Hot Tours: Usher, Lady Gaga, Rush

By Bob Allen, Billboard.com, April 14, 2011

Five single-venue sold out concerts in Australia and New Zealand by Usher on his OMG Tour give the Grammy-winning R&B star the No. 1 ranking on this week's Hot Tours list. Usher grossed over $7.6 million from five performances at Melbourne's Rod Laver Arena with 62,075 fans in attendance. The first two shows in Melbourne were on March 19 and 20, and then the tour moved on to play arenas in three other markets before returning to Rod Laver arena from March 31 to April 2 to close out the Aussie trek. Promoted by Frontier Touring Company, the Usher tour Down Under featured singer/rapper Trey Songz and Australian group The Potbelleez as opening acts.

Lady Gaga takes the No. 2 ranking this week with box office stats reported from four recent sold out concerts on her Monster Ball Tour, currently nearing the end of its final North American leg. The top attendance among the four venues was reported at the BOK Center in Tulsa, Okla. with a crowd of 13,710 in the house on April 4. Two nights later in Austin, a sellout crowd of 12,904 filled the Frank Erwin Center, and an April 8 performance in Houston's Toyota Center drew 13,412. With a total of 13,513 sold seats the following evening at the New Orleans Arena, Lady Gag pulled in a sum of 53,539 fans for her first four April shows.

Canadian rock band Rush ranks third in the Hot Tours rankings with the initial totals of 2011 reported for the Time Machine Tour that originally kicked off last summer. The 2010 schedule wrapped last October in South America, but following a winter break, the tour resumed with a sold out performance on March 30 at BankAtlantic Center in Sunrise, Fla. The first six concerts from the 2011 itinerary were reported during the past week by tour promoter Live Nation Global Touring, and the top gross and attendance numbers among these venues came from Madison Square Garden. The band drew a sellout crowd of 13,207 to the New York City arena on April 10 grossing $1.2 million.