Bad Bunny Closes Out 2022 With Record-Breaking $435 Million in Tour Grosses
Written by djfrosty on December 13, 2022
Bad Bunny wrapped World’s Hottest Tour over the weekend in Mexico City, closing out a historic year on the Billboard Boxscore charts. Ultimately, his 81 concerts in 2022 – culled from two separate tours – combine for the highest gross for an artist in a calendar year ever, since Billboard Boxscore launched in the late 1980s.
Some may have thought there were no Boxscore records left to break for Bad Bunny. His arena tour in the spring, titled El Ultimo Tour Del Mundo, grossed $116.8 million, according to figures reported to Billboard Boxscore. This made it the highest grossing Latin tour of all time. On a city-by-city basis, he broke local revenue records in 13 North American markets.
He then launched World’s Hottest Tour, a stadium run that made him the first artist to ever mount separate $100-million-tours in the same year. That trek broke local records in 12 of its 15 domestic markets, ultimately earning $232.5 million in the U.S.. Its 11 shows in September grossed $123.7 million, breaking the record for the highest one-month gross since Billboard launched its monthly rankings in 2019.
Bad Bunny topped the year-end Top Tours chart with a $373.5 million take, though he was still in the middle of a Latin American leg when the year-end tracking period ended. (Year-End Boxscore charts are based on shows that played between Nov. 1, 2021 – Oct. 31, 2022.) In doing so, he became the first Latin artist, and first artist to primarily perform in any language other than English, to crown the annual ranking.
Finally, Bad Bunny closed out World’s Hottest Tour with two shows at Mexico City’s Estadio Azteca on Dec. 9-10, adding $10.3 million and 116,000 tickets to its total. The Latin American run spanned 21 shows in 15 cities, earning $81.7 million from 910,000 tickets sold. Mexico was the highlight – not only for its two CDMX concerts, but for the $17.1 million out of Monterrey’s Estadio BBVA.
Altogether, the tour grossed $314.1 million and sold 1.9 million tickets, re-setting the record for the biggest Latin tour ever.
Added to his arena tour, plus three hometown shows in San Juan in July that were not a proper part of either of his two tours, Bad Bunny grossed $434.9 million in 2022, narrowly eclipsing Ed Sheeran’s $434.4 million in 2018, for the highest calendar-year gross in Billboard Boxscore history.
Bad Bunny’s gigantic year on the road is just one piece of his 2022 puzzle. He was also named Billboard’s Top Artist of the year, bolstered by the success of Un Verano Sin Ti. Released in May, his seasonal smash spent 13 weeks atop the Billboard 200 and landed seven of its tracks on the year-end Billboard Hot 100 ranking.
That album, plus his two 2020 releases, brought Bad Bunny from arena-contender to stadium-conqueror. His previous touring cycle, 2019’s X100 PRE Tour, earned $45.8 million between two legs, averaging $1.1 million per night. World’s Hottest Tour went stratospheric, pacing $3.7 million per show in Latin America and $11.1 million in the U.S.
Dating back to a Rosemont Theater show in October 2017 — his first show reported to Billboard Boxscore as a headliner — Bad Bunny has grossed $508.7 million and sold 3.3 million tickets. That’s one more broken record — enough to make him the highest grossing Latin artist in Boxscore history.