Country Music Has a New Record Holder After a Texas Legend’s Mark Fell Sooner Than Anyone Expected. ML
Last summer, the King of Country shattered concert records when he performed for more than 110,000 fans at one of college football’s most legendary arenas. But barely a year later, one of country music’s princes has stolen the crown.
On Saturday night, Oklahoman Zach Bryan performed for 112,408 fans at Michigan Stadium in Ann Arbor. In doing so, Bryan broke the all-time U.S. attendance record for a ticketed concert set last summer by George Strait.
Strait played for a crowd of 110,905 at Kyle Field in College Station last year, at the time breaking the record that the Grateful Dead had held since 1977.
Bryan’s show at “The Big House,” the biggest stadium in the nation and the third largest in the world, was the first concert ever played in the 99-year history of the venue.
According to The Detroit Free Press, show promoter AEG Presents said that Bryan’s 90-minute set moved about $5 million in merchandise, which AEG said is another record.
Bryan paid plenty of tribute to the home crowd. The Oklahoma-native took the stage clad in a University of Michigan blue jersey with “BRYAN” written across the back. Bryan was backed by a 16-piece band that included fiddle and horn players, and he brought out special guests John Mayer and Michigan-native country group War and Treaty.
“Thank you so much for the best night of my life,” Bryan said during the set, per the Detroit News.
The show’s massive turnout probably thrilled the University of Michigan leaders, who told the Detroit News that Michigan Stadium is now “open for business” for concert acts. Part of the motivation behind the Bryan concert was shattering Strait’s record. But another factor was at play: NIL money.
Now that college athletes can make money from name, image, and likeness deals and schools can pay them directly, universities are looking for new revenue streams to keep the NIL spigot going. As the Detroit News noted, other schools such as the University of Wisconsin and Oklahoma State University are getting into the concert business, some for the first time in decades.
“I think there’s more pressure on us now to figure out ways to drive revenue, and the use of our facilities—in this case, Michigan Stadium—is a focus,” Rob Rademacher, chief operating officer at Michigan Athletics and UM’s executive senior associate athletic director, told the Detroit News. “It’s something we’ve been in a lot of talks over the last four or five years to try to do something like this, and we finally brought it across the goal line.”
Texas universities are getting into the events business, too. Kyle Field hosted Strait in June last summer, when Strait shattered the ticketed attendance record first set by the Dead in 1977 in New Jersey.
Texas A&M University said in August of last year that the Strait concert netted the school $3.9 million. Along with a sellout Mexico-Brazil soccer match last year that profited $2.6 million, the Aggies raked in $6.5 million just in events in 2024.
College football stadiums are some of the biggest venues anywhere in the world. In the NIL era, packing them for concerts is great for business.
As for the actual musicians playing said venues, Bryan has experienced a meteoric rise in the past few years to become one of country music’s most prolific songwriters.
How far he’s come from playing poorly run College Station music festivals. If he can avoid his nemesis, Gavin Adcock, maybe he’ll get to play Kyle Field one day, too.
And while Strait’s record is no more, he can’t be too disappointed. Strait has broken plenty of records in his storied career, including breaking the record for the largest indoor concert crowd in American history when he played at AT&T Stadium in 2014.
And with a Kennedy Center Honor to his name, the King of Country doesn’t need to worry too much about his throne.
