Ticket sales -- North America Tour

[QUOTE] [b]PrimeJiveUSA wrote:[/b]

So...if the concerts only sold 40% of tickets the band makes the same as they would if they had sold 100%.? It's the promoter that stands to win or lose?
[/QUOTE]

Usually a band of Queens size get either a percentage of ticket sales but with a guaranteed hefty minimum, or a set fee plus bonuses depending on how many tickets are sold. I imagine queens guarantee was around 500,000 per show, possibly more. The band are responsible for the cost of the crew and all the touring expenses which for a tour that size probably run to six figures per day so a day off is expensive. Healthy profit in it though. Im sure Brian and Roger are a few million better off each now than they were.

Looking at the figures I would guess the promoters made a profit everywhere except Vegas, Kansas and uncasville. The uncasville show is particularly weird, unless Queen did the show for a smaller fee I don't see how the promoter makes money there. Possibly Queens fee was for the whole tour but playing a less than 7000 seat venue seems odd.

The only way to view the tour as a failure financially is to look at how much Coldplay are earning and see how well they are doing in comparison but there is no way the band haven't come out of this very well financially, and I'm sure Adam Lambert just had his biggest ever pay day too.

I am of course assuming the spreadsheet is accurate and not just random figures plucked from someone's eyebrow.

To make a 7,000 seater work, I would guess that the arrangement Queen had on this tour (and a don't know for certain) was that they were either paid a flat rate for the whole tour, or they were paid a percentage per venue capacity.

Of course some shows are not as expensive to stage as the appear. a few years ago Peter Gabrial toured UK arenas they were either sold out or close to it except one. The show in an 11,000 capacity hall sold 4,500 but the show didn't lose money.

So judging what Queen made and how successful financially the tour was is next to impossible without exact figures, I'm sure Jim Beach will be willing to help!!

Bands make so much profit from merch on tours these days that it's farily hard to make a loss on tour, they are planned long in advance and most promoters will only put one on if they know they will sell.
it's hard to totally sell out a gig because you are always left with a few single seats here and there, but Queen will have no problem making a vast profit from these tours, from ticket, CD, DVD, T Shirt and Mug, Program, Poster etc the tour will have broken even just over half way through