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Popmart unsold tickets. How bad was it?

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Zoo adam

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Popmart unsold tickets. How bad was it?
« on: March 18, 2024, 04:16:32 PM »
After a 4 year gap, Pop was released to mixed reviews.

U2 were not as big as 10 years earlier. However I understand they didn't hold back & went straight for the big stadiums in America.

I remember hearing shows were not selling out. Even 2 dates at Wembley Stadium took it's time.

Any other information? 
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Zoo adam

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Re: Popmart unsold tickets. How bad was it?
« Reply #1 on: March 18, 2024, 04:28:09 PM »
Were Arena's played at Popmart? Be pretty hard to fit that big 'M' and lemon in.

A 100% stadium world tour would be optimistic.
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SlyDanner

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Re: Popmart unsold tickets. How bad was it?
« Reply #2 on: March 18, 2024, 05:28:37 PM »
this is where an tha tells us

1. the largest crowd U2 ever played to was on PopMart in Italy
2. the album and tour only failed in America, cuz we're idiots
3. yeah Germany also had issues but they're German, so what the fuck do you expect

all lies (except maybe #1)!
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Amor fati

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Re: Popmart unsold tickets. How bad was it?
« Reply #3 on: March 18, 2024, 05:57:01 PM »
Quote from: Zoo adam on March 18, 2024, 04:28:09 PM
Were Arena's played at Popmart? Be pretty hard to fit that big 'M' and lemon in.

A 100% stadium world tour would be optimistic.

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Tumbling Dice

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Re: Popmart unsold tickets. How bad was it?
« Reply #4 on: March 18, 2024, 06:10:20 PM »
Quote from: Zoo adam on March 18, 2024, 04:28:09 PM
Were Arena's played at Popmart? Be pretty hard to fit that big 'M' and lemon in.

A 100% stadium world tour would be optimistic.

The Perth show was squeezed into an arena. 

Fine margins.  Another half a million tickets sold in the USA, Germany and Australia and it would have been considered a commercial success.   

I think the Discotheque video has a lot to answer for.  Many Americans don't do irony.
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Zoo adam

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Re: Popmart unsold tickets. How bad was it?
« Reply #5 on: March 19, 2024, 11:28:19 AM »
Wiki says

'The band had some difficulty filling stadiums in the southern and Midwestern US, yet there were multiple night sellouts in Chicago, New York and Boston. It was however better received by Europeans and in particular, South American audiences.'

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Were some stadiums half full? Says the tour had some technical problems.

Maybe after ZooTV they could have gone lower key. That was done for the Elevation tour.

The capacity for the shows on Wiki are very big. The UK show venues had an average capacity of over 61,000.
« Last Edit: March 19, 2024, 11:37:54 AM by Zoo adam »
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Tumbling Dice

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Re: Popmart unsold tickets. How bad was it?
« Reply #6 on: March 19, 2024, 12:20:07 PM »
Quote from: Zoo adam on March 19, 2024, 11:28:19 AM
Wiki says

'The band had some difficulty filling stadiums in the southern and Midwestern US, yet there were multiple night sellouts in Chicago, New York and Boston. It was however better received by Europeans and in particular, South American audiences.'

----------

Were some stadiums half full? Says the tour had some technical problems.

Maybe after ZooTV they could have gone lower key. That was done for the Elevation tour.

The capacity for the shows on Wiki are very big. The UK show venues had an average capacity of over 61,000.

Zoo TV emboldened them to go bigger.  They didn't want to leave any money on the table because if they had it would have made them cry.

You can't base an expensively produced stadium tour on shows in just a few big cities.  They had to go all in.

Without the Latin American shows the attendance figures would have been far more embarrassing.

U2 only played five shows in the UK on PM and two of those shows were at the large Wembley Stadium and so of course the average attendance for the UK shows was above average for the tour.  The average attendance over the 93 shows was only 42,500 and the figure was just over 10,000 fewer than that for the US shows.







