Shakira’s concert is a Fresno first. But are there more stadium shows to come?

It all happened relatively quickly.

It took about two weeks, give or take, for Fresno State to secure and announce an Aug. 7 concert date with Shakira.

The global pop-star is slated to perform at Valley Children’s Stadium.

The concert was a late addition to Shakira’s Las Mujeres Ya No Lloran World Tour (tickets on sale now), and it was announced alongside several new dates in Mexico and a second performance at Los Angeles’ SoFi Stadium (the first night sold out).

It was a coup for Fresno and the university — putting the Central California city among major markets for global tours and opening up new possibilities for the 45-year-old, 40,000+ seat football stadium just off Shaw Avenue west of campus.

It will be the first time the venue has hosted a concert proper and the first major non-sporting event since Billy Graham’s Central Valley Crusade in 2001. If things go well, it could be the largest single-night concert in the city’s history, according to the music industry trade publication Pollstar.

And it comes as the concert industry is trending toward stadium tours, especially among its highest-profile acts. This is forcing markets like Fresno to get creative in finding suitable venues while offering up opportunities at universities like Fresno State, where the athletics departments is looking for ways to grow and diversity revenue as it moves into the larger-profile Pac-12 Conference.

Stadium shows becoming concert trend

The concert will be a different kind of experience for those in attendance.

“I don’t think that Fresno has had this kind of entertainment before,” says Pollstar managing editor Ryan Borba.

By design, stadium tours are built to be more than the typical concert fare you’d see, even in an arena setting like the Save Mart Center, which sits on the east side of Fresno State’s campus and has a capacity upwards of 16,000 for its largest events.

For this tour, Shakira hired a production team that’s done work for the Grammy Awards, the Eurovision Song Contest and the VMAs. They spent a year crafting the staging and visuals.

“It’s not just: put everyone one stage and see how many people we can fit in,” Borba says.

There is a communal aspect to these shows that is appealing for audiences. And there are the logistical efficiencies and gross revenue potential that comes with playing fewer but larger venues. See Beyonce’s three-night run at Stade de France, where she sold 215,025 tickets and grossed nearly $40 million, according to Pollstar’s box office numbers.

This has led to more artists and promoters looking to do stadium shows, Borba says.

A quick look at ongoing or upcoming stadium tours includes everyone from rock icons AC/DC and My Chemical Romance to rapper Kendrick Lamar, pop/country singer Post Malone and country legend George Strait.

And universities are getting in on the trend.

Earlier this year, the University of Michigan announced Luke Bryan would perform at its stadium, which is famously home to Wolverines football. The concert sold out and broke the national ticket sales record as the first ever concert at the 100,000-capacity stadium known as the Big House.

Valley Children’s Stadium hasn’t been upgraded since 1991 and is a modest facility, comparatively. But the promotions teams behind these concerts know what they’re doing, Borba says.

If they are looking at Fresno, that’s exciting.

“You want to be in the conversation,” he says.

“There’s going to be a lot of shows that could do well there.”

New opportunities needed ahead of Pac-12 move

That’s the hope, according to the university’s athletics director, Garrett Klassy.

Shakira is the concert it landed, but the school has been working to woo promoters to the stadium since Klassy was hired last year. Representatives from Live Nation, the world’s largest promotions company, came to town this fall to tour the stadium and get a sense of the facilities.

The university was in negotiations with at least two other concert acts.

“We just didn’t get those across the finish line,” Klassy says.

This is a time of rising financial stakes for the department and the university, which is dealing with both a move into the Pac-12 Conference and a new rule governing revenue-sharing with student-athletes.

And Klassy was hired, in part, for his experience doing just that. It’s what university president Saúl Jiménez-Sandoval called “strategic entrepreneurship” in an interview with The Bee last year.

“He’s very much aware of what’s happening nationwide,” Jiménez-Sandoval told The Bee.

Klassy jokes any experience he has in the world of concert and entertainment is “minimal, but enough to be dangerous,” which seems like it could be humility. While working at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln in 2012, he helped bring Garth Brooks to its Memorial Stadium.

It was the first concert at the stadium since 1987 and sold 90,000 tickets. University students and staff were invited to a free sound check. The estimated economic impact to the city was in excess of $10 million.

That’s something Fresno State will be watching as Skakira comes through town, Klassy says.

Because the concert is about more than Fresno State repeating financial benefits. It’s about quality of life and showing the city and county the viability of having a multi-purpose stadium that’s capable of more than seven weekend games each fall. “Maybe the city gets on board to help with a new stadium,” he says.

That’s something that has worked at other universities, like San Diego State.

Who’s next at Fresno State venue?

Fresno is a strong market, Klassy says, one with more than 1 million people, if you’re looking at county numbers. More than that, it has an engaged audience that’s starved for entertainment, he says.

He’s been to a half-dozen events at the Save Mart Center since he moved to Fresno and that’s the pattern he’s seen.

“They will show up.”

On the news of the Shakira concert alone, the university has already received inquiries from other promoters interested in booking the stadium. But Klassy and Borba agree the concert will be the real litmus test.

The results will depend on how well the show is supported by ticket sales and what kind of experience the university and stadium can provide. “These promoters,” Borba says, “they are now going to know what we’re capable or not capable of.”

This story was originally published June 29, 2025 at 11:00 AM.