Def Leppard and Motley Crue’s Stadium Tour sold $173,000,000 worth of tickets

Motley Crue take a bow on the stadium tour — Mötley Crüe take a bow at the opening Stadium Tour show at Truist Park on June 16, in Atlanta, Georgia (Image credit: Kevin Mazur/Getty Images for Live Nation)

Motley Crue and Def Leppard's Stadium Tour raked in $173 million in concert ticket sales over the summer, according to a feature in Billboard Magazine.

Over the course of 36 nights – which kicked off at Truist Park in Atlanta, GA on June 16, and climaxed at the Allegiant Stadium in Las Vegas on September 9 – 1.3 million tickets were sold, with an average of 37,520 fans attending each show.

The numbers represent a considerable success for both bands, whose commercial peaks in the 1980s and 1990s were supported by shows in 10-11,000 seat arenas. By the turn of the century both bands were attracting crowds half that size, and Motley Crue's so-called Final Tour of 2014-2015 grossed $44.3 million across 158 shows.

In June, Leppard frontman Joe Elliott confirmed that the Stadium Tour will come to Europe next summer.

"I can’t reveal when or where it will happen because I haven’t been told that it’s okay to say anything yet," Elliott told us. "But the second that information is cleared, Classic Rock will know about it."

“One gig is absolutely confirmed so far, and we’re looking at a second one in a different city. There will be another in Dublin, and loads around Europe. Some of them will just be festivals [with different bands], but others will be what we’re currently doing here in North America."

Motley Crue frontman Vince Neil said a little more in an interview with the Las Vegas Review-Journal prior to the final show of the US tour, revealing that the circus will move on to Mexico and South America in the spring of 2023 before playing European stadiums in the summer. And then Motley Crue will tour the US again, although there's no word yet on what form that tour will take.

“We’re far from being over,” Neil said. “When we come back in ‘24, we’re going to do it all over again."

Artists

Online Editor at Louder/Classic Rock magazine since 2014. 40 years in music industry, online for 27. Also bylines for: Metal Hammer, Prog Magazine, The Word Magazine, The Guardian, The New Statesman, Saga, Music365. Former Head of Music at Xfm Radio, A&R at Fiction Records, early blogger, ex-roadie, published author. Once appeared in a Cure video dressed as a cowboy, and thinks any situation can be improved by the introduction of cats. Favourite Serbian trumpeter: Dejan Petrović.