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Last night, U2 arrived at New Jersey’s New Meadowlands Stadium in a giant green-and-orange spaceship. At least that’s what the nearly 100,000 people in attendance might have assumed upon first seeing the blinking, glowing, four-legged, 167 foot tall contraption straddling the area that otherwise serves as the Jets’ and Giants’ home turf.
More confusion may have ensued around half past nine when the base of the structure began to smoke furiously; shortly thereafter, David Bowie’s “Space Oddity” announced a countdown over the loudspeakers. At zero, the sound of live guitars cut through the heavy air and U2 charged onto the stage as the stadium heaved with applause. The band played for over two hours, rocking through hits like “Beautiful Day” and “Sunday, Bloody Sunday,” punctuated with shout-outs to Amnesty International and bits of banter by Bono.
“I’m a man of simple needs, just 200 trucks, 400 tons of equipment,” he said of the group’s current tour. “A work in progress.”
In Pictures: U2 Rocks New...ds Stadium
In progress, perhaps, but almost complete — and unfathomably lucrative. U2 took home $195 million over the past 12 months, making the Irish rock group the top-earning musical act on FORBES’ Celeb 100 list of highest-paid entertainers. That’s more than any other star besides Oprah, and more than Lady Gaga, Jay-Z and Toby Keith combined. Earlier this summer, the group’s Live Nation-backed “360″ tour topped the Rolling Stones’ “A Bigger Bang” tour, which grossed $558 million from 2005-2007, to earn the title of highest-grossing tour ever. By the time U2 winds up its own two-year stint later this month, the total will be somewhere around $700 million.
The group’s tour takes its name from the aforementioned structure that allows U2 to play stadiums “in the round”; in other words, to open up thousands of seats that would ordinarily be behind a stage — and actually sell out 80,000-seat venues (or larger). The contraption is dismantled and trucked from city to city between shows along with all the group’s equipment. As a result, U2 has been playing to average crowds of 96,000 people per night and grossing just shy of $10 million per show. By comparison, Bon Jovi, the second-highest earning musical act over the past year, drew an average of 34,000 fans and grossed $3.5 million per night.
“Rock bands who play stadiums are going to have better margins than rock acts who play arenas,” Bon Jovi’s co-manager David Munns explained to me for a story on the New Jersey rockers this spring. “The bigger the gross, the bigger the take-home.”
Veteran managers like Munns and U2′s Paul McGuinness plan their tours shrewdly, often booking shows on consecutive days in the same venue to save on promotion, travel and equipment shipping costs. Bon Jovi saved $300,000 on setup and strike costs in less than three weeks by playing 19 shows in 12 days at the 02 Arena in London; more than half of U2′s shows over the past 12 months were part of multiple-night stands at individual arenas.
Of course, there are other benefits to being on the road besides earning gobs of cash.
“Not much has changed with U2,” said Bono toward the end of the New Meadowlands show, motioning toward the group’s bassist. “Adam Clayton is still in the band because he thinks it’s a good way to meet girls.”
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