Garcia said “We were great for seconds on end.” I was lucky to see Jerry play for about 1,000,000 seconds exactly. Thanks for your 1,000,000 views here . Dave Davis wrote this blog for 500 posts and 5 years from 2015 to 2019. Contact me at twitter @gratefulseconds

Wednesday, December 5, 2018

We Will Survive: The Economics of 1987's Dylan and the Dead Tour

I go back three years from last month's post on the 1990's to the year following Jerry Garcia's return.

After Jerry came back from his coma, The Touch of Grey Dead doubled their average yearly ticket sales from 600,000 a year range to an average of nearly 1.4 million in the last three years of 1980's.

The Dead moved up from an average venue size of under 10,000 in the earlier 1980s to the 18,000 range, including many more stadium shows, which would become de rigueur in the 1990's.

Leading the size growth in 1987 were the seven Dead/Dylan shows which sold 373,968 tickets over
seven shows. For comparison, all 41 shows in 1976 saw about 344,000 sold.

This "tour" (not including the Dead only shows in July) was the first tour that averaged $1 million per show. I only saw July 24, 1987, which was my 79th show of 80. I moved to LA to go to UCLA in August and only saw 12-16-1994 after.

Next I will be covering the economics of 1987-1989.


Silver Stadium     - July  2, 1987    30,000  $17.50 $  512,610
Sullivan Stadium - July  4, 1987 61,000  $21.00  $1,266,111
John F. Kennedy  - July 10, 1987 71,097  $21.00  $1,493,037
Giants Stadium -    July 12, 1987 71,598  $21.00  $1,478,350
Autzen Stadium -   July 19, 1987 40,470  $20.00  $  809,400
Oakland Coliseum-July 24, 1987 52,354  $20.00  $1,067,000
Anaheim Stadium -July 26, 1987   47,449  $20.00  $  948,980

Averages                                         53,424  $20.26         $1,082,213               

Totals                                             373,968                     $7,575,488 




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