Magic Tour (Bruce Springsteen) - Critical and Commercial Reception

Critical and Commercial Reception

Reviews of the Magic Tour have been generally favorable. The New Haven Register found the band "ripping through a spirited set" on opening night and judged Weinberg, Van Zandt, and Clemons as the main stars of the performance besides Springsteen. The paper also profiled fans who had come from nearby states to see the opener. A Jon Pareles review in The New York Times of a Madison Square Garden show two weeks later framed the performance thusly:

The Syracuse New Times summed an Albany, New York show late in the first leg as "a masterful presentation of Springsteen’s new album Magic and a few moments of his mumbling political cajoling, all wrapped up in a joyous rock’n’roll revival replete with his most famous hits going back to the 1970s."

North American ticket sales during the first leg were generally strong. Prime markets in the Northeast sold out in less than ten minutes. The faithful knew, as usual, that this was only the beginning of the ticket acquisition process, as the later secondary market — online ticket outlet drops of held-back allotments, later drops due to stage setup revelations, day of show drop lines, online forum exchanges, and eBay — all offered opportunities for success. The first, North American leg garnered $38.2 million in ticket revenues, making it the 14th biggest grossing concert tour in North America for 2007. Springsteen saw more younger fans appearing in America than in a decade, while in Europe younger fans were constantly replenishing his fan base.

Meanwhile, over in Europe, the London concert, which went on sale first on August 30, sold out in about ten minutes. The Belfast concert sold out in eight minutes, setting a venue record for The Odyssey; thousands left standing outside the venue, other ticket outlets, or phone or online users, were left quite frustrated. Most of the tickets were bought my major companies and sold on eBay or other websites for hundreds of pounds. The Belgian concert was sold out in a few minutes, the booking site having experienced constant lag.

On the show's third leg, the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle praised the show's concentration on newer material and detected implicit support for the presidential campaign of Barack Obama. In a USA Today interview Springsteen professed admiration for both Obama's effort and rival Hillary Rodham Clinton's campaign, although he seemed to have a greater affinity for the former: "I always look at my work as trying to measure the distance between American promise and American reality. And I think 's inspired a lot of people with that idea: How do you make that distance shorter? How do we create a more humane society? We've lived through such ugly times that people want to have a romance with the idea of America again, and I think they need to." The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel saw the concert there as exemplifying Springsteen's ability to have "dark words ride along on a buoyant pop melody", terming the enterprise "an exercise in danceable agitation."

Commercially, though, the third leg was softer, with most of its shows not sold out. Moreover, when tickets went on sale in December 2007 for three hometown, summer 2008, fifth-leg Giants Stadium shows, they did not come close to selling out right away, and may never have. This paled in comparison to the fast sales and many added dates for The Rising Tour's Giants Stadium stand in 2003; theories advanced included poor sales timing before the holiday season and way in advance of the shows, a worsening U.S. economy, stagnant European second leg set lists, and aftereffects of Springsteen's Vote for Change explicit political stances and non-E Street Band tours. Nevertheless, the Giants Stadium stand grossed over $14 million, and was the fifth-highest concert stand gross for 2008. For the first half of 2008, the Magic Tour third leg was the second-highest grossing tour in North America, garnering $40.8 million, behind Bon Jovi's Lost Highway Tour for that period but ahead of the Van Halen 2007–2008 Tour. The European outdoor fourth leg was very strong commercially, selling out or nearly selling out its shows. The Billboard Boxscore Top Ten Concert Grosses report for the issue the week after the leg ended showed the first nine positions all held by Magic Tour shows; the highest grossing was the two nights at Barcelona's Camp Nou, where 143,804 total attendees brought in over $14 million gross.

By the tour's finishing fifth leg, critical reaction was again strong. Of the penultimate show in St. Louis, Billboard wrote that the band had "unleash an epic, loose show that wowed the unwowable and flapped the unflappable."

Ticketmaster Entertainment's TicketsNow portal reported that the average resale price of a 2008 Magic Tour ticket had been $235, sixth highest among touring acts for the year.