« Last Edit: March 19, 2024, 12:39:36 PM by Tumbling Dice »
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So Cruel

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Re: Popmart unsold tickets. How bad was it?
« Reply #7 on: March 19, 2024, 12:27:35 PM »
U2 did really well in some smaller markets they typically never hit. I did a college road trip to see them in Edmonton where they sold out 2 shows. They also sold out Winnipeg. Edmonton and Winnipeg are very small cities, but U2 hadn’t played them since the very early tours so there was built up demand.

Then when I saw the tour in my home town of Vancouver they had about 35,000 people. Vancouver had about 3x the population of those cities but they also play Vancouver every tour.

At the end of the day the typical North American college kid seeing the Edge looking like a gay biker in the Discotheque video wasn’t really seen as cool back in 1997
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Tumbling Dice

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Re: Popmart unsold tickets. How bad was it?
« Reply #8 on: March 19, 2024, 12:36:58 PM »
Quote from: So Cruel on March 19, 2024, 12:27:35 PM
U2 did really well in some smaller markets they typically never hit. I did a college road trip to see them in Edmonton where they sold out 2 shows. They also sold out Winnipeg. Edmonton and Winnipeg are very small cities, but U2 hadn’t played them since the very early tours so there was built up demand.

Then when I saw the tour in my home town of Vancouver they had about 35,000 people. Vancouver had about 3x the population of those cities but they also play Vancouver every tour.

At the end of the day the typical North American college kid seeing the Edge looking like a gay biker in the Discotheque video wasn’t really seen as cool back in 1997

Culturally, Canuckistan is different from their southern neighbour.  Many twenty something and thirtysomething Americans had to feel a little uneasy about the direction U2 had moved in. And the tour was thematically and stylistically inextricably linked to the album they were touring, unlike 360 for example.

I remember Bono expressing surprise at the turn out for their two shows in Edmonton of Edmonton Oilers fame.

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Zoo adam

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Re: Popmart unsold tickets. How bad was it?
« Reply #9 on: March 19, 2024, 12:41:03 PM »
TJT shows were very primitive. There wasn't even a video screen.

Even Bruce had a video screen in his 85 shows.
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MPare1966

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Re: Popmart unsold tickets. How bad was it?
« Reply #10 on: March 19, 2024, 01:38:14 PM »
Quote from: So Cruel on March 19, 2024, 12:27:35 PM
U2 did really well in some smaller markets they typically never hit. I did a college road trip to see them in Edmonton where they sold out 2 shows. They also sold out Winnipeg. Edmonton and Winnipeg are very small cities, but U2 hadn’t played them since the very early tours so there was built up demand.

Then when I saw the tour in my home town of Vancouver they had about 35,000 people. Vancouver had about 3x the population of those cities but they also play Vancouver every tour.

At the end of the day the typical North American college kid seeing the Edge looking like a gay biker in the Discotheque video wasn’t really seen as cool back in 1997

Winnipeg. The city where fun goes to die.
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imaginary friend

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Re: Popmart unsold tickets. How bad was it?
« Reply #11 on: March 19, 2024, 01:56:18 PM »
I remember Pollstar saying they sold 91% of all available tickets, but I think that was worldwide. I saw 3 North American shows:

Columbus, about 51k tickets sold; I think capacity for PopMart was 72k, max? Certainly a lot less than for Pink Floyd's Division Bell show in the same venue.
Chicago, sold-out show, pre-renovation Soldier Field, maybe 48k?
Detroit, about 37k sold...which, believe it or not, was about 9k more than they drew in the same stadium for ZOO TV. Funny thing here was that they almost completely sold out the upper deck because tickets up there were $15 cheaper, I think.
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So Cruel

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Re: Popmart unsold tickets. How bad was it?
« Reply #12 on: March 19, 2024, 02:23:38 PM »
Quote from: MPare1966 on March 19, 2024, 01:38:14 PM
Quote from: So Cruel on March 19, 2024, 12:27:35 PM
U2 did really well in some smaller markets they typically never hit. I did a college road trip to see them in Edmonton where they sold out 2 shows. They also sold out Winnipeg. Edmonton and Winnipeg are very small cities, but U2 hadn’t played them since the very early tours so there was built up demand.

