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Frontier resurrects touring festival success with RNB Fridays Live

The 2018 edition of the Australian festival scaled up to stadiums, selling 200,000+ tickets nationally

By Gordon Masson on 07 Jan 2019

RNB Fridays Live

RNB Fridays Live


image © Mushroom Creative House

The days of touring festivals dominating the Australian outdoor season may be confined to history but Frontier Touring is enjoying phenomenal success with its RNB Fridays Live series.

The concept just wrapped up its third annual instalment in Australia and the company reports that the 2018 edition went to another level – scaling up to stadiums, selling out nationally and moving 200,000 tickets, making it one of the biggest touring festival brands in the region.

Since its debut in 2016, RNB Fridays Live has become arguably Australia’s most successful concert series. For three consecutive years, Frontier has used the brand to bring some of the biggest names in contemporary RNB to the stage, raising the bar with each line-up.

This year, Frontier gambled by stepping up the production for acts including Usher & Lil Jon, Salt-N-Pepa, Trey Songz, Eve and Taio Cruz

The inaugural events saw Nelly and TLC headline an 11-act show that visited arenas in Sydney, Brisbane, Perth, Adelaide and Melbourne, playing to about 68,000 fans in total. Last year, the tour visited the same cities but played seven nights, with back-to-back performances in Sydney and Melbourne, attracting almost 120,000 fans, thanks to appearances by Craig David, NE-YO, Sean Paul, Kelly Rowland, Kelis, En Vogue and others.

But this year, Frontier gambled by stepping up the production for acts including Usher & Lil Jon, Salt-N-Pepa, Trey Songz, Eve, Taio Cruz, Naughty By Nature, Ginuwine, Estelle, Next and others, and sold out Perth’s 20,000-capacity NIB Stadium, Etihad Stadium in Melbourne (45,000-cap), Adelaide Showground (15,000), Brisbane Showgrounds (27,000) and Spotless Stadium in Sydney (40,000), cementing the brand as one of the year’s biggest parties and allowing RNB acts to play to record-sized audiences in the southern hemisphere.

 


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