6 replies to this topic

[steeple]

Monster Tour Records!!

http://www.ukmix.org...pic.php?t=79628

[Sweden]

Wow, interesting stuff! Been a while since I read about the Monster tour, but this brings back memories of reading through reviews in (print!) fanzines and in a few rare cases online, as well as then trying to collect the live tapes. Pretty amazing to see the number of US shows comapred to the number of European ones, especially compared with later tours. This was of course in part due to not all European shows booked were rescheduled after the aneurysm.

[thomas08]

Wow it's so hard to believe how big R.E.M. actually was back then!! Would love to know the stats for the '99 world tour and see how much they differ.

I think it's pretty safe to say the guys made enough from the '95 tour to retire for life!

[stipeeyes]

Their estimates for some of the average ticket prices are off.  I know at least for the Philly shows that all tickets were 35 dollars.  Even the nose bleeds.

Awesome how they were able to get that information.  So we can pretty much say the tour grossed 95 millions dollars. I'd say take maybe more than half of that away just to pay for the tour.  R.E.M. were at the top of their popularity then.  Michael had said  that year that they would probably never tour on that huge scale again.  He was right.

[Sweden]

stipeeyes, on 19 December 2011 - 06:46 PM, said:

Awesome how they were able to get that information.  So we can pretty much say the tour grossed 95 millions dollars.

I say that assessment is essentially a really wild guess. You can hardly base a global assessment on attendance numbers, much less ticket prices or what constitutes a "stadium" or an "arena", on some North American numbers (and five or so UK/Ireland shows). Still, this is certainly their biggest tour in many ways. (But is it indeed the most lucrative, who knows?)

(Damn it's hard to try to write in past tense about the band - this "was" their biggest tour, "was" it indeed"...)

[fanfan]

gross is not net, anyway. But it must have been the largest tour they did.

[thomas08]

Sweden, on 20 December 2011 - 12:35 AM, said:

I say that assessment is essentially a really wild guess. You can hardly base a global assessment on attendance numbers, much less ticket prices or what constitutes a "stadium" or an "arena", on some North American numbers (and five or so UK/Ireland shows). Still, this is certainly their biggest tour in many ways. (But is it indeed the most lucrative, who knows?)

(Damn it's hard to try to write in past tense about the band - this "was" their biggest tour, "was" it indeed"...)

It's true that you can't just assess the gross profit on attendance numbers alone. If anything, the gross profit would be even higher than 95 million; they also have sponsorships, money from the record label, merchandise etc. It would be pretty hard to get an accurate number but I think the 95 million estimate is as close as we'll ever get.

This has to be the most lucrative tour they ever did. It had the highest number of sellouts, the highest attendance, biggest venues etc. and they didn't rely on festivals as much as they did in the latter years. They hardly played any.

That's the one problem i had with the 2008 tour, they played so many festivals that year, which in my opinion showed the band acknowledging the fact that they weren't capable of pulling in the big crowds alone anymore which was a shame.

2008 - 18 festivals
2005 - 4 festivals
2003 - 13 festivals
1999 - 5 festivals
1995 - 4 festivals
1989 - 7 festivals