Breaking news: Def Leppard Announces final World Tour – Dates and Cities Revealed…..one Last Ride…But the Def Leppard tour in 2025 is entirely cancelled, including….

Following more than 48 hours of keeping Charlotte music fans guessing, Live Nation and Tepper Sports Entertainment on Thursday morning revealed their well-kept secret: Billy Joel and Sting are the mystery artists bringing a tour to Bank of America Stadium next year. The Rock and Roll Hall of Famers will perform here on Saturday, May 10, a date that currently is the only one they have planned for the Southeast in 2025. Tickets go on sale at 9 a.m. Friday, Oct. 4, at LiveNation.com. For Joel, who turns 76 next May, it will be his second time playing the stadium in just over three years, having taken fans on “an exhilarating ride” here in April 2022. Sting, however, hasn’t performed in Charlotte since November 2007, when he headlined then-Charlotte Bobcats Arena (now Spectrum Center) with his band The Police. He turns 73 next Wednesday. Billed as “Billy Joel & Sting: One Night — One Stage,” it’s a safe bet the setlists will include songs like “Every Breath You Take,” “Roxanne” and “Fragile” from Sting, and selections like “Piano Man,” “Scenes From an Italian Restaurant” and “Only the Good Die Young” from Joel. Joel and Sting, of course, weren’t actually in attendance for what the organizations had hyped in a Tuesday-morning email as the addition of “another major show to the 2025 concert series.” The most recognizable name at Thursday’s event was Charlotte Mayor Vi Lyles, who officially made the announcement (and noted, during her brief address: “I think I got married to a Billy Joel song.”) Still, it was an extraordinary attempt at showmanship for both the concert promoter and the Carolina Panthers. A fancy ceremony is highly unusual for this type of announcement, even one involving Charlotte’s largest outdoor venue, even one centering around a major live-music draw. In fact, the last to get the royal treatment was also Joel — also in absentia — at a similar news conference in September 2019 to announce a 2020 show (one that wound up getting postponed for two years due to Covid). In the five years since, no other artist has been made the star of an in-person announcement for a BofA concert. The Rolling Stones’ and Elton John’s performances in 2021 and 2022, respectively, each were teased with logos cast onto the stadium videoboards ahead of their reveals; but in both cases the official news ultimately was handled via email. Even Beyoncé, last year, simply got a press release. As such, given the baked-right-in hype, there was a fair amount of wild speculation Tuesday and Wednesday, with armchair pundits making guesses that included stadium-friendly artists like AC/DC, Paul McCartney, U2, Bruce Springsteen, Lady Gaga and Oasis. Taylor Swift’s name was tossed around, too, but then quickly tossed out — due to her disqualifying relationships with Live Nation rivals AEG Presents and The Messina Group.