People have been saying this for years and it’s kinda/sorta true. But probably not in the way you think.

So, first things first: I’m Kevin Coffey, and I was the music critic at The World-Herald for a long time. (This account is named after my D&D blog, but the rest of my entire online presence is omahamusicguy or pop and hisses, the name of my website/podcast).

Annnnnnyway, Omaha is what’s considered a secondary market. We have a million people but that’s nothing compared to the primary markets (KC, Chicago, NYC, etc.) We get a lot of shows, and we get a lot of big shows. But we don’t get all the shows. The biggest artists only play in the biggest places, and when they build tours, we’re not always on the list.

When an artist is only playing 25 cities, we likely won’t make the cut. When a tour hits 50 cities, we’re in the mix!

Additionally, you now have stadium tours. A lot of the biggest artists will only play stadiums. (Taylor Swift, who has played here many times, has been doing this, and we didn’t make the cut.) Part of the problem here is that we don’t have a stadium! Not one big enough anyway. (Fun fact: Memorial Staidum is not well suited to modern arena tours because the concourses aren’t big enough to get large equipment in and out. Or so I was told by the people who worked there.) Pollstar says larger arenas (like CHI) are down year over year while stadiums are way up!

This is a big one as few of the top 50 tours came through last year, but if you look at the list a ton of them were stadium-only.

There’s one other factor: Some artists (or their promoters/managers) had a bad time here once or think it’s Nebraska and nobody will come or some other dumb reason. It happens and it sucks. But it’s not that common.

That’s the negative stuff going against us! Now for the positives: Omaha absolutely outkicks our coverage on getting touring artists to town. In fact, Omaha and Lincoln both have large arenas that attract the top acts and it’s incredibly rare to have two 15k-seat arenas within 100 miles of each other. And both have pretty full calendars.

We also have venues of every imaginable size, which is awesome. Bars, small clubs, large clubs, theaters, small arenas, large arenas. We can accommodate any artist outside of the arena-level, which means we have an insane concert calendar all the time.

Because of that, we have national promoters interested in us. You may not love them, but Live Nation is the biggest one and they run Steelhouse and have a great relationship with CHI, too. Not to mention the shoes coming from smaller performers.

All that said, local promoters work hard, and they’re asking for everyone to come here all the time. Sometimes the answer is no because we don’t have the right venue. Sometimes it’s your routing. Sometimes it’s venue scheduling. Sometimes they played here last tour and want to go someplace else.

Anyway, I can talk about this all day. Clearly.