Guns N’ Roses are one of the most legendary bands in rock history and are a fitting group to mount one of the first major tours as concerts returned from a global shutdown. According to figures reported to Billboard Boxscore, the U.S. leg of the Guns N’ Roses 2021 Tour grossed $50 million and sold 363,000 tickets.
The tour unofficially launched in January 2020 with a high-ticket play at Miami’s American Airlines Arena on Super Bowl Weekend. The show earned $2.7 million on 11,200 tickets.
A slate of summer 2020 dates were then postponed by a year due to COVID, resuming on July 31 at the Hersheypark Stadium with a $2.3 million gross. Opening night became the biggest pandemic-era U.S. one-night earnings to that point, only to be bested several times throughout the tour.
The 2021 tour alternated between stadiums and arenas, with 10 outdoor shows and 14 indoor shows. Despite more arena dates, the stadium concerts, perhaps unsurprisingly, carried the bigger gross ($28.6 million) while managing a slightly lighter ticket price ($121), compared to arenas with $21.5 million on an average $169.48 ticket. The stadium portion hit some of the biggest music markets in the country, including New York, Los Angeles, Chicago and Las Vegas but also Indianapolis and Missoula, Mont.
Tour highlights include an Aug. 5 show at Metlife Stadium in East Rutherford, N.J., with a $4.5 million gross. The most tickets were sold at Las Vegas’s Allegiant Stadium, one of only three concerts at the venue so far. The show sold 36,100 tickets while bringing in more than $4 million.
The 2021 tour follows the comeback of GNR’s original lineup via the Not In This Lifetime… Tour. That run spanned four years (2016-19) and wrapped as the third biggest tour in Boxscore history with a $584.2 million and 5.4 million attendance count. To date, Guns N’ Roses has grossed $774.1 million and sold 9.6 million tickets over 453 reported shows over their career.
The Guns N’ Roses 2021 Tour was promoted by Live Nation, with representation by United Talent Agency and on-stage support from Mammoth WVH. The tour will continue in 2022 with legs in Europe and Australia.