Country legend George Strait wrapped up his touring career in style as his final performance at AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas on June 7 shattered a Billboard Boxscore mark for largest single-show attendance at a U.S. stadium.
104,793 sentimental fans packed the home of the NFL’s Dallas Cowboys to see King George on the final date of his announced farewell tour titled Cowboy Rides Away. The last hurrah was the culmination of a two-year stint on the road that took the award-winning country veteran to arenas and stadiums in 44 U.S. cities.
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Largest Attendance in the U.S. at a Single-Show Concert — Since Billboard Boxscore began tracking touring data in 1991, Strait’s June 7 show’s attendance tops the U.S. stadium record for a single-show concert, previously held by U2 with 97,014 in attendance at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, Calif. on Oct. 25, 2009. That stop was part of U2’s 360° tour that played stadiums worldwide from 2009 to 2011, wrapping as the top-grossing tour of all time with $736 million.
Largest Attendance at an Indoor Venue — Strait’s AT&T Stadium show also broke his own Billboard Boxscore record for largest attendance at an indoor venue, both in the U.S. and internationally. His Reliant Stadium concert in Houston on March 17, 2013 held the prior mark, drawing a sellout crowd of 80,020. Prior to that concert, the Backstreet Boys set the standard with 73,337 fans in the house at Atlanta’s Georgia Dome on Feb. 19, 2000.
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Largest Gross and Attendance at a Single-Show Concert (Country Music) — Among country touring artists, Strait, the reigning Entertainer of the Year for both the Country Music Association and Academy of Country Music, is the bona fide No. 1 act when it comes to single-show gross and attendance. With the Cowboy Rides Away finale, Strait once again broke his own record on both fronts, surpassing the gross ($8.1 million) and attendance counts from that March 17, 2013, performance in Houston. His gross from the Arlington, Texas tour finale was a whopping $18,194,374, topping last year’s record by $10 million.
Strait also fills the No. 3 slot among all country shows with a gross of $7.2 million from his concert on June 1, 2013, at the Alamodome in San Antonio with 73,086 fans in the house. That performance was the final date of the opening leg of Cowboy Rides Away tour that ran during the first half of 2013.
With the final box office data reported by AEG’s The Messina Group, promoter of the two-year trek, the Cowboy Rides Away tour ends its run with an overall gross that tops the $99 million mark based on 996,583 sold tickets at 44 performances during both legs of the tour.
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