It’s official: No more arena shows in Milwaukee this year
Since the coronavirus crisis hit in March, huge stars like Kenny Chesney, Elton John, Justin Bieber and Rage Against the Machine have canceled or postponed their tours and Milwaukee shows for 2020.
Now, it’s official. There won’t be any more arena concerts in the city for the rest of the year.
Thursday, Alan Jackson’s Sept. 12 show at Fiserv Forum — the last Milwaukee arena concert still on the calendar for 2020 — was pushed back to Sept. 10, 2021. Refunds will be available for 30 days through Ticketmaster, and originally purchased tickets will be honored for the new date.
The next arena-level concert scheduled in Milwaukee the city is Feb. 24, a makeup date for a Michael Bublé show in March that was postponed.
But the concert industry may still not be back to normal early next year. In a conference call with investors in May, Michael Rapino, CEO of Live Nation, said the company wasn’t expecting touring to return to pre-pandemic levels until summer 2021.
The live music industry was on track for another record year in 2020 before the pandemic. Fiserv Forum’s General Manager Raj Saha told the Journal Sentinel in January he aimed to book at least 35 concerts and comedy events for 2020, topping a blockbuster 2019 where the Milwaukee Bucks’ venue hosted the most arena concerts in a single year in the city’s history.
But with artists remaining off the road, concert trade publication Pollstar estimated in March that nearly $9 billion would be lost this year. There have been a few live music events around the country, like drive-in concerts, including the Live at the Lot series in Grafton. Alan Jackson himself has been performing a handful of drive-in concerts this summer.
But most music venues in Milwaukee and around the country remain closed.
The crisis led to the creation of the National Independent Venue Association in April, co-founded by Gary Witt, CEO of Milwaukee’s Pabst Theater Group. The organization is lobbying for additional financial aid from Congress, with more than 90% of its nearly 2,000 members reporting in a May survey they would not last an additional six months without it. Two Milwaukee venues, Fire on Water and the Underground Collaborative, have permanently closed because of the pandemic.