One night, one man with a guitar/stand up or the like. I’m looking for a ballpark on what kind of money he can pocket for one night.
Anywhere from zero to a billion dollars. How much per ticket? Is it Dylan, or the Trololo guy?
Joe
Who’s paying for the promotion of the event? What’s their %?
What’s the agent’s %?
Too many variables to generate one factual answer.
Years ago Ozzy Osbourne said playing Madison Square Garden was more for prestige than making money because of the costs involved. I’ve never heard any figures and there are a lot of variables. I’m not much into the going to rock concert scene now but when I was in the 1980s, it seemed that Brendan Byrne Arena in New Jersey (next to Giants Stadium) got more than Madison Square Garden. I assumed musicians and their promoters figured they could make more money in Jersey.
Here’s a quote from the New York Raiders of the WHA from when they tried playing in MSG 40 years ago.
“The rent at the Garden was more than reasonable. Wood paid just $1,700 for a Sunday afternoon date, about $3,500 on average, and if that was all he had to worry about, the Raiders would have thrived. The problem was a series of union contracts that guaranteed certain staffing quotas in the area of concessions and maintenance. The rent might have been $1,700 on Sundays, but when you add in all the costs of the support workers, the actual price of staging a game was close to $20,000.”
“It was okay if you were drawing 18,200 a game like the Rangers” says Wood. But we were averaging about 4,500 a game and it was killing us.We went to the union and asked for a break. We were told we needed a full staff every night in case there was a sellout.
“The Rebel League, the short and unruly history of the World Hockey Association” by Ed Willes.
keep in mind the money in sports was a lot less than it is today.