Adele is in the middle of something pretty wild. In January, it was announced that a new concert venue was being built in Munich, Germany specifically for an Adele residency. Fast-forward to this past weekend when the first shows kicked off and it appears the run has a shot at making some history.
As Billboard reports, “The engagement, which runs two days a week throughout August, could break the Billboard Boxscore attendance record for a concert engagement, currently held by Coldplay, which drew 627,000 fans to 10 shows in Buenos Aires in 2022. It could also break the box office record of almost $110 million, held by U2 for its first 17 shows at the Sphere, in 2023. (Adele has not generally reported concert grosses to Billboard Boxscore, so the records may stand anyway.)” Furthermore, Munich economic official Clemens Baumgärtner has estimated that the residency will bring 560 million Euros (about $614 million) to the city.
It’s really quite the spectacle. The custom venue holds 74,000 people and the production is reported to have cost over $100 million dollars. There’s also a 720-foot-wide screen that’s apparently the largest in the world, as well as “a Ferris wheel, a biergarten, and merchandise operation the size of a large boutique,” per Billboard.
Big numbers aside, it just seems like a ton of fun, from watching the Olympics with Adele on stage to Adele’s impressive t-shirt cannon.
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