Tickets.com Client Spotlight: BOK Center

Arena is up there in sales rankings
It's rated No. 9 in the U.S. and No. 23 in the world in ticket totals for January through June.

Tulsa's BOK Center is ranked No. 9 in the United States and No. 23 in the world by Pollstar magazine for the number of tickets sold at arenas during the first half of 2009.

The center sold 188,688 tickets for events from January through June. It will celebrate its anniversary Aug. 17 with a Paul McCartney concert.

BOK Center General Manager John Bolton said people would not usually expect Tulsa's arena to perform as well as it is because of the size of the metropolitan area's population. The U.S. Top 10 is dominated by major metropolitan areas, he said.

"But one, this is a brand-new, state-of-the-art facility, and two, our economy is stronger than in many areas of the country," he said. "Acts are also excited to tap into a new market that has responded extremely well."

Bolton said the ranking by Pollstar, the trade publication of the concert industry, matters because it bolsters the BOK Center's reputation.

"It captures the attention of promoters, agents and act managers, who will recognize this as a hot building and steer the tours this way," he said.

The U.S. venues that rank higher than the BOK Center on the Top 50 list are Philips Arena in Atlanta; Allstate Arena in Rosemont, Ill., a Chicago suburb; BankAtlantic Center in Sunrise, Fla., outside Fort Lauderdale; Sprint Center in Kansas City, Mo.; St. Pete Times Forum in Tampa, Fla.; Madison Square Garden in New York City; Toyota Center in Houston; and Mohegan Sun Arena, at the Mohegan Sun resort and casino in Uncasville, Conn.

The Atlanta arena, with 303,911 tickets sold for the period, is the only U.S. venue to crack the worldwide Top 10, which includes venues in the United Kingdom, Ireland, Belgium, Mexico, Australia and Canada. The No. 1 venue is London's O2 Arena, with 1,217,397 tickets sold.

Oklahoma City's Ford Center ranked No. 48 in the country and No. 93 in the world with 69,946 tickets sold. The center closed for renovations at the end of April, so it had no May or June events. It is scheduled to reopen in October.

Tickets are counted for the tally when an event takes place, not when the actual sale of the ticket occurs.

For the six months, the BOK Center had 65 ticketed events, including 18 Oilers hockey games and six Talons arena football games. However, Pollstar does not include ticket sales for sports events.

The June 22 concert by the Jonas Brothers also wasn't part of the BOK Center's total because of when the data was turned in, Bolton said. The 16,585 tickets sold for that show could have boosted the Pollstar ranking, he said, but similar situations may have happened at other arenas as well.

Bolton's complete figure for the six months is 333,721 tickets sold, totaling $13,516,322.

Bolton said the Jonas Brothers concert was the No. 3 event in terms of ticket sales for the first half of 2009. No. 1 was the eight-performance run of "Walking With Dinosaurs," with 49,096 tickets sold, followed by the Billy Joel and Elton John "Face to Face" concert, with 17,335 tickets sold.

Pollstar's rankings for the first three months of 2009 put the BOK Center at No. 2 in the United States and No. 9 in the world.

"We really had a strong first quarter, which led to that high ranking," Bolton said, noting that "Walking With Dinosaurs" took place during that period.

The BOK Center has been the scene of or is scheduled to be the venue for nine of the Top 10 tours this year: Britney Spears, Fleetwood Mac, Elton John and Billy Joel, the Eagles, Celine Dion, Bruce Springsteen, Kenny Chesney, Dave Matthews Band and Dane Cook.

The Dead, an offshoot of the Grateful Dead, is the only one not on the BOK Center's calendar, and it had only a limited run on the East Coast, Bolton said.