ANN ARBOR (WWJ) — Michigan Stadium has hosted hundreds of football games in its nearly 100-year history. But for the first time ever this fall, the Big House will host a concert.
Officials with the University of Michigan on Wednesday announced Zach Bryan and John Mayer will headline the first-ever concert at the Big House on Sept. 27, with hope of breaking attendance records.
Tickets will go on sale Friday at 10 a.m. and can be purchased online at https://www.axs.com. Joshua Slone and Ryan Bingham and the Texas Gentlemen will also perform at the concert, put on and promoted by AEG Presents.
Michigan Athletic Director Warde Manuel said officials have been “studying and evaluating what it takes to host a concert” at the Big House for a couple years and Wednesday’s announcement “marks that next step in the venture with great partners.”
Speaking to WWJ Newsradio 950’s Jeremy Otto, Michigan Athletics COO Rob Rademacher said a lot of planning has gone into making the show happen, but it won’t be without its challenges.
“There’s one tunnel in and out. We literally drove a crane in there as a test to make sure we could. And it comes within inches of the ceiling,” Rademacher said. “So we’ve got enough room to get a crane down on the field to build the stage, and that’s a big deal.”
The Saturday date of Sept. 27 happens to fall on a bye week for the Wolverines and comes a week after they play on the road at Oklahoma, allowing even more time to prep the stadium for the show.
“This gives us two weeks to get the stadium ready for a concert, and we wanted to make sure we had time on the back end to get it back to being ready for a football game,” Rademacher said.
Rademacher said officials are hoping to break the attendance record for a stadium concert held in the U.S., which was set last year when over 11,000 people saw George Strait at Kyle Field at Texas A&M University.
Hailing from Oklahoma, Grammy Award-winner Zach Bryan has "risen to the forefront of country music as a once-in-a-generation voice," according to a press release from the university.