Phil Collins decided retirement wasn’t for him. (Getty Images)
Phil Collins scores on Hot Tickets with ticket sales from his Not Dead Yet tour, which played 15 cities in the U.S. and Canada this fall. It’s the final leg this year on the English singer’s comeback effort named after his 2016 autobiography. With shows in Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Chicago and Columbus, Ohio, ranked among the highest-grossing concerts on this month’s charts, the Las Vegas event at MGM Grand Garden Arena was his top grosser. The concert on Oct. 27 took in $2.7 million at the box office from 12,663 sold tickets priced from $54 to $204. On the following evening, he made his final appearance of the year at the Forum in Inglewood, Calif., logging 13,866 sold seats and a $2.5 million take.
Collins, who had announced his retirement in 2011, had a change of heart and made a handful of appearances in 2016. With encouragement from his family, he planned a return to the stage for a full-scale tour the following year. He launched the new tour in Europe beginning with a June 2017 performance at Liverpool’s Echo Arena. Multiple-show runs in London, Paris and Cologne, Germany, led to a string of summer dates that wrapped with a headlining stint at the British Summer Time Festival at London’s Hyde Park on June 30. A series of U.K. arena dates in November and December completed the 2017 schedule.
This year the tour crossed the pond and began with a Latin American run through seven countries in February and March. The Latin leg kicked off with three stadium dates in Brazil, including a two-night engagement in São Paulo that drew 82,662 fans Feb. 24-25. With a gross of $9.5 million, it is the former Genesis front man’s highest gross this year and the tour’s second-highest overall. The best box office earnings came from his five-show engagement in June 2017 at AccorHotels Arena in Paris, with $10.6 million in sales from 62,071 sold seats.
Next up for the Not Dead Yet tour is a seven-city jaunt in Australia and New Zealand beginning Jan. 19 and running through Feb. 6.
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