Published tour statistics – Iron Maiden aren’t the most accurate band in the world?:)

RLonger

RLonger

Educated Fool
I’m deeply into the concert statistics, record sales or so, just noticed Iron Maiden seemed not to be the most accurate band in the world in terms of running statistics calculations.

Published on the 24th July 2018 press release states a.o: “Since the opening night in Tallinn, Estonia at the end of May, the band has already played to around 750,000 fans in sold-out stadium, arena and festival shows across Europe including selling out the prestigious Atletico Madrid football stadium in Spain last week”.

So they cited the state of aggregated auditorium referring to the running shows schedule already played (so far – 24 VII), it means in fact: just ‘til the date of publication on the band’s site or even the few days earlier: we can read here about the around 750.000 plp. But there’re still 10 – 11 shows left to play: Croatia, Poland and whole UK leg of the tour – it means a 130 thousands + more than mentioned before ‘already played 750K’. More curious is the fact cited data-wise became the info – viral for the official tour summary and the press releases published by Live Nation and many major live shows organizers all over the world, making the statement referring to combined live shows auditorium (2018) as representative and ultimate result.

I’ve checked carefully official data published by “Pollstar” or “Billboard” and particular tour and concert reports. I’ve noticed cumulated results for the whole tour should be a little bigger than “750.000”. Definitely more than 850.000 – including data from festivals’ official daily attendance recaps and soloed shows ticket sales scores published by “Pollstar”. Focusing on mentioned “750K” that IM played for ‘til the 24th July 2018 and adding further dates (11) attendance (less or more than 130) I suppose 850 – 880K seems to be pretty accurate result…

So, I’m wonder what do you think about it? May the official results exposed by the management just to be only the random characteristics of the global tendency? What do you think about reflections I’ve shared with?

https://ironmaiden.com/news/article...-out-legacy-of-the-beast-tour-lands-in-the-uk
 
And if someone goes to more than one date on the tour they are counted as multiple people, when they are really just one person!
 
Rod Smallwood counts them all. Yet again, he is not sure how accurate he has been and, therefore, adds the world "around" to avoid being sued by nerdy fans. :D
 
RLonger said:
I think you must be accidentally right.
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Quite probably. :D

Rod Smallwood likes to boast about these things, hence the constant mention of attendance numbers in press releases (not always 100% accurate). Bottom line is the tour was a massive success and I had a whale of a time. Long may it remain so!
 
Exactly, if you read the original article from July the 24th, which has been cited here - it seems to be obvious that real number of whole tour attendees should be approx. 20% higher.
 
TH a lot, mate!!! Great, 24 cities with soloed shows (Cracow, London, Helsinki, Paris - aggregated) equal 491K summary netto ticket sales + 330K for 10 festival gigs attendees means +820K. Yeah maybe I'm a nerd but still more than "750K". That's great - near 22.ooo per show (38!).
 
What I would like to know, but is impossible: what was the percentage of a people that see Maiden for the first time? Or the other way around?
In London, Berlin and some other places where Maiden are more frequent I believe number of Maiden fans that aren't "concert virgins" is much higher than, let's say, South Africa, Costa Rica, China and so on...
 
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Whooten said:
And if someone goes to more than one date on the tour they are counted as multiple people, when they are really just one person!
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Err..that's why it's called "attendance" and not "unique visitors". You have a number of tickets sold, not unique ID of the visitors.

The tickets are not named in Europe or at least not here. It's old school, you can go to shop and buy a piece of paper for money, no IDs and stuff. That's for Maiden. Some big electronic festivals here do bracelets which are tied to unique ID of the person so you can precisely count statistics, but they don't do it for the stats but for the people wanting to go to bars inside which would be a disaster if you actually had to engage in payment while getting your beer.

Also in Split 2008 the official attendance is bit short of 30.000. The pitch was full and the only fully opened stand was packed. And people were around on semi-opened stands too (the ones that don't have a good view of the stage). Just the pitch alone and the East stand would be 33.000 people and I know the security allowed random visitors to enter the venue in the latter half of the concert. People who were drawn to stadium area because of the "big event", some of my non-metal friends included, were eventually allowed in. That's interesting - if you counted people that left the venue one by one there would be a big chance of having ~10-15% error against official ticket sales. Which is rather large.
 
Spambot said:
What I would like to know, but is impossible: what was the percentage of a people that see Maiden for the first time?
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If you want to have an insight, maybe poll the visitors or try counting the voices that yell when Bruce asks is this your first Maiden show ;)
In any case getting this info right out of the ticketing system would be a great breach of privacy.
 
Zare said:
Err..that's why it's called "attendance" and not "unique visitors". You have a number of tickets sold, not unique ID of the visitors.

The tickets are not named in Europe or at least not here. It's old school, you can go to shop and buy a piece of paper for money, no IDs and stuff. That's for Maiden. Some big electronic festivals here do bracelets which are tied to unique ID of the person so you can precisely count statistics, but they don't do it for the stats but for the people wanting to go to bars inside which would be a disaster if you actually had to engage in payment while getting your beer.

