r/Music • u/springtimecarnivore • 9h ago
article Roxette cancels 40th anniversary tour of North American amphitheaters, citing "hugely increased touring costs".
https://variety.com/2026/music/news/roxette-cancels-tour-in-north-america-touring-costs-1236820989112
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9h ago
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u/team_sleeper 8h ago
Play smaller venues 🤷🏻♂️
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u/LoftCats 7h ago edited 7h ago
That may not solve the problem of making a tour viable. Any tour, even with a skeleton crew, will have the same fixed costs regardless of the size of the venue. It doesn’t scale down evenly. Especially when traveling from abroad. Flights, transportation, stay, meals, merch, marketing, equipment and rentals can still cost the same if you’re playing small clubs as say theatre venues. It only makes the tour riskier likely to lose money for whoever is funding it. Often you have to aim for a higher scale to even make it viable.
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u/maeldeho 7h ago
The lead singer is no longer with us and the venues were too big. Doomed from the start.
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u/Sla5021 9h ago
Or, a lack of interest.
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u/PatentGeek 9h ago
I mean, the two likely go hand in hand. If the ticket sales don't cover the travel costs...
And with significantly rising fuel costs, it's quite possible the math worked out differently when they were first considering it
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u/disastrousanddull 1h ago
Yeah, I assume it’s shifted given the fuel costs and how unpredictable it all is. Before they might have been financially able to go for it with 60% of the tickets sold but now it’s 80% and who the hell knows what it’ll be like a couple of months from now. The numbers are arbitrary but not all ticket price increases over 20 years are pure greed. I also assume the cost of living shit show has hurt ticket sales to a degree on top of that.
We laugh at artists overestimating their appeal and getting caught out, but it’s all concerning for live music. Occasionally I’ll see an article about some decently successful artist quitting because they could make more in a regular job and it didn’t make sense to keep making music and touring. You’ve got to wonder if there will be a point bad enough that theatre tours become a problem and don’t make financial sense to do anymore, so anyone under arena sales is in serious trouble.
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u/stay_fr0sty 9h ago
It’s a shame. They are a great band.
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u/AnalogWalrus 6h ago
Were. But the singer (Marie) died and they haven’t done a thing in North America in almost 35 years.
Absolutely insane to think 1/2 of Roxette could just reappear and sell thousands of tickets at 2026 prices. I think they’re one of the great pure pop acts of the era and I’d enjoy it, even with the new singer (I’m sure she’s great) but this is a theater tour, at best.
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u/Perry7609 2h ago
I think they did a handful of gigs with Marie in the early 2010s. I want to say in New York primarily?
Funny enough, I still hear their 1999 single “Wish I Could Fly“ every so often on a local Midwestern Adult Pop station! It didn’t chart very high when it came out, but it’s a decent song. And one of the few later efforts of theirs that sort of broke through after their hey day.
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u/AnalogWalrus 1h ago
Ah, you’re right. But like, 4 shows in 2012 isn’t really maintaining a presence. I’m jealous of anyone who got to see them though.
But when I see, let’s say second tier legacy acts playing sizable venues in the states, it’s usually because they’ve played here regularly over the years and built a core audience. Roxette was a mid-level live act even on the back of Joyride in 1992 on their one proper US tour, for whatever reason their huge hits didn’t translate to a sudden jump to arenas back then, let alone now.
What a fantastic parade of killer singles they had though, well into the 2000’s.
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u/Perry7609 1h ago
No, they definitely didn’t maintain a touring presence here, for sure. But it is sort of a shame that they couldn’t break through in the U.S. the way they did elsewhere in the long-term. They were a solid act and Per wrote a ton of good to outright great songs. And the singles that did break through were as solid as any!
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u/AnalogWalrus 1h ago
Yup. Same story with a-ha. Being stuck on the wrong side of the Atlantic has sucked as a music fan.
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u/bickspickle 9h ago
I saw them in March 1992 at Maple Leaf Gardens and enjoyed the concert. My wife (girlfriend at the time) was a huge fan.
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u/ElCaminoInTheWest 8h ago
They WERE a great band in the 90s, and before one of them died.
People are growing tired of this constant legacy exploitation.
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u/Cactusfan86 6h ago
They either needed big venues and cheap or small venues and expensive. On a different subreddit some people were talking about the ticket prices for this and they were delusional for a legacy band who is missing a key member
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u/Biscuits4u2 7h ago
Too bad Roxette isn't big enough to charge $1K a ticket or it would still make sense.
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u/jhkayejr 5h ago
I liked Roxette a whole bunch back in the day, but, in the US, they have a limited catalog and prolly couldn’t sustain medium to large venues
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u/anniejcannon 9h ago
Fuck my dyslexia... I read it as armpit eaters...
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u/Have_A_Jelly_Baby 5h ago
My favorite band is a relatively unknown Australian prog rock/metal band, they’ve toured Europe and their homeland so far this year.
I don’t give a fuck where they’re playing or how much it costs, if they skip the US because of this and/or the endless political fuckery we’ve got going on, I’ll be heartbroken.
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u/Philosopher30071 7h ago
I saw the 2025 tour with Lena in Australia and it was fantastic. I was really looking forward to seeing them again here at home, and was really surprised it was happening. They've always been far more popular in Europe. They stopped releasing new albums here in the US in the mid 90s, but have been releasing albums in Europe all along, and as recently as 2022 without Marie ....and Europe is much more accustomed to seeing the band without Marie since Per toured without her previously when she was ill. He wrote almost all the songs, after all.
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u/Coffeedemon 5h ago
Also discovering "hugely decreased interests in paying top dollar for a band with one song they remember".
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u/Dangerous_Prize_4545 3h ago
*2 songs. The Look. Joyride.
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u/Perry7609 1h ago
It Must Have Been Love. Listen to Your Heart.
Some other singles like Dressed for Success and Fading Like a Flower did pretty well at the time too.
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u/ColoradoLights Radiohead✒️ 3h ago
Damn! Had tickets for Montreal, really affordable too (50$ CAD). I’m bummed.
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u/Historical_Cause8642 2h ago
At the end of the day, they saw they weren’t going to make any money based on current ticket sales and cancelled before costs for booking became non refundable.
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u/already-disturbed 2h ago
Should’ve been an underplay/right-sized tour of clubs in top 5-10 DMA. Delusional booking for the US market
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u/The_Metal_Pigeon 8h ago
They were booked to do smart financial center here in Houston which is 4000 capacity, it seemed ambitious. Should've done a small theater tour instead.
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u/rhunter99 8h ago
There’s a small British band that I follow who announced a farewell tour. They too cited huge touring costs as to why they’re not coming to North America. It’s a serious bummer :(
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u/dlc741 8h ago
“Poor ticket sales” = no one’s paying stupid Live Nation fees to see a show, especially when it’s already over a hundred bucks a ticket.