A four-city tour of Australia and New Zealand by The Weeknd is expanded due to “unprecedented demand” for tickets.
The Canadian R&B singer scheduled four gigs last month, including one in Auckland, New Zealand, and stops in each of Australia’s major east coast cities of Sydney, Melbourne, and Brisbane.
That schedule expanded to 10 gigs across those four venues on Monday, September 4.
The Weeknd’s After Hours Til Dawn Tour, which is put on by Live Nation, will now feature three shows at Sydney’s Accor Stadium (the first two are sold out), three at Melbourne’s Marvel Arena, and two at Brisbane’s Suncorp Stadium. Mike Dean and Chxrry22 will be the special guests on all dates, as was originally announced.
After his tour of Australia is through, he will go to New Zealand, where he will now perform twice in December at Auckland’s Eden Park.
Since the announcement of the tour on August 22, demand for the Weeknd’s music has increased by double across streaming music services, propelling a number of his albums up the ARIA Charts. The Highlights remains at No. 3 this week, according to the chart compiler ARIA; previous leaders Starboy soars 18–4, After Hours is up 27–17, Dawn FM soars 65–25, and Beauty Behind The Madness soars 93–38 (all via Universal).
The two biggest ticket sellers, Ticketek and Ticketmaster, have both reported high levels of traffic on their systems. According to representatives, the first presale line for the Melbourne dates on Ticketmaster had 122,000 people in it. More than 100,000 Melbourne supporters were still in line after the initial allocation was used up.
Ticketmaster NZ claims the largest amount of unique users and page views for any announcement this year on the other side of the ditch, including 165,000 users and 647,000 page views. Additionally, presale demand from Vodafone Australia and One NZ customers was historically unprecedented.
Although impressive, the Weeknd’s 10-date stadium tour of both markets pales in comparison to Ed Sheeran’s Divide tour of 2018, which featured 18 stadium shows across Australia and New Zealand and broke AC/DC’s previous record of 14 stadium dates in a single tour by selling more than a million tickets.
After Hours Til Dawn Tour 2023′ by The Weeknd New Zealand and Australia:
Nov. 20 — Suncorp Stadium, Brisbane
Nov. 21 — Suncorp Stadium, Brisbane
Nov. 24 — Accor Stadium, Sydney (*sold out)
Nov. 25 — Accor Stadium, Sydney (*sold out)
Nov. 27 — Accor Stadium, Sydney
Dec. 1 — Marvel Stadium, Melbourne
Dec. 2 — Marvel Stadium, Melbourne
Dec. 4 — Marvel Stadium, Melbourne
Dec. 7 – Eden Park, Auckland
Dec. 8 — Eden Park, Auckland
These are the schedule.
