Harry Styles’ Love On Tour Ends As the Fourth $600 Million Trek Ever
Written by djfrosty on August 7, 2023
Harry Styles kicked off Love On Tour in September 2021, emerging as one of the first arena headliners of the immediate post-pandemic era. Two years and five continents later, the trek played the last of its 169 shows on July 22 in Reggio Emilia, Italy, closing as one of the highest grossing and best-selling tours of all time.
According to figures reported to Billboard Boxscore, Love On Tour grossed $617.3 million and sold more than 5 million tickets. Among all tours in Boxscore’s 30-plus-year history, the world tour is the fourth-highest grossing and eighth-most attended trek ever. Only Elton John’s Farewell Yellow Brick Road Tour ($939.1 million), Ed Sheeran’s The Divide Tour ($776.4 million) and U2’s 360 Tour ($736.4 million) have earned more.
The tour began on Sept. 4, 2021, with 42 shows in the U.S. Those dates had already been postponed twice due to COVID-19, supporting Styles’ second solo studio set Fine Line, already two years old by opening night. It was one of the biggest tours of the season, at No. 3 on the abridged 2021 year-end Top Tours ranking, with repeat appearances at No. 2 on the monthly chart.
Still, by the time Styles returned in support of 2022’s Harry’s House, the chart-topping album and its enduring lead single “As It Was” helped him further ascend into a new domain of superstardom. Styles held steady in North American arenas, but went from one or two shows per market to extended mini residencies in five cities. Venue capacity and attendance were essentially unchanged, but the destination-event factor made demand soar.
Average ticket prices leapt from $131.69 in 2021 to $204.78 in 2022, culminating in a $157.3 million gross over 44 shows. The 15-date run at New York’s Madison Square Garden grossed $63.1 million alone, making it the highest grossing report ever. The 15 dates at the Kia Forum in Inglewood, Calif., earned $47.8 million, coming in fifth place on the all-time leaderboard.
Harry’s House caused a similar bump in Europe, leveling from arenas in 2022 to stadiums in 2023. The first European leg earned $56 million and sold 639,000 tickets. Already among the top-earning acts in Europe over that summer, Styles’ grosses tripled just a year later, with $199.3 million over 31 shows from May 13-July 22.
Love On Tour also included 14 shows in Latin America, seven in Oceania and six in Asia. Styles had last hit these international markets in 2018 as part of Harry Styles: Live in Concert, essentially skipping the Fine Line portion of the tour due to delayed openings after the pandemic. The difference was most dramatic in Australia, where his per-show attendance quintupled from 10,407 to 53,295 and his average gross multiplied by seven, from $971,000 to $6.8 million.
Over the five years that separated Styles’ two solo outings, he amassed a trio of No. 1s on the Billboard Hot 100 songs chart, won multiple Grammy Awards (including album of the year for Harry’s House), and graduated from a reliable arena headliner to an artist who sells out blockbuster stadium shows. His first tour earned $63.7 million, almost one tenth of Love On Tour’s final figures. Not only is Love On Tour easily Styles’ highest grossing solo tour yet, it eclipses the entire career gross One Direction, the pop group in which he shot to stardom, which earned $583.4 million over four tours from 2012 to 2015.
Altogether, Styles has grossed $681 million and sold 5.8 million tickets.