For those who had been to journey to see your favourite musical act in any metropolis within the US, which metropolis would you select? How would you resolve? Would you wish to journey someplace with a well-known music scene, a enjoyable vacation spot with issues to do and good infrastructure, or search for the most affordable ticket you could find? We all know from earlier HVS evaluation that many followers are prepared to journey, however that not all live performance tour locations have the identical attraction. Why do completely different stadiums or cities get extra guests and related imported financial impression than others?
To reply this query, we gathered knowledge from Pollstar on 4 massive home excursions from 2022-2023: Taylor Swift’s Eras, Beyonce’s Renaissance, Ed Sheeran’s Arithmetic, and Elton John’s Farewell Yellow Brick Street. From 2022 by way of August 2023, not less than three excursions in seven completely different US venues overlapped. We used the tour dates to collect the share of attendees from greater than 100 miles away at every efficiency from Placer.ai. Placer.ai makes use of telephone monitoring knowledge from third-party apps to rely attendees at an occasion and observe their origin and from how distant they got here.
We centered on vacationers, which we outline as individuals who come to live shows from greater than 100 miles away as a result of they import spending and generate new financial impression, versus native attendees who already spend within the native financial system. Venues that appeal to extra vacationers import have a bigger financial impression.
The determine beneath reveals the share of vacationers for every tour within the seven cities, with not less than three of the excursions overlapping.
Share of Vacationers at Every Tour
There may be some variation by tour: Taylor Swift attracts essentially the most vacationers, whereas Elton John attracts the fewest, though Elton John didn’t play at Ford Subject or Lincoln Monetary Subject on his tour. However extra considerably, Nashville stands out as a magnet for vacationer live performance attendees, with greater than half of attendees being vacationers for all 4 excursions. Way over MetLife Stadium within the New York metro space (12%) and Gillette Stadium outdoors Boston (16%).
The determine beneath reveals the common proportion of attendees who’re vacationers throughout the overlapping excursions.
Common Share of Vacationers
The self-proclaimed Music Metropolis is the clear chief. Greater than half of Nissan Stadium was stuffed with live performance attendees who traveled to Nashville, stayed at inns, ate, drank, and shopped. Atlanta will get the second most vacationers, with 38% of their live performance attendees, adopted by Chicago with 28% and Detroit with 23%. The New York, Boston, and Philadelphia metro areas get the fewest attendees from over 100 miles, beneath 20% on common.
What accounts for the robust vacationer draw of Nashville and Atlanta? Is it as a result of they’re in style music locations or particularly enticing cities to vacationers?
To evaluate the standard of a metropolis’s music scene, HVS used analysis from Intelligent Actual Property [1]. They used knowledge from the US Census, the Bureau of Financial Evaluation, the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and Indie on the Transfer to check cities based mostly on Google tendencies, the variety of musicians, the price of tickets, and the supply of live performance venues to rank the highest music scenes within the nation. The desk beneath reveals the rating of every of the seven cities recognized beneath and the common proportion of attendees from greater than 100 miles away.
Music Scene Rating
Whereas Nashville’s music scene ranks first within the nation because of its massive inhabitants of musicians and better wages for musicians, Atlanta solely ranks 45th, effectively behind northeastern hubs Boston and Philadelphia. New York and Chicago ranked comparatively low because of the excessive price of residing and value of live performance tickets. There isn’t any clear indication that having a vibrant and profitable music scene attracts extra vacationers to a metropolis to see a live performance. Different metropolis attributes could drive live performance tourism.
To measure the standard and attractiveness of a metropolis, a possible choice issue for a touring live performance attendee, HVS used Resonance Consulting’s rating of the most effective cities in america. Resonance produces these rankings yearly and makes use of a strategy that evaluates a metropolis in six classes: place, product, programming, individuals, prosperity, and promotion. This consists of the standard of the pure and constructed setting, town’s key establishments and sights, and town’s artwork, tradition, leisure, and culinary scene, amongst different concerns.
The desk beneath reveals the Resonance Greatest Metropolis rankings alongside the common proportion of vacationers throughout excursions.
Metropolis High quality Rating
New York, Chicago, and Boston cleared the path within the Resonance metropolis rating regardless of having a comparatively low proportion of vacationers attending their live shows. Nashville, the main vacationer hub for live performance attendees, ranks twenty eighth, and Atlanta ranks twelfth.
Just like the music scene rating, the Greatest Cities rating doesn’t correlate with the share of live performance vacationers. If individuals are not coming to a metropolis for a live performance due to the music scene and never due to town’s attract, tradition, and infrastructure, why do they journey to Nashville and Atlanta for a live performance, not New York, Boston, or Philadelphia?
The straightforward reply follows from the legal guidelines of provide and demand. Market areas with fewer individuals and fewer disposable revenue enable vacationers to pay much less to attend these live shows than they might at house. Matching knowledge on the inhabitants and revenue with the share of concert-going vacationers helps our speculation.
Tickets are scarcer in bigger markets than in smaller markets. The northeastern markets are way more populous than Nashville and Atlanta, so there’s extra native competitors for tickets as soon as they go on sale. The desk beneath reveals the overall inhabitants inside 100 miles of town at every venue.
Inhabitants Rating
New York and Philadelphia have greater than 30 million individuals, considerably extra competitors for tickets than the smaller markets. Nashville has the fewest individuals inside 100 miles among the many cities studied, with lower than half the individuals inside 100 miles as Detroit, the following largest market. Atlanta is marginally forward of Detroit and one-third of the dimensions of Philadelphia and New York. Boston is the outlier among the many three northeastern cities, with solely 11.6 million individuals inside 100 miles.
The median family revenue can be greater within the Northeast, so extra disposable revenue is out there for leisure. Excessive demand pushed ticket costs greater. The desk beneath reveals the median family revenue for the world 100 miles from town.
Median Family Earnings Rating
Nashville and Detroit are within the backside three of median family revenue, whereas the three northeastern cities are within the high 3 of median family revenue. This further disposable revenue makes it simpler for individuals from the northeast who couldn’t get tickets to their native present to purchase tickets and journey to Nashville or Atlanta.
A comparability of common ticket costs reinforces our level about individuals paying decrease ticket costs in these vacationer locations. The ticket costs on the venues in Nashville and Atlanta are the bottom among the many venues we analyzed. The desk beneath reveals the common ticket value at every venue.
Common Ticket Worth at Every Venue
Ticket costs at Atlanta and Nashville venues are greater than $15 lower than Philadelphia, which is the following lowest. New York and Boston are the second and third costliest venues, at or above $150 per ticket. The shortage of competitors for the tickets and restricted market dimension makes tickets in Nashville and Atlanta cheaper and simpler to get than in bigger, extra populous areas just like the Northeast.
When given the selection of the place to journey for a live performance, followers of Elton John, Beyonce, Taylor Swift, and Ed Sheeran predominantly select to journey the place tickets can be found and cheap. Followers could respect the native music scene or the facilities a vacation spot could have to supply, however relating to discovering a spot to observe a live performance, the supply of tickets and value stays the first driver.
[1] Intelligent, The Greatest Music Cities within the U.S. (2022 Knowledge), Retrieved August 28, 2023.
