Concert Pulse: Guns N’ Roses, Ozzy Osbourne, New Entries Flood Chart

Katarina Benzova – Guns N
Slash of Guns N’ Roses and Dave Grohl collaborate at BOK Center in Tulsa, Okla., Nov. 14.

Taylor Swift is still queen of the Global Concert Pulse with her huge stadium tour, but from Guns N’ Roses to Todd Rundgren’s Utopia, there are oodles of new tours on the chart this week.

The weekly Global Concert Pulse chart ranks the top 100 artists’ average gross based on reports submitted in approximately the last three months.

The first new entry appears at No. 5 this week with Guns N’ Roses averaging $4.1 million per market and 42,787 tickets per market on nine reports. The band just wrapped up its run through Europe and a recent report from that trek shows the band grossing $3.9 million off 48,952 tickets at Slaski Stadium July 9 in Katowice, Poland.

Pollstar spoke with the band’s agent Ken Fermaglich of UTA, who talked about the band’s global popularity, saying: “Back in the day they did do a lot of touring, for better or worse. I wasn’t their agent back then, I can’t really speak to it, but you can look at their tour history and see they went to a lot of places. …  Due to the fact that the band was absent for all of those years and didn’t tour together that absence made the heart grow fonder for the fan and for the consumer to want to see it.”

Other new acts in the top 25 include Paul Simon at No. 18, whose farewell tour is now fully under way; and Top Dawg Entertainment’s The Championship Tour featuring Kendrick Lamar and other label artists, though SZA had to drop out due to vocal problems.

Ozzy Osbourne hopped on the chart this week with nine reports averaging $925,332 and 13,882 tickets per venue. The Prince of Darkness just finished a huge run of festivals in Europe including Download Festivals in the U.K., France and Spain; Impact in Poland; and Firenze Rocks in Italy. Those festivals aren’t included in his averages, but his European and South American gigs are included.

Ozzy is heading to North America later this month, and his routing may yet see a Los Angeles arena added, though he is suing AEG, alleging the company is unlawfully tying its venues The O2 in London and Staples Center in LA, and he wants to play Forum in Inglewood. AEG Presents chairman/CEO Jay Marciano has said his company’s policies are the same kind of tactics the competition, specifically Azoff MSG Entertainment, engages in with the Forum and New York’s Madison Square Garden Arena. Full disclosure: Irving Azoff of Azoff MSG Entertainment is on the board of Pollstar’s parent company, Oak View Group.

Noted lawyer Howard King told Pollstar, legally speaking, AEG may not be required to make its venue available to everyone who wants to use it. Full disclosure: Irving Azoff of Azoff MSG Entertainment is on the board of Pollstar’s parent company, Oak View Group.

“The O2 has limited availability. Why shouldn’t the owner of the building be able to impose whatever conditions they want for someone to book the venue, including saying you have to use the other venue if you ever come to Los Angeles? It’s not like you’re being deprived of food or water, and it’s not like you don’t have another venue in London to go to. There’s lots of venues in London. Where did everybody go before The O2 was built?”

It should also be mentioned there is one more Taylor Swift report this week, her three-night stand at Gillette Stadium in Foxboro, Mass., July 26-28. In those three shows she grossed $21.8 million on 174,764 tickets. Those figures surpass the totals for most other entries on the chart by a lot.