Adele’s Australia tour is history. And it’s now logged in the history books.
The British singer played to more than 600,000 people across her eight-date stadium jaunt, and shattered attendance records at each venue along the way, according to concerts giant Live Nation, the producer of her first tour Down Under.
Those numbers place Adele’s Live 2017 near the top of Australia’s biggest tours of the past decade and puts her in the conversation for the all-time blockbuster tours to visit this part of the world.
“It has been both a privilege and truly a career highlight for all at Live Nation to have been able to present Adele’s record-breaking Australian and New Zealand tour,” comments Michael Coppel, chairman of Live Nation Australasia.
The audiences, Coppel notes, “have been ecstatic at their opportunity to see a true superstar at her peak, and, as the tour promoters, we have been gratified to be able to fully satisfy the expectations of Adele’s management, agent, production and security teams in the presentation of such a high profile and challenging series of major concert events.”
LN has broken down the record-busting numbers. Adele’s run kicked off Feb. 28 with a 65,000-seat sell-out at Domain Stadium (formerly Subiaco Oval) for the fastest sell-out and the highest-selling concert ever at the site, according to the West Australian Football Commission, which manages the venue.
Up next: two shows in-the-round at Brisbane’s Gabba on March 4 and 5. A venue synonymous with cricket and Aussie rules football, the Gabba hasn’t hosted a concert since 1978, and it hasn’t ever seen anything quite like Adele, whose shows were sellouts with 120,000 combined tickets shifted, for new attendance records.
Her two dates at Sydney’s ANZ Stadium on March 10 and 11 shifted almost 200,000 tickets, an impressive figure which would represent the business for a healthy national tour for many elite international artists. The first of those shows was the biggest single concert that Australia has hosted, and she broke that record on the second evening. The multi-purpose venue hasn’t held such a large gathering since the closing ceremony of the 2000 Olympic Games, according to LN.
On to the redeveloped Adelaide Oval, which boasted attendance upwards of 70,000 for Adele’s March 13 show, which was both the largest attendance ever for a concert in the state of South Australia and the most for any event held at the picturesque venue, which has origins dating back to 1871.
As previously reported, Adele’s tour wrapped in Melbourne last weekend with two sold-out, record-breaking shows at Etihad Stadium, with total attendance ticking over 150,000.
Adele now crosses the Tasman Sea for three shows at Mt Smart Stadium in Auckland, her final Southern Hemisphere gigs. Ticket sales there have climbed upwards of 130,000, a new record for any New Zealand concert tour and nearly 40,000 tickets more than any other artist has sold in New Zealand’s most populous city.
Adele’s Live 2017 Australia leg compares favorably with some of the biggest treks of the past decade. Among them was Pink’s 2009 Funhouse journey, which covered 58 arena shows and 650,000 tickets sold, and her Truth About Love tour of 2012 shifted more than 450,000 tickets across 42 dates.
At the other end of the musical spectrum, homegrown rock heroes AC/DC sold some 750,000 tickets for its 14-date 2010 Black Ice stadium run of Australia and New Zealand (Australia accounted for 650,000 of those tickets), with a staggering half a million tickets going in under three hours, according to Van Egmond Group, which co-presented the dates with Chugg Entertainment. Melbourne-based Van Egmond Group also organized Dire Straits’ legendary 1986 Brothers In Arms visit, which played to an estimated 900,000 people.
Adele will wrap her world tour in support of her 25 album with four sold-out shows at London’s Wembley Stadium in June and July.