After April concert, what comes next for Sanford Stadium as a music venue?
Georgia athletic director Josh Brooks knows that everyone has an ideal candidate in mind for a possible concert series inside Sanford Stadium.
He mentioned the Avett Brothers, Widespread Panic and R.E.M. as theoretical choices.
Given how successful April’s “Live Between the Hedges” was, Brooks knows there’s a reason to keep having concerts inside the famed Sanford Stadium.
“In this day and age, we’ve got to find new streams of revenue,” Brooks said during Georgia’s spring athletic board meeting. “And the concert, I think that’s gone very well.”
Luke Bryan, Jason Aldean, Zach Top and Lauren Alaina performed inside Sanford Stadium on April 25, with Brooks praising their performances. More than 60,000 fans were in attendance.
During the concert, Georgia coach Kirby Smart went on stage and “called the Dawgs.”
Georgia is far from the only school to turn its football stadium into a concert venue. Morgan Wallen performed at Alabama and Tennessee, while Zach Bryan played at Notre Dame and Michigan last September.
Brooks acknowledged there are some logistical challenges that come with welcoming that large an audience onto Georgia’s campus.
“We’ll be very, very focused on how we do that in the future, grow areas to grow that, but also we have to be respectful of campus,” Brooks said. “Because we do an event like this, it puts a lot of pressure on campus, because our stadium is in (the) center of campus, so we always have to be mindful about that, and how that’s going to affect it.”
The Bulldogs have held a spring game in April, and spring commencement has annually been held in May inside the football stadium. That creates somewhat of a limited window for when Georgia can host a concert.
The Bryan and Aldean concert was not the first inside Sanford Stadium; they previously played one there in 2013. Brooks worked behind the scenes in making sure that the first concert came together, as he was Georgia’s associate athletic director at the time.
With the need to continue to create revenue, Brooks knows Georgia can’t afford to wait that long between its next potential concert inside Sanford Stadium.
As for who might play inside Sanford Stadium next, Brooks did make one critical point.
“It’s all about who they think they can sell those tickets,” Brooks said.
About the Author
Connor Riley has been covering the University of Georgia since 2014 before moving to DawgNation full-time before the 2018 season. He helps in all areas of the site such as team coverage, recruiting, video production, social media and podcasting. He graduated from the University of Georgia in 2016.
