TOURING RECAP / JANUARY
W
HILE 2020 HAS KICKED OFF IN GRAND
fashion with new albums from megastars like
Justin Bieber, BTS, Selena Gomez and Lil Wayne,
the January Boxscore report is notably quiet:
Following a final 2019 surge from late-in-the-year
tours by Trans-Siberian Orchestra and U2, the
pickings in live entertainment get slim after New Year’s Day, with a
small handful of A-list tours carrying over from the prior year and a
few new heavy-hitters kicking off at the tail end of the month.
In the post-holiday lull, Billboard Boxscore regulars Elton
John, Céline Dion and George Strait crown the newest Top Tours
ranking. But just behind them is a swarm of hard rock acts. After
sneaking onto the chart in November, Tool claims the No. 4 spot in
January with $9.5 million as it continues its latest North American
tour. According to figures reported to Boxscore, the band moved
84,202 tickets from seven shows during the month.
Tool’s January run included shows in California, Texas and Ne-
vada, peaking with 15,024 tickets sold for a $1.7 million gross at the
T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas. Six of its seven shows crossed the
million-dollar threshold, with a Jan. 15 performance at the Save
Mart Center in Fresno, Calif., barely missing the mark at $995,766.
Tool has been on the road since May 2019 in support of its fifth
studio album, the Billboard 200 chart-topping Fear Inoculum.
Though it is the band’s first release since 2006’s 10,000 Days, Tool
has maintained a regular presence on the touring circuit, playingquick stints of shows in almost every
calendar year in between. Its business
has steadily increased since its last
proper album cycle, scaling from an
average of $478,000 per night in 2006-
07 to $1.341 million in 2019-20.
Rock’s global footprint can be
felt lower in the top 10, as Slipknot
holds January’s No. 6 position with
$3.5 million grossed from four shows
on its European tour. Despite hailing
from Des Moines, Iowa, the heavy
metal band has a long history of
outperforming its domestic tours
with international shows in South
America, Europe and Australia. On
the group’s previous North American
run, the tour’s final four shows com-
bined to earned $885,000, while its
four European dates in 2020 averaged
$871,000 each.
Rounding out the top 10 is Korn
and Breaking Benjamin’s co-head-
lining bill. Both bands have shared a
marquee before, and this joint touris quite literally greater than the
sum of its parts: By combining six
reports from each band’s most recent
solo headlining tour, the total gross
amounts to $2.1 million. But the first
six shows of their ongoing run clears
$2.4 million and 40,000 tickets sold,
proving the power of joining forces to
maximize fan engagement.
On the poppier end of the rock
spectrum, Elton John claims not only
his fourth month at No. 1 on the Top
Tours ranking — he topped the chart
in February, September and November
2019 — but also his first time crown-
ing the Top Boxscores chart with his
Farewell Yellow Brick Road tour. His
three-show run at Sydney’s Qudos
Bank Arena earned $6.1 million and
sold 44,436 tickets. The blockbuster
trek, which he intends to be his final
world tour, began in fall 2018 and has
shows booked through 2021, including
repeat legs in North America, Europe
and Oceania.As the touring industry enters a
post-New Year’s lull, bands like
Tool and Slipknot are pulling in some
of the biggest grosses of their careersBY ERIC FRANKENBERGRock
Steady
Maynard James
Keenan of Tool in
Copenhagen in 2019.52 BILLBOARD • FEBRUARY 29, 2020