Ed Sheeran at Levi’s Stadium will be bigger than Taylor Swift, Beyonce

Beyonce and Taylor Swift drew huge crowds to their shows at Levi's Stadium. Yet, Ed Sheeran is expected to surpass those numbers this weekend.

The buzz surrounding this weekend’s Ed Sheeran concert at Levi’s Stadium has been decidedly smaller than when summer concert queens Taylor Swift and Beyonce came to the venue.

The crowd, however, will be substantially larger.

In fact, it might wind up being the biggest concert crowd the venue has ever seen.

Yes, you read that right. Two of America’s biggest popular music stars in history are about to be out-sold by an unassuming British folk-pop singer who more closely resembles Alfred E. Neuman than Mick Jagger.

Sheeran is expected to draw north of 70,000 fans when his The +–=÷× Tour (aka the Mathematics Tour) hits the home of the San Francisco 49ers in Santa Clara on Saturday. Beyonce, by comparison, reportedly drew about 50,000 fans to her Levi’s gig on Aug. 30, while Swift brought in around 58,000 fans each to her two concerts in July. (Both Swift and Beyonce broke the stadium’s nighttime curfew, which has been a source of controversy at the stadium for sometime)

Emily Eskin, head of Levi’s Stadium Events, confirmed that Sheeran’s Mathematics Tour would mark “our most attended show of the summer concert season.” And it could well wind up as much more than that.

Surpassing 70,000 concertgoers would establish Sheeran’s concert as one of the biggest crowds for any event at the stadium.

The current concert attendance record was set in June 2015 by Fare Thee Well: Celebrating 50 Years of the Grateful Dead, which featured surviving members of the Dead and other musicians long associated with the band. The show brought in nearly 76,000 fans per night during a two-night stand. Earlier that same year, WrestleMania set Levi’s overall record with roughly 77,000 in attendance.

How is this possible? Doesn’t a “sold out” venue represent the same number of people sitting in the same number of seats?

Not hardly, when it comes to stadium events.

Unlike with amphitheaters and many theaters, the stage size and configuration at stadiums are routinely altered for each event, which goes a long way to dictating attendance.

Swift (whose tour has been captured in a new movie) and Beyonce were limited in the number of seats they could sell due to the massive stages utilized on their tours. In each case, a tall stage was erected at one side of the stadium floor, and promoters couldn’t sell the seats behind the stage because people sitting in them wouldn’t have been able to see the show. Swift countered this to some extent by installing screens on the side of her stage, which allowed her to sell some seats that remained vacant for Beyonce. (Read a review of her show here.)

Sheeran, who also performs at the Fox Theater in Oakland on Sept. 15, doesn’t face those issues because his current tour uses an “in-the-round” setting, where the stage is placed at the center of the field, affording a decent sight line on all sides of a stadium. Metallica has been using the concept for years — including on its current concert tour, which recently drew a record-breaking 80,000 fans to SoFi Stadium near Los Angeles area.

This is not to diminish Sheeran’s considerable musical accomplishments. With a knack for catchy, poignant folk-pop songs, he’s sold an estimated 150 million albums worldwide. His recent show at Lumen Field set a new concert attendance record for the Seattle venue, which had previously been held by Swift, reports the Seattle Times.

“In the past decade, Ed Sheeran has defied the odds as, debatably, the most popular meat-and-potatoes songwriter on the planet,” says Daniel Kohn, editorial director at Spin magazine. “His catchy melodies and blending of different genres that check all of the boxes for pop singles, along with a likable public persona and a willingness to experiment, appeal to different fan bases and have allowed him to retain, and grow, his audience.”

And the numbers he’s putting up seem all that more impressive given that he doesn’t exude anywhere near the type of blinding star power as Swift or Beyonce, and his concerts are lower-key affairs.

“As opposed to the spectacle of Taylor Swift and Beyonce shows, Ed Sheeran’s concerts celebrate simplicity — an unassuming performer whose music style brings pop into hummable melodies with lyrics that his fans can relate to,” says Sanjay Sharma, an adjunct professor of finance at the University of Southern California and an expert on the touring industry.

But despite the huge crowds expected to turn out at Levi’s to see the singer, the Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority isn’t expecting quite the public transit draw seen with Swift’s shows.

The first night of her sold-out Eras Tour broke VTA ridership records with an estimated 23,400 people taking light rail to and from the stadium. That obliterated the previous daily ridership record, the 2015 NHL Winter Classic, which had more than 15,000 passengers. In comparison, Super Bowl 50 in 2016 had roughly 10,000 riders.

VTA spokesperson Stacey Hendler Ross said that it would be running the same extra service it ran for Swift and Beyonce — 30 percent more capacity, which is the highest level of service the transit agency can deliver.

Swift’s VTA record, though, probably isn’t going anywhere, Hendler Ross said, because her concert drew many fans without tickets who camped outside across the street to capture a small glimpse of the phenom’s show.