Wind Creek ranked No. 2 busiest club venue in the world: ‘Lot of entertainment for the Lehigh Valley’

BETHLEHEM, Pa. — Nearly every week, Wind Creek Event Center announces new concerts and other shows for casino patrons and the public to attend.

And some are big, in regard to industry standards: Sting, the former singer for The Police, played two shows at the event center Nov. 20 and 21.

Foreigner, the 1970s hit-making pop-rock band, reunited with original singer Lou Gramm for just eight shows — and Wind Creek was among them.

And that busy pace of booking and top level of talent has generated results.

The new annual rankings by entertainment industry publication Pollstar says Wind Creek Event Center was the No. 2 highest-grossing club-sized venue in the world.

The rankings measure ticket sales for entertainment events from Jan. 1 to Dec. 31, 2025.

“I think the Pollstar [ranking] is just a great nod to interest in the event center and interest in what Wind Creek is doing,” event center General Manager Jamie Hines said.

“It’s a great nod to the level of staff members that we have.”

This year, Wind Creek Event Center presented a total 107 events — 93 concerts, 10 private events, two sporting events and two nightclub events, Hines said.

It sold a little under 146,000 tickets, he said.

That ranked Wind Creek behind only MGM Music Hall at Fenway, a multi-purpose performing arts center in Boston, for most tickets sold, Pollstar said.

Wind Creek tops such venues as Forum Melbourne in Australia; The Rooftop at Pier 17 in Manhattan; The Chelsea in Las Vegas; M Telus Theatre in Montreal, Canada; Hard Rock Live in Orlando, Florida; L’Olympia in Paris, France; and Echostage and the venerable 9:30 Club, both in Washington, D.C.

Success in a tougher year

It’s at least the second time Wind Creek has achieved that height in ticket sales — though it’s the first time since it assumed the name Wind Creek when that company took over ownership of the adjoining casino in 2019.

It was called Sands Bethlehem Event Center when it previously achieved the ranking in 2015.

In 2015, the event center said it sold 288,126 tickets to 140 events, again making it the second-busiest club-size venue in the world, according to Pollstar figures.

Event center owner Jeff Trainer said this year’s achievement came amid a far tougher concert atmosphere.

“This past year was probably one of our more difficult years, in terms of getting as many offers,” Trainer said.

“We normally get hundreds of offers and then choose from those offers, and mix it up. And last year was way less than most years.”

A reasons for that could be more competition, Trainer said.

“More competition is coming out all the time, there’s more venues everywhere” — though he discounted competition from Allentown’s new Archer Music Hall.

Trainer said that with that venue’s size — a 1,700 standing room capacity compared with Wind Creek’s 3,750 capacity — it books a different type of act than Wind Creek.

Trainer also said some of the more popular acts “are getting older, so they’re not touring as much.”

“Janet Jackson, when she would play a 30-date tour, they would play Wells Fargo Center [now Xfinity Mobile Arena, in Philadelphia] and Madison Square Garden [in New York], she would come to our place,” as she did in 2016.

“And I used to say they were stopping for gas money. That kind of disappeared a lot last year.

“And yet we still, as you can see, ran quite a few shows and a lot of entertainment for the Lehigh Valley.”

Distributed

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Pollstar magazine

A history of success

That positioning has been true since the event center opened.

Pollstar founder and former Editor-in-Chief Gary Bongiovanni said at the time that market support — people’s willingness to attend shows — is the main factor for having high-level success.

But another important factor is location — near enough to a large population of people to come to shows, but not so close that you compete.

The Lehigh Valley is well-situated in that regard. It has a large population pool from which to draw — center officials say a significant part of its clientele comes from New Jersey, New York and even farther.

The center’s location between Philadelphia and New York also makes it an easy stop for artists playing those larger markets, “piggybacking” on shows in those cities.

Trainer and other event center officials said when the venue opened its doors May 15, 2012, they expected it to be among the Top 10 busiest in the world.

With the Sands casino brand name — and now Wind Creek — behind it, the venue had immediate respect in the entertainment world, giving it the ability to attract top talent.

And with the casino’s support, it had the financial backing to pay for it, as well.

It quickly became apparent the event center had the public’s support, as well.

In its first year, when it operated just seven months, the center offered 85 shows and reported to Pollstar sales of 67,059 tickets, putting it in the Top 30 clubs worldwide.

Its early shows sold at 80 percent capacity — an unheard-of rate for the concert industry — and only got better with the consistency of talent level, Trainer said.

By 2014, its ticket sales were sixth-best in the world.

Strategy: ‘Everything is important’

Hines said strategy also has had a big part in the event center’s success.

“I think [it’s] the way we are in partnering with the casino property and what we’re building,” he said. “I work on creating a brand for the building.

“We’re bringing in things that our local audience and the players at the casino are working to go to and be part of, to maximize the best of what the property’s offering — an all-cohesive brand.

“So we’re not pulling in things that are totally off the wall to put in here, ‘cause that’s not what works for us.

“And I think we make a very good conscious effort to bring in things that work great for the Lehigh Valley, that work great for the player base of the casino by working together to pull in the best programming all year round under that idea.”

And while shows such as Sting and Foreigner capture a lot of attention, “every act that we have is important to us,” Hines said.

“I think we treat everything as important, which also a reason why we’re successful,” he said.

“Even though we have Sting, it doesn’t mean we treat that any different under an advertising or with marketing as we would with Voyage: The Journey Tribute.

“We’re treating everything as important and we create great results on those type of shows, just as much as we create great results on the Stings and the John Fogertys.

“Nothing gets the back burner here. Everything is considered important.”

‘There’s no reason to stop’

A recent example of looking for shows that fit the Lehigh Valley was an eight-show run of the Broadway Christmas stage play “Miracle on 34th Street.”

“’Miracle on 34th Street’ was our first attempt at Broadway,” Hines said. “The event center isn’t a designed theater house. It’s a club room. We don’t have a flat house and we don’t have the normal things that Broadway shows need.

“And I actually had to convince the producers to do the show here, because it wasn’t a standard theater house. And they actually, when they designed the set, they had to design it knowing that they were coming here — to make it fit in what they all non-traditional rooms.”

But by the show doing Wind Creek, “we have helped them create a model where they and sell this to other properties like us and other casinos,” Hines said.

“We’ve sold over 7,000 tickets to ‘Miracle.’ We were the highest-selling market out of all the national tour.”

Trainer said, “Now, at least in my own mind, we can run more of these.”

“And growing up in the Lehigh Valley, you never could go to see an actual Broadway play,” he said. “And us being so close to New York, I just think a lot of people travel from here to go to New York City.”

Success, they say, breeds success. And Wind Creek Event Center officials said they’re already looking forward to 2026.

The event center already has announced 35 shows for next year. They include Jan. 16, Rob Thomas from matchbox twenty; Feb. 20 is Bush; and comedian Gabriel “Fluffy” Iglesias in September.

“We get a good variety — comedy,” Trainer said. “I just think that, after all these years, it’s exciting.

He said “Wind Creek is supporting it even more. They want to see … really good shows, that would play a much bigger arena.

“Wait till you see the lineup coming up.”

“I think next year we’re going to do what we are doing,” Hines said. “There’s no reason to stop that.

“But I think we are working cohesively to get more of the higher-level shows just as a brand. And I think we’re going to see more of that next year.”