Kenny Chesney kicks up his boot heels during his Aug. 24 show at Gillette Stadium in Foxborough, Mass. (Allister Ann)
Kenny Chesney served up another blockbuster finale for the No Shoes Nation as his Trip Around the Sun tour wrapped with a record-breaking two-show engagement at Gillette Stadium in Foxborough, Mass., the traditional final stop for his tours.
Chesney hit a milestone at the stadium by selling enough tickets for his Aug. 24-25 shows to kick his overall attendance count there over the 1 million mark. The country star has sold 1,090,326 tickets since his first concert at Gillette during 2005’s Somewhere in the Sun tour and stretching through his 19 headlining performances at the venue.
Chesney also smashed his own attendance record at the stadium. With a sold ticket count of 121,714 this year, the Tennessee native beat his own record – set last year – by 72 seats. However, his two-night stint in 2017 earned just over $12 million and remains his best gross at Gillette. At $11.6 million, this year’s visit is his second-highest earner.
The Trip Around the Sun tour drew 1.3 million fans in 40 North American cities, making it Chesney’s 12th tour since 2003 to top 1 million in ticket sales. As the only stadium on the schedule with two performances, Gillette was the top grosser.
Only one of Chesney's tours failed to hit the 1 million mark. His Spread the Love trek in 2016 logged 910,330 sold seats, but he played only 30 dates that year, less than the 55-show average of his other jaunts. Revenue from this year’s run totaled $114.3 million, marking the second time Chesney has topped $100 million in sales on a single tour. The Big Revival in 2015 maintains the record as his highest-grossing touring effort, at $116.3 million.
The stadium with the most box office success among the single-show dates on the Trip Around the Sun tour was MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, N.J. The New York-area venue grossed $6.8 million from 58,642 total tickets at a sold-out concert Aug. 18.
“When we hear that he’s set all-time attendance records at MetLife Stadium, it’s mind-blowing,” manager and agent Clint Higham of Dale Morris & Associates told Pollstar. “Having worked with him for 25 years, going back to the days of not being able to afford a bus, borrowing the money to play — but we did it anyway — and playing venues where no one showed up or cared. But brick by brick, Kenny defied logic and honed his craft while the business was not paying attention. Then, one day, you look up and you are headlining arenas, amphitheaters and then stadiums.”
Chesney played 18 stadiums and 21 amphitheaters during the bulk of his summer run, which stretched 18 weeks, beginning April 21 at Tampa’s Raymond James Stadium. Before the stadium opener, though, he made his first appearance of the tour in Las Vegas with a club date at The Joint at Hard Rock Hotel, selling out two shows in mid-March.
Fellow country artists Thomas Rhett, Old Dominion and Brandon Lay provided support for all of the stadium dates except for the finale, which featured Dierks Bentley and Brothers Osborne along with Lay. Old Dominion opened the show for all of the shed dates.
Chesney owns the No. 8 ranking on the Global Concert Pulse of Venues Now-affiliated publication Pollstar, based on gross and attendance averages of $2.9 million and 33,075 from performances in 39 cities reported during the past three months. With no major trek staged last year, his most recent ranking on Pollstar’s Year End Top 200 North American tours was No. 10 in 2016.
Ryan Borba of Pollstar contributed to this report.