Beyoncé’s Renaissance World Tour Is Heading for a $500M+ Finish
Written by djfrosty on August 9, 2023
The first month of Beyoncé’s Renaissance World Tour situated her atop Billboard’s Top Tours chart in May. With reports for June, the entire European leg of the tour blew past the $150 million mark, making it the biggest non-U.S. leg of any Beyoncé tour. Now, with data for the trek’s first batch of North American shows, the bigger picture is coming more clearly into focus.
According to figures reported to Billboard Boxscore, Beyoncé earned $141.4 million on the first 12 Renaissance shows in U.S. and Canada, selling 553,000 tickets. That puts the tour’s overall figures at $295.8 million and 1.6 million tickets, current through her Aug. 1 concert at Gillette Stadium in Foxborough, Mass.
Approaching the $300 million mark, the Renaissance World Tour is now Beyoncé’s highest grossing tour yet, passing 2016’s The Formation World Tour ($256.1 million) and 2018’s On the Run II Tour alongside Jay-Z ($253.5 million).
In exceeding the gross of her own two previous tours, the Renaissance World Tour resets the record for the highest grossing tour by an R&B artist, or any Black artist in Boxscore history. Beyoncé previously held the title with the Formation World Tour and before that, with The Mrs. Carter Show World Tour in 2013-14 ($211.9 million).
Beyoncé hasn’t yet eclipsed those runs in terms of tickets sold, though it’s only a matter of time. The Formation World Tour still holds strong with 2.2 million tickets, 600,000 ahead of her 2023 stint. With 23 shows left to report in North America, expect Queen Bey to add close to 1 million more for a total of 2.6 million.
Though it has the earnings record in the bag, the Renaissance World Tour still has room to grow. Its $295.8 million is already in the region of Billboard’s initial projections of $275 million to $300 million plus, based on expected per-show revenues of $6.8 million to $7.5 million. With extra shows added due to high demand, the tour’s routing shot to more than 50 shows, with the low end of our projection ballooning to $380 million.
But Beyoncé hasn’t been earning $7 million per show. The 12 reported North American dates paced $11.8 million and 46,100 tickets each night. Grosses have swung as high as $33.1 million over two shows in East Rutherford, N.J., and as low as $6.5 million in Louisville, Ky.
If the 23 remaining shows can maintain that average or simply stay above the eight-figure mark, the Renaissance World Tour will set a whole new standard for Beyoncé.
To reach $500 million, the Renaissance World Tour will have to gross $8.9 million per show. But that’d represent a 24% drop from the first batch of U.S. & Canada dates, and there’s no reason to expect such a decline considering the remaining dates include highly anticipated shows in Atlanta, Los Angeles and Beyoncé’s hometown of Houston.
At $10 million per show, Beyoncé will hit $525 million, which would inch her past Coldplay’s A Head Full of Dreams Tour ($523.3 million). That’d be enough to make the Renaissance World Tour one of Billboard Boxscore’s 10 highest grossing tours ever.
Here’s a graph to show you where the Renaissance World Tour could end up, depending on how the 23 remaining shows perform.
At the current breakneck speed of $11.8 million per show, Beyoncé would be looking at $560 million. On the all-time leaderboard, she’s targeting classic rock heavyweights such as Guns N’ Roses, The Rolling Stones and Roger Waters as peers on the stadium stage.
Even before she gets there, Beyoncé has already broken through some hallowed territory in the Boxscore archives. Across her career as a soloist (including her co-headline tours with Jay-Z, and with Alicia Keys and Missy Elliott), Beyoncé has become the 15th artist – and third woman after Celine Dion and Madonna – to gross more than $1 billion. Further, she’s just the second female act (after Madonna) to sell more than 10 million tickets. Over 408 reported shows, she has earned $1.063 billion and sold 10.473 million tickets. By the Oct. 1 close of the Renaissance World Tour, that gross will be about $250 million higher.