Critical and Commercial Reception
Reviews of The Rising Tour were generally favorable.
A reviewer for PopMatters found an early New York City barnstorming show to be the first Springsteen show he'd seen that lived up to the classic Springsteen he imagined from the 1970s and early 1980s. As a response to the tour's role in helping fans mourn after 9/11, David Segal wrote in a review which appeared the Washington Post, "Lordy, lordy, we needed that. We needed Bruce Springsteen even more than we thought, and we thought we needed him a lot." CLUAS.com reported that a May 2003 Munich show featured tight playing, and that the general admission "pit" was a Tower of Babel of different languages from fans come from all over Europe. National Review Online thought that the tour had gotten much better in 2003 than it had been the year before and that a full-band "Incident on 57th Street" played in Philadelphia had been especially strong.
E Street drummer Max Weinberg gave his own assessment: "Playing for a country that was so much in pain from the events of 9/11 made the Rising Tour so much more than a series of rock concerts. People looked to us — actually they looked to the music — to quiet their sorrows. At first it seemed like the responsibility hoisted on us was too much. How could rock musicians meet these expectations? But somehow we did it. Somehow the tour was a great success."
While Springsteen's popularity had dipped over the years in some southern and midwestern regions of the U.S., it was still quite strong in Europe and along the U.S. coasts, as exemplified by the unprecedented 10 nights he played in outdoor football Giants Stadium in New Jersey, a ticket-selling feat that no other musical act can come close to. . Reuters reported that those 10 nights alone resulted in 566,560 tickets being sold and a gross of $38.8 million, a world record for one engagement. The Giants Stadium management reported that ticket buyers to those shows came from all 50 states and all over the world; they had celebrated the event by building a huge boardwalk and amusement park in the parking lot next to the stadium.
Overall, according to Billboard Boxscore, the tour grossed $221.5 million over its two years. Reuters reported a $172.7 million gross worldwide for 2003, while Pollstar reported a $115.9 million gross within North America for 2003, the best of any act that year, and the second-best ever at the time. Rolling Stone reported that Springsteen kept a bigger share of concert gross receipts than almost anyone, due to better deals with promoters and venues, to lower expenses for not having any fancy stage props or special effects, and to his New Jersey fans buying more merchandise than the average (the Giants Stadium shows had specially numbered and colored T-shirts for each night of the stand).
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