History
Announced in mid-April 2000, this was the Dixie Chicks' first headlining tour. Moreover, the group was jumping directly to playing mostly in arenas. Since the sudden jump in the group's success in 1998, they had played as a supporting act for Tim McGraw and as part of the George Strait Country Music Festival and Lilith Fair, seeking to expose themselves to diverse audiences in building a fan base. The live reputation the group developed for their instrumental prowess and performance strengths led to them embarking upon an ambitious, high-profile, large-venue tour of their own.
Begun at the start of June 2000 with five dates in Canada, and with occasional two-week breaks in between legs, the tour was originally scheduled to end in September. However, after having grossed over $25 million for about 50 dates, and averaging about 13,000 fans per show, it was extended until early December, when it concluded with four dates in the Chicks' native Texas.
In terms of commercial impact, LiveDaily termed the tour "a runaway success", and it came at a time when the country music genre was in a box-office slump. It represented an innovation in a business sense, as three different promoters were used, covering different geographical regions of the country, rather than the more typical use of a different local promoter at each stop. Chicks management did this in order to get more consistent messaging in marketing and promotion, which itself was aided by an over $3 million national advertising campaign. The comically-themed commercials showed the Chicks as touring neophytes, learning how to smash banjos and tear up hotel rooms. Tour sponsors were MusicCountry.com and CMT, while one dollar of each ticket sale was donated to the World Wildlife Fund.
In the end, the Fly Tour grossed over $47 million, with an average attendance of over 12,000. It was the biggest country music tour in 2000 by any single act (trailing only the joint Tim McGraw–Faith Hill Soul2Soul Tour) and the sixth highest-grossing tour of any genre during the year.
For 2000, the tour was nominated for Pollstar's most important award, that of Major Tour of the Year, but lost out to the Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band Reunion Tour. It did however win Pollstar's Personal Manager of the Year award for the group's manager, Simon Renshaw, who had negotiated the unusual promotion arrangements.
The tour also had a cultural effect: the Encyclopedia of the Great Plains stated that the Fly Tour "gained a life of its own, making the Dixie Chicks a pop-cultural phenomenon, with young and enthusiastic audiences flocking" to see the group.
Read more about this topic: Fly Tour
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