Springsteen and The E Street Band will return to road for the first time since 2017, with European spring/summer dates confirmed
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Springsteen adds further North American tour dates
The newly added 22 concerts run from 9 August at Chicago’s Wrigley Field to 8 December at San Francisco’s Chase Center
By James Hanley on 15 Feb 2023
Bruce Springsteen and The E Street Band have confirmed additional North American arena and stadium dates for their blockbuster 2023 world tour.
The tour, which began in Tampa, Florida on 1 February, has attracted rave reviews, despite band members Steven Van Zandt, Soozie Tyrell and Nils Lofgren each missing certain shows due to Covid-19.
The newly added 22 concerts, which will take in 18 cities, run from 9 August at Chicago’s Wrigley Field to 8 December at San Francisco’s Chase Center.
Multiple nights have also been scheduled for Philadelphia’s Citizens Bank Park (16 & 18 August), New Jersey’s MetLife Stadium (30 August & 1 September), Toronto’s Scotiabank Arena (14 & 16 November) and Los Angeles’ Kia Forum (4 & 6 December). Tickets will go on sale over the course of the next two weeks.
The tour will be using Verified Fan via Ticketmaster for many shows, with tickets for Wrigley Field and Citizens Bank Park to be sold directly by the stadiums.
The concerts mark the band’s first run since 2016/17’s The River Tour, which was the highest grossing worldwide tour of 2016, earning $268.3m over 76 shows.
More than 1.5 million tickets have already been sold for the European leg alone, which commences at the 60,000-cap Estadi Olímpic in Barcelona on 28 April and winds up on 25 July in Italy at Prato della Gerascia, Autodromo di Monza. Many cities have added second or third stadium shows due to demand.
“No other act in the history of Spanish concerts has sold so many tickets that fast”
Spanish promoter Neo Sala at Doctor Music told IQ last year that demand for the shows helped set a new sales record in the country.
“We went on sale on [8 June] with one Estadi Olímpic, but it sold so fast that in less than an hour we had to add a second show which continued selling equally well,” he said. “By noon… we had sold more than 100,000 tickets which is an absolute record in Spain. No other act in the history of Spanish concerts has sold so many tickets that fast.”
Springsteen spoke out last November about the dynamic ticketing controversy for the tour. Individual tickets reached more than $5,000 via Ticketmaster’s market-based platinum pricing model when the first wave of The E Street Band’s US tour dates went on sale in the summer.
The backlash prompted the 73-year-old’s manager Jon Landau to defend the pricing, insisting it was in line with shows for acts of a similar stature, while the average ticket price is around $250.
“Ticket buying has gotten very confusing, not just for the fans, but for the artists also,” Springsteen told Rolling Stone. “And the bottom line is that most of our tickets are totally affordable. We have those tickets that are going to go for that [higher] price somewhere anyway. The ticket broker or someone is going to be taking that money. I’m going, ‘Hey, why shouldn’t that money go to the guys that are going to be up there sweating three hours a night for it?’
“It created an opportunity for that to occur. And so at that point, we went for it. I know it was unpopular with some fans. But if there’s any complaints on the way out, you can have your money back.”
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