The €44.46m ($49.52m) generated in ticket sales at the box office for Coldplay's sold out four nights at Croke Park last year helped promoters, MCD Productions to a record €238.5m ($245m) in ticket sales in 2024.
New figures by trade industry journal, Pollstar show that Coldplay’s Dublin gigs to 329,000 fans last August and September were the band’s most lucrative set of gigs anywhere in the world last year.
The Pollstar figures show that the band’s Croke Park concerts ranked 3rd in the 'Top 300 worldwide concert grosses’ with U2’s two string of shows at the Sphere in Las Vegas taking the top two places with a combined box office of $134.72m.
U2 recorded the $134.72m box office on the back of average ticket prices of $352.
Coldplay's Croke Park gigs helped the band generate $421m in global ticket sales to be ranked 2nd second only to Taylor Swift’s $1bn Eras tour.
The returns show that almost half a million music fans attended Croke Park last year when 489,507 patrons paid out $76.49m to attend gigs at the GAA HQ.
The Pollstar figures rank Croke Park as the 10th busiest stadium venue in the world for concert attendances and the third ranked in Europe last year, easily outstripping the 229,909 music fans who attended gigs at Wembley Stadium in London.
Along with the Coldplay gigs, 82,298 AC/DC fans paid $14.3m to see them play Croke Park last August.
On the back of Taylor Swift gigs, the Aviva Stadium in Dublin last year generated $49m in box office sales after 256,482 attended concerts there.
In a bumper year for Irish artists, the Pollstar figures show that 85 shows by Niall Horan generated $68m at the box office after 1.04 million fans paid to see the Mullingar singer-songwriter in 2024.
Hozier also passed the 1 million barrier in 2024 where 1.02m fans paid out $57.64m to see the 'Too Sweet’ singer songwriter play 68 shows in 2024. Both artists are in the top 50 worldwide tours for 2024.
The thriving live music scene resulted in a "best ever year" for Denis Desmond’s Gaiety Investments joint venture with Live Nation, MCD Productions selling a record 2.92m tickets.
This was a 38.5pc increase on the 2.11m ticket sales by MCD in 2023 when it recorded ticket sales of $133.48m (€129.4m).
The $245m in ticket sales for MCD last year had the Irish firm ranked 10th in the world in terms of box office revenues and the average ticket price for MCD tickets was $83.90 (€81.33).
Live Nation was ranked first with ticket sales of $7.5bn.
One of the main drivers for MCD’s ticket sales last year was Taylor Swift’s series of gigs at the Aviva last year as part of the European leg of her ERAS tour.
However, the box office returns for Taylor Swift’s Aviva gigs are not available as the artist chose not to report here individual box office figures.
