At the end of the year, the US industry magazine Pollstar analyzed global concert ticket sales. In 2019, the Paléo in Nyon was the 7th best-selling festival. Pop-rock singer Pink generated the most sales with the concerts on her "Beautiful Trauma Tour", which included a stop at the Letzigrund at the end of July. In other rankings, the venues of Ticketcorner's parent company CTS Eventim occupy further top positions globally. Revenue from the world's biggest tours has risen by an incredible 91.1 percent in the last ten years.
The Paléo Festival in Nyon occupies seventh place in the world ranking of top-selling music festivals with a turnover of USD 11.256 million. According to the organizers, 230,00 visitors attended this six-day event last year. This makes it the third most successful music festival in Europe, after the German festivals Southside in 5th place and Hurricane in 6th place, both of which (like Ticketcorner) belong to the Eventim Group. The Outside Lands Festival in San Francisco took first place (USD 29.6 million), followed by the Life is Beautiful Festival in Las Vegas and Lollapalooza in Sao Paulo, Brazil. Paléo was also well up in the ranking of top-selling outdoor stadiums and venues, coming in 15th place. Zurich's Letzigrund stadium came in 32nd place in this ranking with USD 18.9 million in revenue and 156,174 tickets sold. In 2019, Metallica, Pink, Bon Jovi and Phil Collins performed at Letzigrund.
Pink (first place with USD 215 million in revenue and 1.8 million tickets sold), Elton John (USD 212.0 million, 1.56 million tickets) and Ed Sheeran (211.7 million revenue, 2.5 million tickets) made it onto the imaginary podium for the most successful world tours of the year. In Switzerland, tickets for all three favorites were available exclusively from Ticketcorner, as were tickets for many of the other artists in the ranking.
Hallenstadion Zurich in 32nd place in the world rankings
The Hallenstadion Zurich came 32nd in the ranking of the world's top arenas with USD 52.68 million in revenue and 565,649 tickets sold. Madison Square Garden in New York took first place (1.66 million tickets), followed by the SSE Hydro in Glasgow UK and the Lanxess Arena in Cologne, which is operated by CTS Eventim. Only music events were taken into account in the Pollstar ranking - if sports events were included, the Hallenstadion would perform even better and the St. Jakobshalle, another major Swiss venue, would probably also be in the top 100 worldwide.
Among the top event organizers, Ticketcorner customer Live Nation is in first place with USD 3.8 billion in sales and 46.6 million tickets, followed by AEG (USD 1.4 billion, 14.84 million tickets) and Ocesa Mexico (USD 240 million, 4.6 million tickets). The Hamburg-based CTS-Eventim subsidiary FKP-Scorpio came in 7th place, selling 2.75 million tickets and generating revenue of USD 192.736 million. As the largest Swiss promoter, Ticketcorner partner abc Production AG took 85th place in the global ranking with over 235,000 tickets sold in 2019.
Ed Sheeran breaks all-time record
Pollstar also analyzed the world tours of the entire decade from 2010 to 2019. In the last ten years, the revenue of the 100 biggest tours increased by an average of 91.1% compared to the previous decade, rising from USD 674,980 to USD 1,288,387. U2 took first place with USD 1.038 billion, followed by the Rolling Stones in second place with USD 929.2 million and Ed Sheeran in third place with USD 922 million. The 28-year-old British singer-songwriter also achieved a new all-time record of USD 777 million with his last tour "Divide" alone, which ran from March 2017 to August 2019. A total of 7.3 million people attended the concerts on his tour, meaning that the young Briton has replaced the venerable Irish band U2 as the record holder.
The 91.1 percent increase in event revenue is due to both the 39.8 percent increase in tickets sold per show and the 36.7 percent average increase in ticket prices.
To the Pollstar article.
