Garth Brooks Explains His Decision To Return To Arenas After Years Of Stadium Shows
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Garth Brooks has been taking a different approach with his latest tour.
In July, he announced the Blame It All on My Roots Arena Tour, which is inspired by his massive world tour in the 1990s.
The way Garth has been rolling out this tour has been anything but ordinary, though. He’s been switching things up in ways fans don’t usually see from major artists.
For starters, he’s announcing each city and venue one show at a time instead of releasing the full tour schedule all at once. There’s no pre-sale, and every ticket is priced at a flat $154.
He’s even planning to block off the first two rows at each show to keep scalpers from grabbing the best seats. Instead, he plans to surprise select fans sitting in the highest sections and move them down to the front row for free.
This is also the first time in a while that fans have seen the “Friends in Low Places” singer perform in arenas. For the past several years, Garth has mostly performed in stadiums or larger venues for residencies.
Why Garth Brooks Is Trading Stadium Shows For Smaller Arenas
It was surprising to see Garth trade in stadium shows, where tens of thousands of fans can watch him perform, for smaller arenas.
Usually, once an artist reaches the level of fame to sell out stadiums like Garth does, they don’t go back to playing for smaller crowds.
But just like everything else he’s planned for this tour, the decision to scale back the venue sizes was very intentional. And no, it had nothing to do with not being able to sell enough tickets.
Garth talked about his decision to go from stadiums to arenas during an interview with CBS Colorado, explaining that there were actually a couple of reasons.
One big reason for the change is pretty simple: arenas have roofs.
That means the show can go on as planned no matter what the weather looks like. With stadium shows, rain could make things a lot more complicated.
“I got tired of waking up and looking out of the hotel room to see if the clouds were gonna rain or not,” Garth said.
Being indoors also gives Garth more control over the stage production. It allows him to create a more intimate experience, since fans are sitting closer to the action.
“Move back into the arenas and get to pull stuff back out. Maybe some of the kind of theatre entertainment kind of things,” he adds.
Garth’s first show of the Blame It All on My Roots Tour took place in Indianapolis at Gainbridge Fieldhouse on Thursday, August 20.
He has three more shows scheduled at the venue. Those dates are Friday, August 21, Saturday, August 22, and Sunday, August 23.
So far, Garth has announced three other cities for the tour. He’s expected to keep adding more dates, but we don’t know when the next announcement will be.
Fans will have to stay tuned to see where he heads next! For now, you can see the cities and dates that Garth has announced below.
- Denver, Colorado – September 4, September 5, and September 6 at Ball Arena
- Chicago, Illinois – September 10, September 11, September 12, and September 13 at Allstate Arena
- Washington D.C. – September 18 and September 19 at Capital One Arena
