Garth Brooks tour hits slow upper-deck sales at some arena stops

Garth Brooks is seeing softer-than-expected ticket sales for parts of his Blame It All On My Roots tour, with a large share of upper-deck seats still unsold at several arena stops even as other markets have sold out entirely.

The tour, announced July 7, revisits the nostalgic peak of Brooks's mid-1990s "Garthmania" run and follows a pattern of adding shows one market at a time rather than announcing every date at once. It opened with two nights in Indianapolis at the Gainbridge Fieldhouse, which grew to four after the first pair sold out, and Brooks has since added four shows in Denver, four in the Chicago area at the Allstate Arena in Rosemont, and two so far at Washington, D.C.'s Capital One Arena, all in September.

Every ticket on the tour is priced the same, $154, whether it is in the front row or the last row of the upper deck, a model Brooks has promoted as affordable. Denver's Ball Arena shows are reportedly sold out through Ticketmaster, but demand has been softer in Rosemont and parts of Washington. For the Thursday, September 10 show in Rosemont, about 90 percent of upper-deck seats remain unsold; that figure drops to roughly 70 percent for the Sunday matinee, 50 percent for Friday night, and 25 percent for Saturday.

The resale market tells a similar story. Country Chord reported that upper-deck seats from the tour's August 20 opening show in Indianapolis were reselling for as little as $28, with some mid-tier seats going for $72 to $130, all below the $154 face price, even as some of the closest seats to the stage still fetched four figures.

The pattern reflects a strategy Brooks has used for years: adding shows in a market as demand justifies them rather than booking a market's full run upfront, which can undercut scalpers by expanding supply and free up cheaper seats for fans who might otherwise be priced out. But the flat pricing model appears to be running into its limits in markets where demand has cooled, particularly for seats in the upper deck, where the value proposition of a $154 ticket is a harder sell than in the lower bowl.

The uneven demand comes even as Brooks's tour continues sending strong numbers overall in most country markets, underscoring how a single pricing strategy can land very differently from one arena to the next.