One Direction
They've conquered the hearts and Twitter feeds of millions of young American fans, topped the Billboard charts and hit #1 in 97 countries. So, what's left for British boy band One Direction to do?
How about their third major U.S. tour in as many years? After filling everything from the Gibson Amphitheatre in Los Angeles to New York's Beacon Theatre on their inaugural 2012 Up All Night Tour and hitting many of those same venues again this summer, 1D are poised to jump into the world of stadium touring with their 2014 Where We Are outing.
The tour, presented by topline sponsor Nabisco and promoted by Live Nation, will kick off on Aug. 1 at the Rogers Centre in Toronto before hitting a string of major North American stadiums, including MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, N.J., Gillette Stadium in Boston, Nationals Park in Washington, Lincoln Financial Field in Philadelphia and Soldier Field in Chicago. Dates also include stops at Atlanta's Georgia Dome, the Sun Bowl in El Paso and Miami's Sun Life Stadium.
The BOK Center in Tulsa, Okla., landed the only indoor arena show on the tour, and assistant GM Jeff Nickler said his team fought hard for the date.
“It was a combination of luck with the routing and our very close relationship with Live Nation that helped us get the show,” said Nickler, adding that taking the show indoors will be quite an engineering feat.
“The tour will spend a considerable amount of time adjusting the production for us and Charlotte (N.C.),” where One Direction will play its only amphitheater show at the PNC Music Pavilion. “It took some tweaking and multiple CAD drawings, but we finally made it work.”
Landing the show was a huge victory for the BOK Center, especially considering that the tour already has four stops planned throughout neighboring Texas.
“With any show in our part of country, it’s very competitive especially when there are limited dates,” he said. “We knew we wanted it, we knew it would be huge and the amount of hype we’ve seen has been overwhelming.”
The brainstorm of "American Idol/X Factor" judge and record executive Simon Cowell, One Direction – Niall Horan, Zayn Malik, Liam Payne, Harry Styles and Louis Tomlinson – came together in 2010 after finishing third on the UK version of "X-Factor." The leaders of the so-called new "British Invasion," the quintet has had a stratospheric global rise, propelled by three multiplatinum albums that have sold 35 million copies worldwide, as well as $19 million in U.S. sales of such smash singles as "What Makes You Beautiful," "Live While We're Young" and "Story of My Life."
One of a new generation of pop acts whose careers have been boosted immensely by social media – with 16.5 million Twitter followers and 22.6 million likes on Facebook – they've conquered not only the music charts, but also movie screens with the global #1 debut of their 3D concert movie, "One Direction: This Is Us," directed by noted documentarian Morgan Spurlock. To date the film has taken in nearly $69 million worldwide. They will further cement their status as the "it" boy band of the moment when they perform on "Saturday Night Live" for the second time on Dec. 7.
Rose Bowl (Pasadena, Calif.) General Manager and CEO Darryl Dunn said his team is getting ready for their Sept. 12 gig by dusting off its playbook from 2000 and 2001 when the venue played host to two shows by ‘N Sync.
“One Direction is huge and we saw the wave coming a long time ago,” said Dunn, who worked with representatives at Live Nation to secure the band’s only California gig.
“The demographics are different for us this time; we’ll be dealing with parents dropping off their kids, which is something we don’t usually do for football or other concerts,” he said. “We will talk to promoters and learn from them. We know it’s going to be mostly girls and mostly teenagers and we’ll make whatever adjustments we need to make.”
The key will be getting fans to come early, and Dunn said they’re planning a number of pre-events to attract people to the venue.
“We look at this an opportunity to bring people to the stadium that haven’t been here before,” he said. “We want to attract the next generation of live entertainment fans and show them that they can have a great time attending an event at the Rose Bowl.”
Interviewed for this article: Jeff Nickler, (918) 894-4254; Darryl Dunn, (626) 397-4178