Global superstar Shakira will make her first ever concert appearance at what one trade publication says will be the first-ever concert for Valley Children's Stadium in Fresno (formerly Bulldog Stadium). Photos via Fresno State Athletics, Live Nation. Photo illustration by Cecilia Lopez

Due to overwhelming demand, global superstar Shakira has added Fresno to her “Las Mujeres Ya No Lloran” world tour. 

The artist, known best for her songs “Hips Don’t Lie” and the 2010 FIFA World Cup song “Waka Waka”, will be coming to Valley Children’s Stadium — formerly Bulldog Stadium — later this summer. 

She kicked off the North American leg of her tour on May 13 in Charlotte, North Carolina. The Thursday, Aug. 7 performance at Valley Children’s Stadium is the fourth California tour date and appears to kick off a Latin-America leg of the “Las Mujeres Ya No Lloran” tour — named for her latest album, which translates from Spanish to “women no longer cry.”

She will perform at Snapdragon Stadium in San Diego on June 26, Oracle Park in San Francisco on June 30 and SoFi Stadium in Inglewood on Aug. 4.

Paul Loeffler, director of broadcasting for Fresno State Athletics, said he believes the last time Valley Children’s saw a sellout crowd for a non-athletic-related event was an October 2001 appearance by Rev. Billy Graham that happened soon after the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

Fresno City Councilmember Tyler Maxwell, who represents District 4, where Valley Children’s Stadium resides, spoke on the impact of bringing a global superstar like Shakira to Fresno State. Maxwell gave a lot of credit to Garrett Klassy, Fresno State’s athletic director.

Maxwell also addressed some of the concerns about noise from Valley Children’s Stadium in the past from the nearby neighborhoods. 

“Director Klassy has been in communication with me and my staff for months in anticipation of this and making sure that he does everything by the book,” Maxwell, who lives in a nearby neighborhood, told The Business Journal.

He noted that if he thought this concert would be disruptive, he wouldn’t have been in favor of it. 

“I think it’s going to be the opposite,” Maxwell said. “I think you’re going to get families from the surrounding neighborhoods walking over and enjoying the concert firsthand.”

Maxwell praised Klassy, who took over as the university’s athletic director on June 21 of last year, for bringing new and creative ways to give attention to Fresno State.

“Klassy is somebody that I’ve seen since day one trying to come up with new and innovative ways to bring fans to Fresno State,” Maxwell said. “All the while increasing revenues for the athletic department.”

Shortly over one month after Shakira’s concert, Pitbull, another international superstar, will be coming to Fresno for Party in the Park at Woodward Park in September.  

Although Woodward Park isn’t in Maxwell’s district, he touched on what having two global icons coming to Fresno in such a short amount of time means for the city.

“It speaks to the fact that Fresno has positioned itself very well to attract these kinds of artists to visit our city,” Maxwell said. “We want to attract people not just within the city to attend these concerts, but outside of the city as well. It’s going to help establish us on the map as a hub of entertainment and be great for the local economy as we get people out here to spend their dollars and have a good time out with family and friends.”

Tickets will go on sale Wednesday, June 25 at 10 a.m. on the LiveNation website, and presale begins June 23 at the same time. The VIP package includes premium seating, a meet-and-greet and photo op with Shakira, and exclusive merchandise. The concert will be the first-ever hosted at Valley Children’s Stadium, and the first appearance in Fresno by the multi-Grammy award winner, according to entertainment publication Pollstar.

“While the central California city of Fresno is an active concert market with a population of more than 500,000 and various venues including the 16,000-capacity Save Mart Center basketball arena, multiple theater venues and minor league baseball Chukchansi Park with more than 10,000 seats, Fresno has likely never had a stadium concert with as many available tickets as the Shakira show. If she could sell into the 20,000-capacity range, it would almost surely be the city’s largest single-night, standalone concert ever, at least reported to Pollstar,” reported Pollstar.

Pollstar, the concert industry’s leading trade publication, was founded in Fresno in 1981 before relocating to Los Angeles in 2018. It said the largest all-time grosses submitted by promoters for concerts in Fresno include “Madonna’s two-night stand at the Save Mart Center in 2006, which sold 20,154 combined tickets and grossed $3.75 million, and four shows of Garth Brooks in 2016, where he sold a combined 51,743 tickets and grossed $3.4 million. More recently, Mexican star Peso Pluma last summer grossed just under $3 million on 14,333 tickets sold at the arena, which is located on the campus of Fresno State.”