Can concerts or sporting events cause earthquakes?

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Often, there are reports of concerts and sporting events creating an “earthquake” due to massive amounts of simultaneous human energy – whether that be cheering, dancing, screaming or all three at once.

Fans attend a Metallica concert at the Waldbuehne on June 6, 2006 in Berlin, Germany.

(Kristian Jakubaszek/Getty Images/Getty Images)

Earlier this month, during a concert in Athens, Greece, world-famous American band Metallica attracted an enthusiastic crowd of 80,000 fans, with the show recording minor tremors on nearby seismic equipment, Greek news site eKathimerini reported.

Can concerts and sporting events actually trigger real earthquakes? According to a USGS seismologist, the answer is no.

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“There are many, many phenomena on Earth that can cause vibrations in the Earth, and the role of the seismometer, which is a scientific instrument, is to record those vibrations,” said Dr. William Barnhart, associate coordinator of the USGS Earthquake Hazards Program. “Earthquakes are one of the processes that produce vibrations and seismographs record them.”

Crowds on day nine of the 50th D’ete De Quebec Festival headlined by Metallica on the main stage at Plaines D’Abraham on July 14, 2017, in Quebec City, Canada.

(Oli Millington/Redferns/Getty Images)

So, when 60,000 music fans, sports fans, or humans in general come together — regardless of the genre — they often produce human-caused ground vibrations that are picked up by nearby seismographs.

“There are a lot of other things that cause those vibrations as well. In fact, anything that shakes the ground will be picked up by these seismographs. So, if you put a whole group of people on the field, and they get really excited, and they start cheering and jumping, that creates vibrations that get recorded by these seismographs,” Dr. Barnhart said.

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This micro-seismic activity, a fancy name for a metal band, is recorded using the same seismometers that record earthquakes, but don’t fall to your knees just yet.

It’s very easy to misread an earthquake, Dr. Barnhart said.

This micro-seismic activity was recorded using the same seismometers that record earthquakes, but don’t fall to your knees just yet. It is very easy for experts to distinguish between crowd vibrations and an actual earthquake.

(Jan Woytas/Image Alliance via Getty Images/Getty Images)

“MetalliQuakes’ music, of course, especially when you start playing ‘Enter Sandman’ and it gets everyone moving at the same time in the same way, and then all of a sudden, this noise becomes very clear because it’s all happening together at the same frequency, so those seismic waves get bigger and they register well on these machines and it sounds like a really big signal,” Dr. Barnhart said.

One such scenario occurred on May 7, 2025, at Virginia Tech’s Lane Stadium, when a crowd of more than 60,000 people produced “MetaliQuake,” which made national headlines during a performance of the group’s 1991 hit “Enter the Sandman.”

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Whether the explosion was caused by a concert or a musical, a simultaneous eruption in a stadium may appear to be earth-shaking in the moment, but it is not an actual earthquake.

One of the earliest and most famous examples of a man-made seismic event came during one of the defining sporting moments of the 2000s, when Marshawn Lynch of the Seattle Seahawks scampered 67 yards for a winning touchdown in the NFL Wild Card playoffs on January 8, 2011 — a moment immortalized as “BeastQuake.”

Seattle Seahawks’ Marshawn Lynch (24) in action and scores in the end zone after a 67-yard rushing touchdown in the fourth quarter against the New Orleans Saints in Seattle on January 8, 2011.

(Photo by Peter Reed Miller/Sports Illustrated via Getty Images)

In front of a crowd of more than 65,000, Lynch’s famous touchdown run garnered enough noise and energy in his pursuit of the game as it evaded New Orleans Saints defenders to cause a tremor in the nearby Pacific Northwest seismic grid, with a magnitude of 2.0.

The shaking did not stop there.

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Taylor Swift’s Era’s Tour has sent shockwaves around the world as the highest-grossing concert tour of all time – with several “SwiftQuakes” signing up for her record-breaking tour.

During her performance of “Shake It Off,” Swifties were literally shaking. And in Los Angeles at SoFi Stadium, the strongest quake was equivalent to a 2.0-magnitude quake during Swift’s 2014 hit, according to a study.

Fans enjoy Taylor Swift’s performance during the Eras Tour at SoFi Stadium in Inglewood Monday, August 7, 2023.

(Allen J. Chapin/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images)

In many cases, for example at Lumen Field in Seattle, the reason they are recorded is because the stadium is equipped with instruments to see how it would handle a real earthquake.

Engineers then use the information from concerts and sporting events as a vibration source that stimulates the building to understand how it will withstand different types of seismic energy, Dr. Barnhart said.

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In areas where earthquakes are particularly common, large stadiums are designed to handle large earthquakes that far exceed those that have fans cheering and jumping to the tune of their favorite song or landing at the game.

James Hetfield of Metallica performs on stage at Estadio Cívitas Metropolitano on July 14, 2024 in Madrid, Spain.

(Javier Bragado/Redferns/Getty Images)

While these human-caused ground tremors pose no real threat except to opposing fans, that doesn’t mean humans haven’t done their part in causing massive, devastating earthquakes.

Induced earthquakes are caused by or affected by human activity, whether it be oil and gas production, wastewater disposal or mining, and there is a wide range of earthquakes that are entirely human-induced.

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While humans have certainly played a role in causing major earthquakes, Swifties, sports fans and metalheads shouldn’t fear that their cheering, screaming or dancing along with thousands of fellow fans will spark the next big earthquake.

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