More than 120 concerts and dozens of family shows and events. Over 1.6 million tickets sold, generating $102 million in sales.
Those are the raw numbers from Pinnacle Bank Arena, which opened in 2013 with a promise to transform the city.
That it has delivered is an understatement, especially when Pinewood Bowl, the city's outdoor concert venue operated in conjunction with the arena, is added to the equation.
The Pioneers Park amphitheater has staged 96 concerts since 2012 with 296,000 tickets sold and $17 million in ticket sales.
In total, that’s 219 concerts, 40 special events and $119 million in tickets sold. And concert success isn’t measured by numbers alone.
“Look at the list – Paul McCartney, George Strait, Billy Joel, Pink, Garth (Brooks), Kendrick (Lamar), Jay-Z – these are iconic artists,” said Charlie Schilling, the arena’s director of booking.
Schilling has the numbers to back up the notion that Lincoln's arena is swinging above its weight. He notes that Lincoln ranks as the nation's 152nd largest metro area, but it landed a spot on Shania Twain's 40-city concert tour this year.
Twain first played the arena in 2015, adding her name to the impressive list of first-decade performers.
“Watching the Grammys, there was the tribute to Christine McVie with Mick Fleetwood, Bonnie Raitt and Sheryl Crow – all of them have played here," Schilling said. "You have a Super Bowl performer (Snoop Dogg) on 4/20. You have stadium artists -- Kenny Chesney, Metallica. When you look back at the last 10 years, it’s mind-boggling the artists that have played here.”
A decade ago, it cost $370 million to build the arena and associated infrastructure in the freshly made West Haymarket. The downtown arena was also constructed as the home for Nebraska men’s and women’s basketball and other University of Nebraska-Lincoln events, such as graduation ceremonies.
Husker men’s basketball has ranked among the top 15 in attendance each year it has played in “The Vault” and is one of only nine schools to average more than 15,000 fans a game over the last seven seasons. In 2021-22, it ranked 10th in average attendance at 15,283 per game.
Thousands of those Husker fans come from outside of Lincoln. So do thousands of concertgoers for each show.
In March, the arena will host eight days of games in the boys and girls state high school basketball tournaments. State volleyball matches are also played at the arena.
“We’re the venue of choice for most of Nebraska,” Schilling said.
The fan support from outside Lincoln along with the thousands of city dwellers who have consistently attended concerts and events is the key element in the arena’s success.
“(Bringing in concerts) starts with relationships, some of which started three decades ago," Schilling said. “But even with all the relationships in the world, the great building wouldn’t work if the fans didn’t support the shows. We owe it all to the fans.”
The arena was also pitched as a community venue, a place to hold events, large, like high school graduations and gubernatorial inaugural balls, and small, like corporate meetings and dinners.
But the arena played its biggest role in the community in early 2021, when it opened up for COVID-19 vaccination clinics where some 38,000 people got their first shots.
“Nobody thought about a pandemic in 2010,” Schilling said, “but the community was served well and safely. The community was served in a way we couldn’t have anticipated when we opened the building.”
As for the arena itself, it has endured as a “state-of-the-art” building for a decade.
“I love to tell (promoters) that the building still has that new building smell, like a new car smell,” Schilling said. “People are delighted with it. It has wonderful amenities and it has a lot of technology to support backstage, on stage and front of house.”
Those amenities that draw artists and fans to the arena include the restaurants, bars and hotels that have filled the surrounding area.
That has made the arena a preferred venue to start concert tours, a place where artists and their crew can stay and go out nearby as they set up and rehearse in the arena for a couple days before playing their first public show.
The hotels, bars and restaurants in the Haymarket were also cited in the consensus evaluation that the Big Ten Wrestling Tournament held at the arena last March was the best version of that event for the competitors and, importantly, fans who traveled to Lincoln.
Schilling worked for years in partnership with Tom Lorenz, the arena’s founding manager who for awhile feared the new building would open across the street from a muddy field.
But by the time Michael Buble christened the arena with a show on Sept. 13, 2013, development was keeping pace.
‘It’s really part of the success of the arena,” Schilling said.
There have been wins and losses for businesses surrounding the venue, specifically the Railyard, which has had to pivot from its original concept as a hub for bars and restaurants surrounding a public market.
The arena’s singular failure has been the festival space located across the BNSF Railway tracks north of the building. Few events have been held there and the parking lot often hasn’t been fully utilized by those attending events.
“The distance to the Haymarket, even to the building, is just enough that it is too many steps,” Schilling said. “It hasn’t worked because of the distance.”
There are few physical problems in the building, which has developed a national reputation for its quality acoustics and its “close-to-the-action” seating design.
“I wouldn’t change a thing about the building," Schilling said, noting there's no need for major repairs other than routine maintenance and upgrades to keep pace with changing technology.
There is, however, one area of programming that presents a continuing challenge for the arena.
“We continue to work with the University of Nebraska to see what NCAA tournaments we could bring in, the NCAA men’s basketball tournament being No. 1," Schilling said. “Currently, we may not have everything we need from a full-service hotel standpoint. We’ll keep working through that to try to get more of those kind of events.”
The arena, he said, has largely recovered from the pandemic, save for the persistent shortage of food and beverage staff.
“The entertainment and sports industry was highly affected,” Schilling said. “We saw everything disappear for a year and then another year of recovery. We’re at a point where, going forward, we’re as close to normal as we’ve been.”
That means tickets going on sale for a full schedule of 2023 arena and Pinewood Bowl concerts, which began with Blake Shelton on Feb. 16.
That’s precisely what was promised years ago and what the arena should deliver, Schilling said, for years to come.
Photos: Lincoln's Pinnacle Bank Arena from the ground up
Pinnacle Bank Arena
Pinnacle Bank Arena
Aerials
Pinnacle Bank Arena - interior
Pinnacle Bank Arena topping-out
Pinnacle Bank Arena's final beam
Pinnacle Bank Arena's final beam
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Pinnacle Bank Arena's final beam
Pinnacle Bank Arena's final beam
Pinnacle Bank Arena's final beam
Pinnacle Bank Arena's final beam
Pinnacle Bank Arena's final beam
Pinnacle Bank Arena's final beam
Pinnacle Bank Arena's final beam
Pinnacle Bank Arena's final beam
Pinnacle Bank Arena - enclosure
Pinnacle Bank Arena - enclosure
Pinnacle Bank Arena
Pinnacle Bank Arena
Pinnacle Bank Arena
Pinnacle Bank Arena construction, 3.12.13
Pinnacle Bank Arena construction, 3.12.13
Pinnacle Bank Arena construction, 3.12.13
Pinnacle Bank Arena construction, 3.12.13
Pinnacle Bank Arena floor
Pinnacle Bank Arena construction, 3.12.13
Pinnacle Bank Arena
Pinnacle Bank Arena
Pinnacle Bank Arena
Pinnacle Bank Arena
Arena
Arena
Arena
Construction work
MR13050301
Pinnacle Bank Arena sign
Pinnacle Bank Arena sign
Siding
Bleachers
Testing seats
Seat installation
Suites
Seat installation
Main concourse
Main concourse
Front windows
Pinnacle Bank Arena Ribbon Cutting
Pinnacle Bank Arena Ribbon Cutting
Candy Box
Tim Miles
Pinnacle Bank Arena Ribbon Cutting
Pinnacle Bank Arena Ribbon Cutting
Reach the writer at 402-473-7244 or kwolgamott@journalstar.com. On Twitter @KentWolgamott
Pinnacle Bank Arena officials said there are no major repairs needed in the 10-year-old venue other than routine maintenance and upgrades to keep pace with changing technology.