Yet again, Garth Brooks books a stadium show in Charlotte. Will it happen this time?
Let’s hope that this time, Garth Brooks will actually make it to town.
For the umpteenth time in the past two years, after a series of COVID-related postponements and cancellations, the country-music megastar has booked a concert for Charlotte’s Bank of America Stadium — and the date he’s picked for 2022 is ... Saturday, July 16.
Tickets will go on sale at 10 a.m. Friday, March 25, online at www.ticketmaster.com/garthbrooks; by calling 877-654-2784; or via the Ticketmaster app on your mobile phone.
Those wanting to get in line early for tickets can join the waiting room at ticketmaster.com/garthbrooks beginning at 9 a.m.
In a news release for the tour, ticket prices were listed as $94.95 “all-inclusive”; it said there will not be any advance sales, and that purchases would be limited to eight tickets. The setup for the stage will be “in the round,” with all seats being reserved (i.e., there won’t be a general-admission pit).
It’s difficult to understate how big of a deal this show would be.
Brooks, who turned 60 in February, hasn’t been to Charlotte since he played a pair of sold-out shows (attended by 48,000-plus) on back-to-back nights at the old Charlotte Coliseum in March 1998.
In the 24 years since, he’s become the best-selling solo artist in U.S. history, with 157 million records sold — and in 2016, Brooks earned his seventh diamond-certified album. According to the Recording Industry Association of America’s Gold & Platinum Program, he is now the artist with the most diamond certifications, which are bestowed on albums that eclipse 10 million copies sold.
It is currently the only show he has booked for anywhere in North Carolina, South Carolina or Virginia.
Determined to get to Charlotte
No other major artist tried as doggedly to make it to Charlotte during the pandemic.
It started pre-COVID, when Brooks made huge news by revealing that his “Stadium Tour” would be coming to Bank of America Stadium, with an original date of May 2, 2020.
As the pandemic set in, he first pushed to June 13, 2020 — but that proved to be way too soon. He tried Oct. 10, 2020, and that didn’t work out either, so he postponed again to April 10, 2021.
In an interview with the Observer shortly after that third postponement, Brooks laughed as he said:
“I’m gonna be worn out a minute into this thing. It’s just one of those things where I’ve been trying to get a date with this city for 20-something years, and once I got (it), it got pulled back even further. So just know the band and crew loves and respects the hell out of this city, and this is gonna be a fun gig. Please God, please let it happen. And please let everybody be safe doing it.”
A few months later, a fourth postponement pushed the concert to Sept. 25, 2021.
Finally, as the delta variant swept across the country last August, he announced that he was officially canceling plans to come to Charlotte. “With a hopeful heart,” he said in a statement at the time, “we will reschedule and start over when this wave seems to be behind us.”
By late September, that wave was subsiding. Since then, Charlotte has hosted a steady stream of major concerts, including the Rolling Stones at Bank of America Stadium and Billie Eilish, The Eagles, Dua Lipa and others at Spectrum Center (where the Charlotte Hornets play).
Brooks’s July concert will join a list of highly anticipated shows coming to Bank of America Stadium in 2022 that already includes Billy Joel (April 23); Kenny Chesney (April 30); Def Leppard, Motley Crue, Poison and Joan Jett and the Blackhearts (June 28); Red Hot Chili Peppers (Sept. 1); and Elton John (Sept. 18).
Hoping to score tickets to see Garth?
The news release urged fans to go to the website (once again, that’s ticketmaster.com/garthbrooks) and click on “On Sale Tips & Hints” to create a Ticketmaster account — or to refresh their existing one — “for a quicker purchasing experience.”
And it’s likely you’ll need to be quite quick.
When tickets to his Bank of America Stadium concert originally went on sale the first time, back when it was supposed to happen in May 2020, all 74,000 of them sold out in 90 minutes, according to Brooks and the show organizers.
That translated to 822 tickets per minute, and would have amounted to the largest paid crowd in the history of uptown Charlotte’s largest venue — if it had gone on as scheduled.
Anyway, if you want to get seats for this time, we have five words for you: Good luck on the 25th.
This story was originally published March 16, 2022 at 7:37 AM with the headline "Yet again, Garth Brooks books a stadium show in Charlotte. Will it happen this time?."