Then when I saw the tour in my home town of Vancouver they had about 35,000 people. Vancouver had about 3x the population of those cities but they also play Vancouver every tour.

At the end of the day the typical North American college kid seeing the Edge looking like a gay biker in the Discotheque video wasn’t really seen as cool back in 1997

Winnipeg. The city where fun goes to die.


Winnipeg. A city best known for the size of their mosquitos
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So Cruel

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Re: Popmart unsold tickets. How bad was it?
« Reply #13 on: March 19, 2024, 02:30:56 PM »
Quote from: Tumbling Dice on March 19, 2024, 12:36:58 PM
Quote from: So Cruel on March 19, 2024, 12:27:35 PM
U2 did really well in some smaller markets they typically never hit. I did a college road trip to see them in Edmonton where they sold out 2 shows. They also sold out Winnipeg. Edmonton and Winnipeg are very small cities, but U2 hadn’t played them since the very early tours so there was built up demand.

Then when I saw the tour in my home town of Vancouver they had about 35,000 people. Vancouver had about 3x the population of those cities but they also play Vancouver every tour.

At the end of the day the typical North American college kid seeing the Edge looking like a gay biker in the Discotheque video wasn’t really seen as cool back in 1997

Culturally, Canuckistan is different from their southern neighbour.  Many twenty something and thirtysomething Americans had to feel a little uneasy about the direction U2 had moved in. And the tour was thematically and stylistically inextricably linked to the album they were touring, unlike 360 for example.

I remember Bono expressing surprise at the turn out for their two shows in Edmonton of Edmonton Oilers fame.

The Edmonton show I was at was amazing, and was one of the shows they filmed. We were mid floor close to the B-Stage. One of the best U2 shows of the tour. A great few days…. early 20’s….lots of drinking and hitting the bars…. and U2 near their peak.

I actually got Bono’s autograph. We were leaving a liquor store and saw a crowd gathered outside a hotel. Walked over and all I had on me was a case of Heineken. Everyone else had posters/albums. Bono laughed when I handed him a bottle of Heineken.

The encores professionally recorded from the show I was at.

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Tumbling Dice

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Re: Popmart unsold tickets. How bad was it?
« Reply #14 on: March 19, 2024, 02:46:14 PM »
Quote from: So Cruel on March 19, 2024, 02:30:56 PM
Quote from: Tumbling Dice on March 19, 2024, 12:36:58 PM
Quote from: So Cruel on March 19, 2024, 12:27:35 PM
U2 did really well in some smaller markets they typically never hit. I did a college road trip to see them in Edmonton where they sold out 2 shows. They also sold out Winnipeg. Edmonton and Winnipeg are very small cities, but U2 hadn’t played them since the very early tours so there was built up demand.

Then when I saw the tour in my home town of Vancouver they had about 35,000 people. Vancouver had about 3x the population of those cities but they also play Vancouver every tour.

At the end of the day the typical North American college kid seeing the Edge looking like a gay biker in the Discotheque video wasn’t really seen as cool back in 1997

Culturally, Canuckistan is different from their southern neighbour.  Many twenty something and thirtysomething Americans had to feel a little uneasy about the direction U2 had moved in. And the tour was thematically and stylistically inextricably linked to the album they were touring, unlike 360 for example.

I remember Bono expressing surprise at the turn out for their two shows in Edmonton of Edmonton Oilers fame.

The Edmonton show I was at was amazing, and was one of the shows they filmed. We were mid floor close to the B-Stage. One of the best U2 shows of the tour. A great few days…. early 20’s….lots of drinking and hitting the bars…. and U2 near their peak.

I actually got Bono’s autograph. We were leaving a liquor store and saw a crowd gathered outside a hotel. Walked over and all I had on me was a case of Heineken. Everyone else had posters/albums. Bono laughed when I handed him a bottle of Heineken.

The encores professionally recorded from the show I was at.


It's a good thing you didn't have a case of Carlsberg, now that would have been embarrassing.

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