Who had more attendees at Madison Square garden?
Executive summary
The precise question—“Who had more attendees at Madison Square Garden?”—requires specifying which two acts or events are being compared; the available reporting most directly compares multi-show runs rather than single-night crowds and shows that Harry Styles led MSG attendance in the referenced reporting period, outpacing acts like Phish and Rage Against the Machine [1]. Venue capacities and historical outliers complicate one-to-one comparisons: single-night totals are bounded by MSG’s roughly 18,000–20,000 configurations, while all-time and multi-night tallies can reach into the hundreds of thousands [2] [3] [4].
1. What the question likely means and why it matters
When someone asks who “had more attendees” at Madison Square Garden they may mean a single performance, a residency/run (multiple nights), or cumulative career totals tied to the venue; the reporting supplied focuses on multi-show attendance tallies and year‑end venue rankings rather than single‑show headcounts, so answering requires choosing the same metric the sources use—here, total attendance across a charted period or multi-show engagement [1] [5].
2. What the sources say directly about recent comparisons
Billboard’s reporting on MSG’s year-end figures identifies Harry Styles as the top draw by attendance during the tracking period, listing him above Phish , Rage Against the Machine , John Mulaney and Luke Combs , which the article summarizes as Styles leading those multi‑show runs by attendance [1]. That same Billboard item ties those attendance numbers to MSG’s record revenue year and 1.8 million tickets sold in the tracking window [1].
3. Venue capacity limits and how they shape the numbers
Madison Square Garden’s seating capacity varies by event type—roughly 19,000 for basketball, about 18,000 for hockey, and up to roughly 20,000 for some concert configurations—which caps single‑night attendance and pushes many headline records into multi‑night totals instead [2] [3] [6]. Earnings and boxscore-style tallies reported to outlets like Billboard aggregate multiple shows when comparing artists, which explains why the highest attendance figures in the sources refer to runs [1].
4. Historical and anomalous figures that complicate comparisons
Historical reporting that predates modern fire‑code capacities notes much larger cumulative figures—Elton John’s 1977 Hall of Fame mention cites “record attendance of 140,000” for a period in June 1977, and archival sources reference single events in older Madison Square Gardens exceeding modern intended capacities—facts that underscore how venue location, configuration, and record‑keeping have changed over decades [4] [7]. Those older totals are not directly comparable to contemporary single‑night caps under current configurations and regulations [2] [7].
5. Limits of the evidence and alternative readings
The supplied reporting does not present a single universal leaderboard for “most attendees ever at MSG” by a single night; instead, it provides year‑end and quarterly aggregates (Billboard’s year‑end boxscore and MSGE’s earnings‑call attendance totals) and capacity figures from venue descriptions [1] [5] [2]. Therefore, the defensible, source‑backed answer within these materials is directional: in the cited modern tracking period, Harry Styles had the most aggregate attendance at MSG among the acts named, surpassing Phish and Rage Against the Machine as reported by Billboard [1]. If the intended comparison was single‑night maximums or all‑time cumulative career totals at MSG, the current sources do not provide a definitive pairwise list to settle that version of the question [4] [2].
Conclusion: the direct answer grounded in the supplied reporting
Based on the reporting provided, Harry Styles had more attendees at Madison Square Garden during the Billboard‑tracked period than the other named acts (including Phish and Rage Against the Machine), as Billboard lists Styles ahead of Phish and Rage in attendance for their respective multi‑show runs [1]. Contemporary venue capacity constraints (roughly 18,000–20,000 depending on configuration) and historic outliers mean that a different metric—single‑night highest attendance or all‑time cumulative attendance—would require additional, specific data not present in the supplied sources [2] [4].