Watching the sun set on the stadium rock concert

U2 at the L.A. Memorial Coliseum in 1997 ... the Lilith Fair at the Rose Bowl in 1999 ... the Rolling Stones with Guns N’ Roses at the Coliseum in 1989 ... Elton John at Dodger Stadium in 1975.

Stadium concerts have given pop-rock stars some of their biggest crowds, and fans some of their most cherished memories.

So why has stadium rock joined the endangered species list?

Big-name pop-rock acts can now make as much money staying indoors.

“Shania Twain, Bette Midler, Rod Stewart and some others are grossing $1 million per city,” says Gary Bongiovanni, editor of the concert industry tracking magazine Pollstar. “It used to be the only way you could come close to that was to play a football stadium.”

“But with ticket prices so high, artists have found they can play arenas ... and make the same amount people were making in stadiums five years ago, without the enormous overhead and risk involved,” Bongiovanni says.

Summer has always been peak season for stadium tours, yet none -- except KIIS-FM radio’s Wango Tango station promotion festival on May 15 at the Rose Bowl -- are booked in coming months in the Los Angeles area.

Ray Waddell, who covers the concert business for Billboard, further notes that acts with the drawing power to even consider playing in stadiums primarily attract baby boomer fans. As middle-aged concertgoers, they’re less inclined to put up with the disadvantages of the stadium experience -- difficulty in seeing the stage, sometimes atrocious sound, long lines for restrooms and concessions -- than when they were teens and young adults.

“They don’t want to sit on the grass -- they want a piece of real estate,” Waddell says. “For shows outdoors, amphitheaters tend to give a better experience. Modern arenas that can hold up to 20,000 and that are packed with amenities are great. It may be the end of the era for stadium shows, but I’ve got to ask: How big a loss is it?”

A decade has passed since that era arguably peaked in 1994, a year that boasted stadium tours by the Stones, Pink Floyd, Elton John and Billy Joel, the Eagles and the Grateful Dead.

Few in the industry predict another year like that in the foreseeable future. Last year, only Bruce Springsteen and the Stones played a significant number of stadium shows on their world tours. The 2003 Summer Sanitarium tour co-headlined by Metallica, Linkin Park and Limp Bizkit touched down in about 20 stadiums around the country.

For most acts, the fatter paydays that have become possible since the price of tickets took to the stratosphere in the last five years have virtually knocked stadiums off their radar screens. And with a few exceptions, the main attraction for doing them in the first place was the big box-office payoff.

“There are certain artists who will still want to stage spectacles,” says Jay Marciano, chief strategy officer for AEG Live, which promotes shows throughout the country. “That will continue, but more infrequently than in the past.”

U2 is widely considered one of the few acts with both the fan base and the artistic inclination to make a stadium tour a serious consideration for later this year or in 2005, after the band’s new studio album is slated to be released.

Which direction will the band go?

“It’s a little hard to predict,” U2’s manager, Paul McGuinness, says. “They haven’t finished the new album yet, and the character of the new album and the new production will be the determining factors.

“Quite honestly,” he says, “in the case of U2, it’s more a function of what kind of music they want to do, rather than what kind of box-office gross they want to achieve.

“Certainly playing indoors is much easier, and the logistics are much more controlled,” McGuinness says. “Now that high ticket prices indoors are accepted, if you’re going to take the audience to a big outdoor event, you’d really have to be doing something very, very good, and we would take that responsibility very seriously. If we decide to go outdoors, it will be because it’s worth doing something on a grand scale.”

In Southern California, other factors come into play.

“Maybe it’s not just one thing,” says Paul Tollett, a partner in Goldenvoice, the promoter of last week’s Coachella Music and Arts Festival in Indio. “There aren’t as many acts that can do stadiums now. The high ticket prices possible in arenas have probably picked off a few tours that might have gone to stadiums previously. The Glen Helen Pavilion in Devore [with capacity of 60,000] has picked off a couple, because it’s pretty cheap to operate and the stage is built in and it was designed for concerts.”

He also cited the new 27,000-capacity Home Depot Center in Carson, which, like Goldenvoice, is owned by Anschutz Entertainment Group. The Dave Matthews Band, one of the few bands to emerge in the last two decades that has achieved stadium-level followings, played two shows at the soccer stadium last summer and will be back Aug. 28 and 29.

One question looms, stemming from the unalterable fact that stadiums hold so many more people than amphitheaters or sports arenas: If musicians now command stadium-level paychecks charging higher prices for arena concerts -- which cost on average $200,000 per night to put on, compared with $500,000 to $1 million per show at a stadium -- won’t somebody try hiking ticket prices at a stadium show for an even bigger payoff?

“The answer to that is yes,” Tollett says with a laugh. “It’ll probably be a triple bill, and a pretty strong one. It would have to be something like the Eagles and Pink Floyd together with another big act. But somebody will try it.”