Tagged As: concerts, music, Tour, U2, Michael Jackson

While March Madness continues to whittle the competition down, the music world has seemingly already boiled the year of 2009 down to two performers, Michael Jackson and U2.

Michael Jackson quickly went from announcing he would be playing at least 10 shows for a farewell tour at the O2 Arena in London to selling out 50 concerts. U2 quickly went from announcing the 360 Tour to accompany the release of their first album five years, No Line on the Horizon, to selling enough tickets in New York, Boston, and Chicago and set single-day attendance records in each of the metropolises.

The numbers we have are quite early, but the O2 Dome has a capacity of roughly 20,000. That means that Michael Jackson could be singing and dancing before one million people in his final stint as a performer.

Meanwhile over in the United States, U2 has added a second show in each of the major cities. The first cities sold out at 82,000 in New York, 72,000 in Boston, and 65,000 in Chicago. The Irish band still has to factor in the numbers from two sold-out shows at Rogers Centre in Toronto and arena dates throughout the U.S.

I think it is very possible that both these performers will be breaking the Rolling Stones “A Bigger Bang” tour record soon. Of course, that record is kept in dollar signs (558 million to be exact), so the number of tickets sold means very little.

Still, the U2 360 Tour is expected to be a two-year world wide bonanza with an additional album released in the short hiatus between legs. The group will probably pass its own runner-up tour “Vertigo” in the process.

Michael Jackson is a more difficult tour/residency to guesstimate. Reports are in from Live Nation that Jacko is going to make 50 million pounds from the first ten shows. According to my handy-dandy currency converter that means he will make $71.7 million from those ten. Who knows what his profits will be from the next 40 concerts.

So in the end I guess the question is will U2 and Bono saving the world or the end of Michael Jackson be a bigger sell?