As “The Voice of Live” during the past four decades, Pollstar has consistently documented the state of the live entertainment industry from year to year with a commitment that has never changed. Along with editorial coverage of contemporary newsmakers and the hottest stories of the day, they have also charted box-office success of the industry’s biggest players. With ticket sales figures shared by talent buyers, venues, booking agents and artist managers, Pollstar's aim is to highlight live performers and properly present the box-office impact of their endeavors on concert stages around the globe.
As part of the coverage for their 40th anniversary, Pollstar have created three special charts that reflect the overall impact of box-office realities during the four decades of the Pollstar Era, beginning in 1980 through the present.
One is the All-Time Boxoffice chart that ranks the top individual live engagements that occurred during the past 40 years. Like their weekly Global Live Boxoffice chart, it ranks engagements of concert headliners at a single venue, whether it is one performance or multiple shows. They also have included music festivals in the mix as well as package tours with multiple artists on the bill.
For the All-Time Boxoffice chart, Pollstar have changed their regular procedure and ranked the concert engagements by the number of sold tickets instead of by gross. The reason for this change is that monetary values have evolved and grown considerably throughout the four-decade Pollstar Era, and the value of a concert gross in 1982 is not an apples-to-apples comparison to the gross value for a performance this year. But one ticket is still just one ticket, regardless of the year – or decade – it was sold.
Along with the All-Time Boxoffice chart, Pollstar have also created two special charts to present the Top Touring Artists Of The Pollstar Era, both ranking the top 150 headlining acts during their entire history. Each listing is comprised of cumulative totals for each artist and compiled from all the thousands of box-office reports they have received since the early 1980s.
Both charts present the Top Touring Artists, but one is ranked by gross and the other by the number of tickets sold. For both, they have counted only headlining shows for each act, omitting results from any festival appearance since the festival itself is eligible to rank on the All-Time Boxoffice chart, as many of them have. Pollstar also did not include any event where the touring artist participated as a support act.
Although multiple-day music festivals are not included on the cumulative charts, they did include festival tours or package tours with multiple artists such as the “Vans Warped Tour,” “American Idol Live,” the “Honda Civic Tour” and “Ozzfest” among others.
Artists on the "Top Touring Artists Of The Pollstar Era" chart include The Rolling Stones (#1), Bon Jovi (#7), Metallica (#9), Roger Waters (#18), Trans-Siberian Orchestra (#21), Guns N' Roses (#23), AC/DC (#27), Aerosmith (#31), KISS (#41), Def Leppard (#42), Iron Maiden (#44), Journey (#45), Mötley Crüe (#63), Rush (#73), The Who (#81), Van Halen (#91), Scorpions (#99), and Tool (#100).
Read more at Pollstar, and find a PDF of the charts here.
