Why Many Top Artists Are Ditching Music Festivals in Favor of Stadium Concerts
Written by djfrosty on March 11, 2025
The numbers don’t look good for festival promoters — and they’re getting worse.
Since the end of the pandemic, the economics of stadium concerts have become so much more favorable for fans and artists that major festival promoters are losing headliners who can dependably drive ticket sales.
Take Zach Bryan. In 2023, the then-rising star headlined the Railbird Festival in Lexington, Ky.; the Two Step Inn Festival in Georgetown, Texas; the Pilgrimage Festival in Franklin, Tenn.; and Under the Big Sky in Whitefish, Mont., among the eight that he performed at that year.
After playing just two festivals last year and releasing a wildly successful fifth studio album in July, Bryan, now a superstar, had festival buyers rejoicing in September when he was announced as the opening headliner for 2025’s Stagecoach festival. But instead of signing on as the top draw for other country festivals like Faster Horses or Tortuga, Bryan opted to partner with Stagecoach producer AEG Presents for 10 large-scale shows this summer, including stadium dates in New York, San Francisco and Ann Arbor, Mich., at the newly rebuilt Michigan Stadium, the largest such venue in the country, which will host Bryan as its inaugural concert.
He’s not alone. Festival staples like Post Malone and Kendrick Lamar, who performed at 10 apiece in 2023, are mostly ditching those live events this summer in favor of stadium concerts in major markets like Los Angeles, where the SoFi Stadium is hosting a record 19 shows from Beyoncé, The Weeknd, Shakira, Blackpink and more during the first half of the year.
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Add in stadium dates from Coldplay and Metallica and a co-headliner tour with Chris Stapleton and George Strait, and it’s easy to see why festival promoters are feeling suffocated by the abundance of stadium concerts in most major markets.
“The popularity of stadium concerts represents a significant challenge to festivals,” says Josh Kurfirst, a partner at WME who runs the agency’s 40-person festival department. From a competitive standpoint, festivals face a number of disadvantages compared with stadium concerts “that are very difficult to overcome,” he explains.
The biggest of those drawbacks is the economics. At most, festival headliners earn $5 million to $6 million per appearance, while an artist with an aggressively priced stadium show can generate double that amount. The trade-off is the costs an artist pays — a festival slot has little to no costs to cover, while a stadium headliner is responsible for nearly all of the show’s expenses. On a one-to-one basis, an artist’s net from a big festival date might be the same as what the artist would earn from a stadium show. But when those costs are amortized over a dozen stadium dates, the economics heavily favor the stadiums. That’s especially true in 2025, when the number of festivals capable of paying out high-seven-figure headliner slots has dropped significantly while the number of markets hosting stadium shows has increased.
The numbers work in favor of consumers as well. Most stadium concert tickets cost $200 to $300, while festival tickets have climbed considerably in recent years to offset rising costs, often averaging $400 to $700 per attendee. And while most festivals stretch out to several days and include access to dozens of artists, “many fans would prefer to spend an afternoon at a concert seeing their favorite artists and knowing that they have a seat to sit down in and access to basic creature comforts,” says Jarred Arfa, executive vp/head of global music at Independent Artist Group.
“It’s not an apples-to-apples comparison, and there’s significantly more work involved in promoting a stadium concert than booking an artist on a festival,” Arfa continues. “But in general, a stadium concert is more appealing to older fans than a GA pass to a festival.”
That said, Arfa points out that the number of acts capable of leaping from festival headliner to the top of a stadium tour lineup is quite small and that as early incubators of artists, festivals have the resources and reach needed to cultivate a new generation of top talent.
Kurfirst adds that the headliners come and go for most major festivals and that the best brands tend to be defined by their cultural significance, the fan experience and the community that supports the festival. To remain relevant, maintain ticket demand and attract star acts, he says festival organizers need to understand the appeal of their brand and “double down on superserving the fan. Find out what your audience wants and deliver it to them in a way that no one else can.”
This story appears in the March 8, 2025, issue of Billboard.