

    do include all shows that were officially part of the 2010 Play On tour, which concluded on December 22nd with a concert at the Palace Of Auburn Hills in Michigan.

    If Carrie’s Play On tour concluded on Dec 22d, what concert am I seeing at the Borgata in Atlantic City on Jan 1st? My hubby gave me $155 tickets to Carrie’s concert this Saturday in my Christmas stocking and I was thinking it was the Play On tour.

    Also nice to see Kellie and Danny opening for successful tours.

  • bridgette12

    Congrats to Carrie for having another great tour.

  • windmills

    Lucy1234: Your show isn’t a part of the regular Play On tour. It’s a much smaller venue which should actually be pretty nice for a Carrie show. You probably won’t see the regular production (like I’m pretty sure the venue’s too small for the flying truck) but you’ll probably get the full set list. Carrie’s also playing Foxwood’s in Connecticut tonight so whatever the show is tonight is probably what you’ll see on Jan 1st.

    Hopefully Carrie will have fully recovered from the cold that bugged her the last 3 weeks of the PO tour. I hope you have a great time at your show.

  • Elliegrll

    Most people in the idol bubble seem to think that people can only be successful if they are producing pop music, and most of us agree that artists are going to make the bulk of their money by touring, but it’s interesting to see the diversity of the top 50 touring acts. There are acts from so many different genres, acts that are more about the performance style than the music, and acts that aren’t going to put on an elaborate floor show, but they will deliver a great vocal or musical performance.

  • indigo15

    Congrats to Carrie for another wildly successful tour, and to Danny and Kellie for being opening acts on other huge tours. It seems that Danny was very well-received on the Sugarland tour and gained quite a few new fans there. I heard that many of the lines for his post-show autograph signings were very long and wound their way through the arena concourses. Good for them, and I wish all of the Idols nothing but the best in 2011.

  • car

    Congrats to Carrie very impressive. windmills, I notice that Carrie was not on the list last year. Was that because she did not tour last year or was she short of the top 50? In any case great numbers for her.

  • Valentin432

    That’s very impressive, even more so if you consider she’s the 4th best woman headliner act behind Gaga, Pink and T. Swift. Way harder for women to attract people to concerts.

  • Fullmoon

    Congrats to Carrie for a great year. How the heck did Whitney Houston get Top 50WW. I didn’t even know she was touring.

  • windmills

    car: Carrie only did some spot dates in the summer of 2009, probably no more than 10. Her pattern has been to work on/release an album one year then tour like crazy the next year. So it’s been new albums in 2005, 2007, and 2009 and heavy touring 2006, 2008, and 2010. Carrie’s got a few concert dates scheduled for 2011 but she’s said she’s going to take a break, enjoy married life, and write for a new album.

    Carrie’s total numbers are awesome. That having been said her average per night numbers are not quite at the touring superstar level yet because she does a lot of dates in smaller cities. But that’s part of the process of building things step by step and I actually really like that Carrie’s made it easy for fans in less populated areas to see her. It makes sense if you’re a country act anyway.

    The 2nd leg of the Play On Tour was the 1st time she headlined solo in major cities and she’s started getting arena crowds of 10k+. I also feel like this tour really solidified her reputation as an entertainer and made people want to check her out again the next time she plays their town or city.

    By the way based on Billboard Boxscore reports the total numbers I have for Daughtry’s 56 date tour in 2010 are:

    Number of shows: 56
    Total Gross: $11,560,912
    295,831 attendance/321,755 capacity
    91.9% capacity
    Average gross: $206,445
    Average attendance: 5,283
    Average capacity: 5,746
    Average ticket price: $39.08

    I’d guess he’s probably in the top 75 top grossing North American tours.

  • Lucy1234

    Your show isn’t a part of the regular Play On tour. It’s a much smaller venue which should actually be pretty nice for a Carrie show.

    Thanks for the info Windmills. I am very excited to see Carrie in concert on Saturday and hope we get the full set list. Have been a fan since 2005 and have all her albums but this is my first concert other than the AI tour in 2005.

  • MrDuffin

    I saw Carrie with Keith Urban in 2008 and she was terrible! She has gotten much better since then.

  • girlygirl

    Congrats to Carrie!

  • Kirsten

    The #50 tour on 2010’s Pollstar list grossed $14.3 million.