Also in Split 2008 the official attendance is bit short of 30.000. The pitch was full and the only fully opened stand was packed. And people were around on semi-opened stands too (the ones that don't have a good view of the stage). Just the pitch alone and the East stand would be 33.000 people and I know the security allowed random visitors to enter the venue in the latter half of the concert. People who were drawn to stadium area because of the "big event", some of my non-metal friends included, were eventually allowed in. That's interesting - if you counted people that left the venue one by one there would be a big chance of having ~10-15% error against official ticket sales. Which is rather large.[/QUOTE

You're obviously right man, I think Split attendance was even 35.000 in fact, maybe they don't wanna reveal the whole numbers becouse of duties' barriere (knowing Rod that's a case) but refering to all I shared in the very first post - in this year the omission of cummuled attendance from last 11 shows of the tour (22 VII - 11 VII c.y) is the evidence, they stopped at 750.000 data just accurate for shows played before Plovdiv gig.
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Something interesting in common with the main topic. Scan from the past, interior of Promo Phone Card with some biogram notes from the "X Factor" album press kit 1995. These days management calculated Iron Maiden since the first show in May 1976 till the first leg of "The X Factour 1995" started, band's played more than 1400 shows for nerbly 20 mln people and sold circa 40 mln albums (as you can learn from shared picture of original notes - enlarge the picture, please). That all has happened 24 years ago. Today they are undeniably greater in terms of popularity and sales of albums or combined attendance throught the next 1000 show or so. Memories still remain out there. Who knows all about that?!
P.S. All datas and notes: EMI/Sanctuary Ltd.
 
RLonger said:
You're obviously right man, I think Split attendance was even 35.000 in fact, maybe they don't wanna reveal the whole numbers becouse of duties' barriere (knowing Rod that's a case) but refering to all I shared in the very first post - in this year the omission of cummuled attendance from last 11 shows of the tour (22 VII - 11 VII c.y) is the evidence, they stopped at 750.000 data just accurate for shows played before Plovdiv gig.
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Yeah some fee and tax classes come to mind but thinking into it I'm not so sure that's how entertainment industry operates. Since they earn "white" money by selling tickets, wouldn't that be the base for fees and taxes and not some perceived attendance number?
 
RLonger said:
since the first show in May 1976 till the first leg of "The X Factour 1995" started, band's played more than 1400 shows for nerbly 20 mln people and sold circa 40 mln albums
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Well it does intuitively check-out. It's about 1500 people per show on average.

The number that's in circulation today is 100 mln albums, very good for a band that a lot of critics declared essentially dead at the moment of 40mln sales. They've doubled it up, and then some.

Keep in mind Rod has released some compilations nobody cares about, but they still sell. Since 1996 there have been 21 releases in discography, singles and videos not included. There was no compilation album between 1975-1996, now there are a dozen, there was only 1 live release between 1975 and 1992, 4 when they hit 1996, again that went three fold.
 
Zare said:
There was no compilation album between 1975-1996, now there are a dozen,
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There's probably a good bit less than a dozen, and none of them were in print simultaneously. I'd be surprised if the various compilations between them would account for 5 million sales.
 
Ok half a dozen +1 :) But there weren't any before TXF.

They would follow some event like SBiT tour which had marketing that was inaccessible to Maiden of 80s and 90s (half hour CNN special) which obviously exposed the band to some people that didn't knew it before, consequently someone walked in the CD shop to check out the band or buy a gift and there was a brand new release just fit for that. These marketing/sales venues were not open in the 80s and 90s. There was no compilation album to companion ARLDO and generate couple of hundred thousand unit sales just like that.

Yeah, both the business and the brand are 10x what they were in the 1980s.
 
Zare said:
Ok half a dozen +1 :) But there weren't any before TXF.

They would follow some event like SBiT tour which had marketing that was inaccessible to Maiden of 80s and 90s (half hour CNN special) which obviously exposed the band to some people that didn't knew it before, consequently someone walked in the CD shop to check out the band or buy a gift and there was a brand new release just fit for that. These marketing/sales venues were not open in the 80s and 90s. There was no compilation album to companion ARLDO and generate couple of hundred thousand unit sales just like that.

Yeah, both the business and the brand are 10x what they were in the 1980s.
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There's an element as well of the band getting older and becoming a "heritage act", even though they are still releasing great albums. What I mean is nowadays a casual punter might pick up an album or even go to a gig off the back of Maiden's reputation alone*. Whereas in the 90's people might have specifically not picked up albums or gone to gigs because Maiden where in their "old hat" phase.

* The big surprise for me has been the massive increase in sales of TNOTB which goes along with the idea of casual fans picking up a copy of the biggest album from heritage act. As far as I remember TNOTB has sold almost double the amount of the next biggest albums, wheres my memories from the 90s was that while it was still the biggest seller for Maiden at the time, it was only in the lead by maybe a million copies or so.
 
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