Billy Strings visited Asheville, NC for six sold-out shows this month, and the city has shared some figures on the residency’s impact on the economy. Over the two, three-show weekend runs at the ExploreAsheville.com Arena, Strings and his hordes of fans brought in over $15 million to the Western North Carolina city that was ravaged by Hurricane Helene last fall.
In the Asheville Watchdog, a reader wrote in to ask “Answer Man” John Boyle how big of an economic impact the shows brought to the city. As the unidentified reader observed, “Downtown felt like the special weird Asheville that has been missing for a while,” a sentiment many locals—Billy fans and non-fans alike—expressed as visitors once again flooded the streets, hotels, bars, and breweries around town.
For answers, Boyle contacted Chris Corl, general manager of the Harrah’s Cherokee Center-Asheville, the entertainment complex that houses the Arena and the temporarily shuttered Thomas Wolfe Auditorium. Corl said, “direct spending generated in the Asheville area by the Billy Strings concerts is estimated at $15.7 million, including $6.3 million in lodging revenue and $3.5 million in food and beverage sales. Other categories comprising the remainder include transportation, retail sales, recreation, space rental and business services.”
Between February 2nd and 16th, the ExploreAsheville.com Arena hosted 12 events and recorded an attendance of 46,581—with 38,174 of those attendees coming from Strings. According to the arena’s sales data, tickets to Billy’s shows were sold to fans in all 50 states, Puerto Rico, and five countries, including 121 tickets to Great Britain. Inside the venue, food and beverage staff received $44,720 in tips and the venue paid out $250,117 in direct wages to staff working the event (not including salaried full-time employees). The arena also paid local nonprofit groups $61,519 for their work volunteering in the bars and concessions stands.
The run went so well, Corl said the venue is already working with Strings’ team for another run next year, “with hopes of finding a way to further create a significant impact in Asheville and Buncombe County.”
Strings’ run came five months after Hurricane Helene’s historic devastation, which is said to have caused an estimated $60 billion in damage to the state of North Carolina. Even after the roads were cleared and the town started coming back to life, things were far from normal as the city was left quiet and desolated by the noticeable lack of tourism in the fall—a critical commercial time for many local businesses. In the aftermath of the storm, many national concert tours canceled their stops in Asheville (though many of those artists donated proceeds from other shows to local Asheville charities). Strings was one of the few large-scale artists to keep his dates in Asheville, and he even delayed the ticket on sale for weeks so that locals could participate once internet was restored to the area. Billy’s management team utilized a geo-focused pre-sale with zip code tracking, only allowing those with FEMA-recognised zip codes to get early access to tickets.
Up next for Billy Strings is a three-night run in his adopted hometown this weekend, with two nights at Nashville’s Bridgestone Arena on Friday and Saturday followed by a Sunday finale at Ryman Auditorium. Find tickets and a full list of Billy Strings tour dates here. Revisit Live For Live Music‘s coverage of Billy Strings’ Asheville run: Thursday, February 6th | Friday, February 7th | Saturday, February 8th | Friday, February 14th | Sunday, February 16th.