Fun Facts Explaining Why Raymond James Stadium Is A Great Concert Venue
We still have two months before the Baker Mayfield-led Buccaneers kick off their 2024 season. However, concerts at Raymond James Stadium continue to keep the venue quite busy.
“Pollstar ranked Raymond James Stadium at No. 8 out of 50 stadiums worldwide for gross concert sales, making it the highest-ranked U.S. stadium,” WTPS 10 Tampa Bay said. Pollstar‘s mid-year report was released this week.
How did Raymond James Stadium rank number one in the country for concert sales? Well, having some great big-name artists booked to play there is obviously a large part of it, but there are also some fun facts to consider.
The report shows 115,069 tickets sold. This leads to “$23,856,249 in gross concert sales so far this year, Raymond James has sold more than any other stadium in the country,” WTPS 10 explained.
What’s Unique About Concerts At Raymond James Stadium
The majority of outdoor stadiums across the United States can realistically only support holding large concerts in the warmer months. We’re talking May (later) until October (early). Within that stretch you also have to deal with and work around the NFL and/or MLB schedule. So you have aa limited timeframe to host concerts. Then, you have to fit into the tour schedule of the artist.
In Tampa, that’s obviously not the case. For example, Billy Joel and Sting did a one-night performance back in February. Two months later, we saw Zac Brown Band (who often takes to stadium stages) along side a familiar name in Kenny Chesney. Chesney’s tours usually kick off in Tampa. In fact, even the tour rehearsals are in Tampa. They then close each summer in New England.
Morgan Wallen, who also has been known to hit the outdoor stadiums, only has five U.S. markets on his upcoming agenda. Luckily, this includes Tampa July 11 and 12. Zach Bryan’s The Quittin Time Tour with special guest Jason Isbell is then a month later on August 14.
Another fact about concerts here is that the staff directing traffic is helpful. Parking, tailgating, and most importantly getting out of the parking lot upon conclusion of the show is an important aspect to fans interested in buying tickets to a stadium concert. Many football stadiums struggle with this as often they are located in an isolated area with single-land entry. Nobody enjoys it when the entry and exit of the stadium process takes as long as the actual concert itself. We’re lucky that is not typically the case at Raymond James Stadium.
The Tampa Bay Business Journal recently reported on how artists tend to pick playing this stadium in Tampa over other Florida cities. This is in part due to the 75,000 seat capacity.
