Billy Joel Wraps 10-Year MSG Residency With $266 Million in the Bank
Written by djfrosty on September 11, 2024
After 10 (and a half years), Billy Joel has completed his one-show-a-month residency at New York’s Madison Square Garden (MSG). According to figures reported to Billboard Boxscore, Billy Joel at The Garden earned $266.7 million and sold 1.9 million tickets over 104 shows.
Joel’s residency was a steady performer since its launch in 2014. He played one show at MSG every month except for June 2017 and December 2022. The other exception was a year-and-a-half hiatus due to COVID-19, from March 2020 through October 2021, plus January 2022 in the height of the first Omicron wave. All 104 shows sold out, averaging 18,604 tickets per night. Playing in the round, he out-sold the average MSG act, typically scaled to 13,000-15,000 seats.
While attendance remained consistent, ticket prices and grosses grew over the course of his decade at the arena. Joel’s 2014 shows averaged $2 million per show, steadily creeping up to $2.5 million by 2019. Upon returning from the pandemic, dynamic pricing and new platinum ticketing sent earnings soaring, from an average of $2.7 million in 2022 to $3.2 million in 2023, and up 49% to $4.7 million this year.
Joel’s final MSG show topped the entire run, bringing in more than $5 million from 18,576 tickets on July 25. That’s more than double the sub-$2 million revenue from the opening show on Jan. 27, 2014.
Ultimately, Billy Joel at The Garden is the third-highest grossing concert residency in Billboard Boxscore history, passing U2’s brief-but-powerful opening run at Las Vegas’ Sphere. The only artist with bigger totals is Celine Dion. The Canadian diva’s A New Day… residency ran from 2003 to 2007 at The Colosseum at Caesars Palace and grossed $385.1 million, while her follow-up, simply titled Celine, brought in $296.2 million from 2011 to 2019.
Though Joel’s career pre-dates the mid-1980s launch of Boxscore reporting, there is record of his presence at MSG before his sprawling residency. He played 12 shows between January and April of 2006, earning $19.2 million from 226,000 tickets. More than 18,800 fans rang in Y2K with him, on a $4.5 million gross on Dec. 31, 1999. He moved more than 100,000 tickets during a six-show run in December 1998, and before that in October 1993.
Though Joel stayed loyal to MSG while in New York, he played various isolated stadium shows around the world, plus co-headline dates with Stevie Nicks and Sting.
In all, Joel has grossed $1.2 billion and sold 15.3 million tickets across 841 reported shows, dating back to 1986.