Details have emerged regarding the fourth and final leg of the U2 Vertigo tour. The band had announced last week on U2.com that more international Vertigo dates would be played in 2006, taking the total number of dates on the tour to 116.
“We’re going to play Mexico, South America, New Zealand, Australia and Japan,” Arthur Fogel, president of TNA International, worldwide producer of the tour, tells Billboard.biz. “We’re going to start just after the Grammys (Feb. 8) in Mexico.”
The band will stay out until the second week in April which will end the tour. They will play all stadiums on the final leg, which will include about 19 shows. Australia and New Zealand will go on sale the first weekend in December, with Japan, Mexico and South America to follow shortly thereafter, Fogel says. The final stadium dates will use the same production as the European stadium shows, which is different from the North American arena shows.
The tour began last May with a run of North American arenas, then moved to Europe for stadiums over the summer. The third leg began in North America began Sept. 12 in Toronto and wraps Dec. 19 in Portland, Ore.
U2 will finish the year at close to $300 million in grosses. The large capacity of the final venues on the tour should be enough to make Vertigo the top-grossing tour of all time, passing the Rolling Stones’ Voodoo Lounge tour of 1994-95, which grossed $319.5 million.
If U2 breaks the Voodoo gross record, the band’s reign as touring’s box office champ could be short lived. The Stones current On Stage world tour may shatter all previous gross records.
