Selena Gomez is making a return to this year's Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo
Newcomers including Hunter Hayes and Robin Thicke will join capacity-crowd veterans such as Brad Paisley, Reba McEntire, Jason Aldean, Maroon 5 and Luke Bryan during the 2014 Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo, which will be held March 4-23.
Twenty-one acts playing 20 dates were announced last Monday — a change for Houston officials, who in recent years had teased out a small portion of the lineup in the fall and slowly followed with additional acts.
Also different this year is the separation of artists into two miniseasons. Now, if concert-goers want to buy season tickets, they have to purchase tickets for all the artists in prices ranging from $336 for the upper level to $720 for club seats.
“We’ve only sold the miniseasons for seven years,” said chief operating officer Leroy Shafer.
Tickets went on sale Saturday for individual concerts, but season-ticket buyers have been making their purchases for five months, since August, without knowing who the entertainers would be, Shafer added. The day after the announcement, sales were on par with last year’s at 42,000 per performance.
“I think it’s gone extremely well,” Shafer added. “Season tickets are right even with where we were last year, and last year we had George Strait in the option and they knew he was in the option.”
At the 2013 Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo, George Strait, Martina McBride and Randy Rogers played a concert-only event in addition to the usual rodeo-concert lineups, adding one day to the event.
This year, in addition to Hayes and Thicke, other acts who will be making their RodeoHouston debut will be recent Oscar nominee Usher, Florida Georgia Line, Easton Corbin, and Banda MS, who will join returning act Pesado for the popular Go Tejano Day performance.
Returning acts also will include the Eli Young Band, Chris Young, Selena Gomez, REO Speedwagon, Jake Owen, Keith Urban, Blake Shelton, The Band Perry and the Zac Brown Band.
The lineup is a mix of favorites, some of whom have packed the 75,000-plus Reliant Stadium in standing-room-only mode, 60-65 percent of whom Houston officials try to get to represent the country genre.
“That being said, we try to get a third of those in crossover mode,” Shafer said. “Looking at the lineup, Blake Shelton is a crossover with his appearance on ‘The Voice.’ Looking at The Band Perry and the Zac Brown Band, they are country artists, but they play in general mode. We try to put together a group of artists that appeals to all facets of the general population.”
Also, several of the artists, including Shelton, appear in television shows, which also adds to their popularity. While Shelton is a judge on the NBC singing reality show “The Voice,” as are singers Adam Levine of Maroon 5 and Usher, Urban serves in the same capacity over at Fox’s “American Idol,” Shafer pointed out.
Also, Gomez was a star of a Disney show, “The Wizards of Waverly Place,” until recently.
“There is a trend happening in music today,” Shafer said. “When I came to work here in 1973 and started working with entertainment, TV dominated. We had the Jackson 5 and The Osmonds, Leif Garret and Sonny and Cher. They were as much TV stars as recording stars. That went away. Today, with all the music shows – ‘American Idol’ and ‘The Voice’ – we seem to be leaning back toward TV stars.”
Houston officials perform extensive research in order to determine what their audience members would like to see, Shafer said.
“Our season-ticket buyers are our largest ticket buyers,” he added. “Each year they buy 60 percent of the tickets we sell. That’s an easy group to survey. They buy the tickets from us and we have their phone numbers. We survey our season-ticket holders most extensively.”
Then the Houston officials work with Ticketmaster to get email addresses for what they call the “ticket option buyers.” That represents about 65,000 individuals who purchase about 365,000 tickets, picking and choosing the artists they want to see.
“They are a significant piece of that, 25-30 percent each year,” Shafer added.
Volunteers also are surveyed, and then officials rely on telephone calls to capture the other 10 percent not questioned by more direct means.
“We sit down and look at these answers and we weigh percentages against entertainers,” Shafer said. “We give them a 10-percent rating as they only buy 10 percent of the tickets. It’s very scientific.”
Five of the returning acts account for the top 10 all-time acts at the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo, Shafer said. The record is held by last year’s Go Tejano Day acts Julion Alvarez and Los Invasores da Nuevo Leon with 75,305 audience members; then returning acts Bryan and Shelton came in at Nos. 2 and 3 with 75,242 and 75,238 respectively.
They are followed by Pitbull, 75,217; Bruno Mars, 75,177; Aldean, 74,905; the Go Tejano lineup of La Original Banda El Limon and Duelo, 74,588; The Band Perry, 74,241; the Go Tejano lineup of Pesado, who is returning this year, along with El Trono De Mexico, 74,222; and the Go Tejano lineup of Ramon Ayala and Alacranes Musical, 74,147.
Most individual tickets range from $18 to $24, although specials do exist, such as chute seat tickets featuring a dinner that cost $200 or $300.
Last year’s entire event shattered previous attendance records, with a total of 2,506,238 passing through the gates, 10.7 percent higher than the previous all-time attendance record set in 2011 of 2,262,834. A total of 1,308,288 of those attendees purchased rodeo-concert tickets, Shafer added.
Whether or not lightning will strike again this year remains to be seen.
“We know there is a good likelihood that even if we have the most perfect weather, that we won’t break the general attendance record. We had 21 days with George Strait. Now we’re back to our normal 20 days.”
Interviewed for this article: Leroy Shafer, (832) 667-1000