The two hottest trends in arena concerts right now are soft sales and canceled tours.
Ticket listings for the Black Keys’ upcoming tour disappeared from Ticketmaster on the Friday that opened Memorial Day weekend. A week later, Jennifer Lopez announced her upcoming self-financed tour wasn’t going to happen as she was “taking time off to be with her children, family and close friends.”
Meanwhile, heavy hitters like Justin Timberlake and Billie Eilish have upcoming Xcel Energy Center shows with vast banks of unsold seats.
What’s going on?
The Black Keys didn’t formally announced that they axed the tour and didn’t make a statement until days later, after some fans speculated on social media about the duo’s health and well being. “The band wants to assure everyone that Dan and Patrick are alive and well,” they posted on social media. “We have decided to make some changes to the North American leg of the International Players tour that will enable us to offer a similarly exciting, intimate experience for both fans and the band, and will be announcing a revised set of dates shortly.”
A “similarly exciting, intimate experience” is a nice way to say that ticket sales were so bad, they’re going to retreat to smaller venues. There was plenty of online chatter about the Black Keys even playing arenas in the first place, but back in the ’10s, they enjoyed a sold run of arena tours, including three stops at Target Center.
Anyone who saw the Black Keys phone it in last August in front of a half-full Minnesota State Fair Grandstand knew something was up with the blues rockers. Much like their 2019 show at Target Center, guitarist/vocalist Dan Auerbach and drummer Patrick Carney seemed distant and disinterested, in each other and the crowd. It didn’t help matters that the three albums they’ve released since 2021 failed to find much interest among listeners. Their most recent one, “Ohio Players,” peaked at No. 26 on the Billboard charts, the pair’s lowest ranking since their 2006 major label debut “Magic Potion.”
The Black Keys guitarist and singer Dan Auerbach performs the song Gold On The Ceiling at Target Center in Minneapolis on Friday, Oct. 24, 2014. (Juan Pablo Ramirez / Pioneer Press)
Lopez had been on a winning streak in the time since she turned 50 in 2019. That same year, she earned raves for her playing an aging stripper in “Hustler,” even though she didn’t land the Oscar nomination so many folks predicted was a lock. She played the 2020 Super Bowl halftime show and her 2022 films “The Mother” and “Shotgun Wedding” drew huge numbers on streaming.
To the surprise of the world, Lopez rekindled her romance with Ben Affleck a year into the pandemic. The couple married in Las Vegas in July 2022 and Lopez was so starry eyed, she made the ill-fated decision to share her love with the world.
Earlier this year, Lopez released the album “This Is Me … Now,” an hourlong film of the same name and “The Greatest Love Story Never Told,” a documentary about the making of it all. She invested $20 million into the three projects, which all focus on her romance with Affleck. The tour, in theory, would be the icing on the cake. Turns out, though, no one’s that hungry. (In a splashy Variety feature that ran in February, Lopez’s longtime producing partner Elaine Goldsmith-Thomas said she questioned the entire project: “I was worried … It made me uncomfortable for her.”)
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Canceling tours is not good for business. Also not good: Playing to empty seats.
By any metric, Timberlake stands as one of the most successful pop stars of the past 25 years. After blowing up as the leader of ‘N Sync, the Memphis native went on to find massive success as a solo artist, while carving out a second career in acting. Even as interest in his music has dropped off — he’s scored a mere three Top 10 hits in the past decade — he remained a strong draw on tour. In 2018, he headlined the Super Bowl halftime show and spent a year on the road, including two sold-out stops at Xcel Energy Center.
Timberlake’s current tour seems to be doing well. He announced it in January and added additional dates last month, including a show at the X, with Live Nation announcing more than one million tickets had already been sold. Perhaps local fans didn’t get the memo, because two weeks after it went on sale, the Halloween night show in St. Paul has sold roughly half the floor and just a smattering of seats in the 100 and 200 levels. It’s pretty much unthinkable that he’ll go through with this one if sales don’t pick up.
Billie Eilish performs during Lollapalooza in Chicago’s Grant Park on Aug. 3, 2023. (Terrence Antonio James/Chicago Tribune/TNS)
Eilish, who sold out her 2022 Xcel Energy Center debut, has had a remarkably successful career so far and became the second person ever to sweep the four major categories at the 2020 Grammy Awards. While few seats remain for her Nov. 10 show at the X, the Ticketmaster map for Nov. 11 looks a lot like Timberlake’s and is awash with blue dots (which represent unsold seats).
Other shows at the X having trouble with sales include Future and Metro Boomin (July 31), Rob Zombie and Alice Cooper (Aug. 25) and Cigarettes After Sex (Sept. 24). (You’re not alone if your reaction to the latter is “Wait, who?”)
Just like the Black Keys and Lopez, the reasons behind Timberlake and Eilish’s slow sales vary. Timberlake’s latest album fell off the Billboard 200 after four short weeks and he’s become increasingly scrutinized for his history of throwing women like Britney Spears and Janet Jackson under the bus to further his own career. Eilish is playing on an in-the-round stage, drastically upping the number of seats available to sell. Plus, she’s playing on the two worst nights of the week for an arena show, Sunday and Monday.
What they all have in common, however, is a newly choosy audience. Arena shows started trickling back in the latter half of 2021, but truly took off the following two years. Everyone, it seemed, was hitting the road and fans happily gobbled up tickets, even as dynamic pricing led to seats going for hundreds, and in some cases thousands, of dollars. Throw in two massive 2023 outings with worldwide attention — Taylor Swift and Beyonce – and it appears that concertgoing fever has peaked.
A course correction in ticket prices was long overdue, as there are a finite number of acts that can attract a finite number of fans willing to pay big bucks. In May, the Department of Justice sued Live Nation claiming the company, which owns Ticketmaster, is a monopoly that harms fans. If successful, the move would have a seismic impact on the entire concert industry.
Whatever happens, it’s clear that the fans have spoken by not opening their wallets.
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