In the 1970s, stadiums became the main venue for staging concert performances of popular music. From country and rock music stars to more traditional singers like Frank Sinatra and Barbra Streisand, popular performers attracted audience sizes anywhere from 20,000 to 100,000 people at a time. Rock music—with its mass participation and the sheer volume that was necessary to reach so many people at once—was particularly suited to playing concerts at football stadiums and in sports arenas. Rock musicians looked to the stadium as a way to play in front of the most people, for the most money, as audiences broadened during the seventies. Rock's dominance on the concert circuit continued into the 1990s. Of the 20 top-grossing North American concert tours between 1985 and 1994, the average tour grossed $55 million and visited 42 cities; nearly all of them were rock artists.

Rock's first stadium concert was in 1965, when the Beatles...