Originally posted by miryclay:There has been dubious sell outs in U2 land for a long time.
The "sold outs" that we see since the Elevation Tour aren't real and it's a well known matter among those who have a lil bit of knowledge about boxscores. The total amount of tickets sold on the day of the concert is considered SOLD OUT no matter what, whatever it is a real sell-out or not. The maximum capacity figure you see in the boxscores that get published after the gigs is given by LiveNation themselves, so they adjust it at will. Billboard only reports what the promoters (aka LiveNation) provide. It's a similar system to how the Gold/Platinum/Diamond Record certifications work - it's actually the record companies who PAY for those, there's no "supra entity" that awards them. To fulfill the analogy, LiveNation reporting fake sold-outs to Billboard would be the equivalent to Universal Music paying the RIAA to award U2 another gold record.
Since the PopMart disaster the sell-out issue has become more of an image/prestige thing than an actual economic concern. They make loads of money from every show no matter what. Attendance figures were real up to 1998, when they were reported by local promoters.
A final example to summarize things up: who can imagine a more successful tour than Zoo TV? Well, many (and I mean MANY) of the Zoo TV concerts were NOT even close to selling out (specially in the Outside Broadcast and Zooropa legs), and local promoters reported the actual attendance figures. If that tour took place today, ALL of the dates would be regarded as "sold-out".