Belk Bowl scores its ‘biggest artist ever’ in Tim McGraw

Country music star Tim McGraw will be in Charlotte on Dec. 29 to kick off the Belk Bowl.

The Belk Bowl’s Twitter account posted a string of mysterious tweets Monday afternoon alluding to the announcement, and teased the Observer by calling the concert headliner “the biggest artist we’ve ever had” – which we felt was saying something, considering last year’s score was seven-time Grammy Award winner Carrie Underwood.

But even if you disagree about who the bigger star is, there’s no question this is a remarkable “get” for the bowl game. McGraw has won three Grammy Awards, and 10 of his 14 albums have ascended to No. 1 on Billboard’s Country Albums chart.

And that’s not the only big news for the pre-game show. The stage and the setup will move this year to BB&T Ballpark, home of the Charlotte Knights, after several years of being somewhat awkwardly situated at Mint and Stonewall streets across from Bank of America Stadium.

The 2016 concert will be held on a weekday afternoon – Dec. 29 is a Thursday – with a scheduled start time of 2 p.m. That’s 3  1/2 hours before kickoff of the Belk Bowl, which will feature a matchup between the No. 2 pooled selection from the SEC and the No. 2 pooled selection from the ACC. The game will be played less than two blocks away, at Bank of America Stadium.

One caveat: Whereas in the past these concerts have been free, the only way to get into BB&T Ballpark for the show is if you first purchase a ticket to the game.

Obtaining a concert voucher will be pretty straightforward for bowl-game ticketholders, although it will require just a little bit of advance planning and legwork. On Dec. 28 and 29 – the day before and the day of the game – Belk Bowl ticketholders can redeem their game tickets for vouchers for McGraw’s concert at the BB&T Ballpark ticket office. (Game tickets will be scanned to verify authenticity.)

Single tickets to the game range from $35.43 to $149.18 (before taxes and fees). If you have a family or friends, a better deal is the Chick-Fil-A four-pack that gets you four Belk Bowl tickets for the price of three plus four promo cards for chicken sandwiches and a coupon for $30 off a purchase of $100 or more at Belk.

It’s worth noting, of course, that no more than 10,000 concert vouchers will be distributed (that’s in line with the stadium’s capacity for Knights games), and demand could conceivably exceed supply; in the past, huge crowds have congregated outside of Bank of America Stadium to watch free performances by Daughtry and Edwin McCain (2011), Lady Antebellum (2012), Blake Shelton (2013), Miranda Lambert (2014) and Underwood (2015).

But there is a way to get guaranteed access to the concert, via a variety of “Super Fan Packages” available at BelkBowl.com/tickets for $75-$150 per person. Each of those “super fan” tickets will put you on the field for the show, so it’s kind of like a pit pass. (Each also includes a ticket to the Belk Bowl, so it’s also a roundabout way for the host to try to put fans in seats at Bank of America Stadium.)

Anyway, this seems like a big win for people who have loved catching the free Belk Bowl shows in the past but who have not really loved the setup. Last year, for example, even though a steady rain thinned the crowds for Underwood, all the open umbrellas combined with the awkward layout of the stage and the viewing areas made for poor sightlines on almost all sides.

“We’re really excited because BB&T Ballpark allows us to provide a real concert venue and a real concert atmosphere,” said Miller Yoho, a spokesman for the Charlotte Sports Foundation, which hosts the Belk Bowl.

And even those who don’t make it into BB&T Ballpark can enjoy the show, albeit not first-hand: The concert will be live-streamed on large video screens at Romare Bearden Park, which is just across Mint Street from the ballpark, and on screens outside of Bank of America Stadium, where other FanFest activities will be held.

Said Yoho: “We want you to feel like uptown is all about this concert.”

This story was originally published October 11, 2016 at 10:07 AM with the headline "Belk Bowl scores its ‘biggest artist ever’ in Tim McGraw."