    If AI reported all of its S9 stats to Pollstar, that’s pretty grim.

    Gross Revenue By Year:
    S1: 8.1M (30 dates) Avg Ticket Price: $31.38
    S2: 15.5M (41 dates) $38.16
    S3: 11.4M (49 dates) $45.33
    S4: 17.3M (43 dates) $44.29
    S5: 35.3M (59 dates) $54.55
    S6: 21.5M (59 dates) $59.92
    S7: 29.3M (52 dates) $60.76
    S8: 30.1M (52 dates) $62.19

    I secretly hold out hope that they are waiting until July 1st to report all the stats so that they can be combined with S10 to give it that extra boost to move it up the year-end charts. They’ll still be grim stats, though.

  • steph6449

    That’s fairly dismal for the AI9 tour statistics, even with low expectations to start with :?
    .

    For the Sugarland tour, I believe Danny had 20 or 21 dates with them altogether. The most of any of their openers as best I’m aware. Most of the openers out with Sugarland last year did more like 5-10.

    ETA: Lol. Still “this year” for two more days, anyway. Ha.

  • RightNow

    That’s great news for Carrie Underwood. Well deserved. Also glad to see both Kellie Pickler and Danny Gokey representing. Carrie and Danny not only have the Idol, producer Mark Bright connections, but one of Carrie’s backup singer, Jamie Fraley is married to Danny’s key board player, Brandon Fraley. Jamie joined Danny on tour this summer when Carrie was on hiatus. And Brandon is now in the studio writing with Danny.

  • Eileen99

    Carrie’s a beast, but that’s not new news. Congrats to her & her fans.

    Windmills, thanks for putting this post together. Interesting stuff.

    AI9 tour? Oy.

  • Moria Polonius

    Wow, U2 stats say 73k people per concert. That’s just unbelievable. It only shows how far you can get if you really make it long term.

  • Eileen99

    Kirsten, do you have the rankings for the AI tours for each year, in addition to the gross? Would be nice to see those numbers in context for each year.

    S5 kicked arse, but then they had a lot of dates as well.

  • JohnP

    Kellie played the 2nd half of the Fearless Tour this year during the first half of 2010, as well as with Rascal Flatts later as mentioned.

    Based on tickets sold according to Pollstar, she has played to a possible 1.14m people in 2010 – only beaten in North America by Bon Jovi 1.18m and The Dave Matthews Band 1.27m (unless there is another opener who has played 2 tours of which I’m unaware.)

  • windmills

    JohnP: I’d totally forgotten about Kellie playing the Fearless tour the first half of 2010! I fixed the post, thanks.

    Eileen99: I’m not Kirsten but I’ve got a couple of rankings for you. All of them are based on total grosses. The s2 tour came in at #37 2003. The s3 tour wasn’t in the top 100 but that might’ve been because not all its concerts reported. The s4 tour also came in at #37. The s5 tour made the top 25 for 2006 and was higher than #25 but I can’t find exactly where it ranked. I can’t find anything on s6/2007 or s7/2008. Kirsten’s got better data than I do so maybe she’ll have the year end rankings.

    Lucy1234: In case you’re still reading here, there were a couple of set list changes for Carrie’s show tonight from her regular set. Out with a few Play On ballads, in with a couple uptempos from Carnival Ride and Some Hearts.

  • hcpoirot

    Interesting note:

    There are few “NON singers” concerts in the top 50 worldwide such as Walking with Dinosaurs, Lord of The Dance (Dancing show), Cirque du soleil (3 different concerts).

    Also Lady Gaga make more money in worldwide tours than in the US. Total her concert gross 133 million. Amazing for a relative new singer.

  • stwbcross

    Thanks windmills, especially for the comparison between the Carnival Ride Tour and the Play On Tour. I wonder how long she will continue to do the smaller venues… I guess until she has a baby and then priorities change and she’ll cut down on the amount of time she spends on the road. :) Any ideas on approx. how much the .36 cent donation will add up to be?

  • fuzzywuzzy

    Congratulations to Carrie! It seems to me that Carrie is a perfect model for someone who originated on AI, improved her performance abilities and increased her exposure to non-AI fans by opening for bigger acts, and transitioned pretty seamlessly from AI to the general public (U.S.), becoming a major star in the process.