Billboard Boxscore
Last month, Billboard Boxscore revealed its midyear touring recap, dominated by Coldplay, K-pop and Las Vegas’ Sphere. With the launch of Billboard’s comedy hub, we’re taking a closer look at the top-grossing comedy acts at the midyear mark. The 2025 midyear recap provides a switch-up at the top of the list. Kevin Hart led the […]
Shakira is the top Latin touring artist on the Billboard Boxscore midyear chart, grossing $130 million on her Las Mujeres Ya No Lloran World Tour so far. Shakira reported 21 concerts for the midyear touring period, which runs from Oct. 31, 2024, to March 31, 2025, landing her the number two slot overall on the […]
Coldplay was back on the road in April, extending the group’s reach to Hong Kong and Goyang, South Korea (14 miles from Seoul). According to figures reported to Billboard Boxscore, the British band is No. 1 on the monthly Top Tours chart, with $67.4 million in the bank and 502,000 tickets sold.
Coldplay has been one of the most dominant acts on the Boxscore charts since the 2022 kickoff of the Music of the Spheres World Tour, reigning over seven Top Tours charts. The band’s touring calendar has become an accurate predictor of chart results: Its last batch of shows was in January, which matches its sixth monthly victory. Before that, Coldplay had dates in November, aligning with its fifth monthly win. Coldplay has only one show scheduled in May, but a busier calendar throughout the summer immediately makes the band prohibitive competition for the top spot over the next several months.
With its April triumph, Chris Martin & Co. tie Bad Bunny and Elton John for the most months at No. 1 (seven). Trans-Siberian Orchestra follows with five (December of every year since the chart premiered).
Beyoncé and P!nk have each led four times. The latter did it twice on the Beautiful Trauma World Tour in 2019 and twice more with dates from Summer Carnival and Trustfall Tour in 2023-24. Beyoncé dominated the summer of 2023 with the Renaissance World Tour and played the first show on Cowboy Carter Tour on April 28, squeaking onto the month’s list with one date.
Coldplay’s April boils down to four shows at Hong Kong’s Kai Tak Stadium and six at Goyang Stadium in South Korea. The first set of dates grossed $32.9 million and sold 184,000 tickets. The second set moved $34.4 million from 318,000 tickets. That’s enough to secure the top two positions on the Top Boxscores chart.
The grosses of Coldplay’s two stops are close, separated by just 4%. But the longer stay in Goyang sold 73% more tickets, which means that the ticket price in Hong Kong had to be much higher. At Kai Tak Stadium, Coldplay averaged $179 per seat, while the Korean shows paced $108.22.
Added to Coldplay’s January run in the United Arab Emirates and India, the 2025 Asian leg wrapped with $124 million and 1.1 million tickets. Combined with the 2023-24 leg in Japan, Taiwan, Indonesia and more, Asia accounts for $253.4 million on the Music of the Spheres World Tour. Worldwide, the trek has brought in $1.3 billion and sold 11.4 million tickets, extending its lead as the bestselling tour in history.
Coldplay picks back up on May 31 in Stanford, Calif., kicking off a 17-show run in the U.S. and Canada. Finally, there are 12 dates scheduled in the U.K., closing out the three-and-a-half-year tour with 10 shows at London’s Wembley Stadium. By closing night, the trek will be approaching $1.5 billion and 13 million tickets sold.
From one of the biggest tours of all time nearing its close to the opening shows of one of 2025’s hottest tickets, Kendrick Lamar and SZA are No. 2 on April’s tally. The first four shows of the Grand National Tour brought in $43.2 million and sold 180,000 tickets.
Lamar and SZA premiered their co-headline trek on April 19 at Minneapolis’ U.S. Bank Stadium, before hitting Houston, Dallas and Atlanta. These are the first stadium shows for each artist, having previously conquered arenas in 2022 (Lamar’s The Steppers Tour) and 2023 (SZA’s SOS Tour).
Already, the Grand National Tour is the biggest tour of either artist’s career, and they are only 10 shows deep. Including six reported shows in May, which will count toward next month’s charts, the trek has earned $115.7 million and sold 508,000 tickets through the May 17 show at Seattle’s Lumen Field.
Thirteen shows remain on the pair’s schedule in North America, before traveling to Europe for 16 dates. Before its close on Aug. 9 in Stockholm, the Grand National Tour will be one of the biggest co-headline treks in history.
April was not just the stadium launchpad for Lamar and SZA. In the closing days of the month, Lady Gaga played her first two ticketed shows of the year at Mexico City’s Estadio GNP Seguros (April 26-27), hitting No. 6 on Top Boxscores and No. 10 on Top Tours. Beyoncé opened Cowboy Carter Tour in Los Angeles (April 28), reaching Nos. 14 and 15, respectively. And Post Malone unleashed the Big Ass Stadium Tour with assistance from Jelly Roll in Salt Lake City (April 29).
Beyoncé, Gaga and SZA help to make April a banner month for women on tour. They are three of 10 women on the Top Tours chart, up from seven in March, six in February, and just one in January. Still less than half, the 33% representation in April represents the most women on a Top Tours chart in its 58 editions, surpassing nine, or 30%, in December 2019 and January 2022.
In between SZA and Gaga, Shakira is No. 7 after leading the list in February and March. The first Latin American leg of her 2025 tour ended mid-month, handicapping her potential rank. Elsewhere, Charli xcx and Olivia Rodrigo carry over tours that began in 2024. Kelsea Ballerini, Mary J. Blige and Kylie Minogue wrapped up spring runs, while Katy Perry began The Lifetimes Tour with five shows in Mexico.
On Wednesday (May 28), Billboard revealed its midyear Boxscore charts, celebrating the top-grossing and best-selling artists, venues, and concert promoters around the world between Oct. 1, 2024, and March 31, 2025. Amid the pop, rock, R&B and Latin acts that blanket the Top Tours ranking, an unprecedented string of K-pop artists are in the mix, with five such acts among the all-genre top 50.
SEVENTEEN leads the pack, as it did for K-pop on midyear recaps for 2024 and 2023. But after grossing $30 million on the 2023 list, and $67.5 million for 2024, the group is No. 3 on the overall tally with $120.9 million and 842,000 tickets sold, according to figures reported to Billboard Boxscore. The group is sandwiched between Shakira at No. 2 ($130 million) and Eagles at No. 4 ($112.2 million).
SEVENTEEN is the highest-ranking Korean act ever on the all-genre midyear list, surpassing BTS’ No. 4 rank in 2022. BTS did manage a matching No. 3 rank on 2019’s year-end tally, but hadn’t played enough shows in the first half of that chart year to appear on the midyear chart.
Not only has K-pop’s top artist essentially doubled its midyear gross for the second consecutive year, but the bench is deepening. This year’s all-genre top 50 includes five K-pop acts, up from three in 2023 and 2024, and two in 2022. The threshold for K-pop’s top five is $25.1 million at the midyear point – this time last year, it was $3.1 million.
After SEVENTEEN, ATEEZ and J-Hope are next at Nos. 2-3 on Top Tours by Genre (K-pop), each with earnings of more than $28 million. The latter is the first K-pop soloist to make the midyear overall Top Tours chart, though he previously was included with his fellow BTS bandmates. ENHYPEN and TOMORROW X TOGETHER round out the list, also within a couple percentage points of one another above the $25 million mark.
These four groups and one soloist made their millions while proving the international strength of Korean artists. During the six-month tracking period, they toured arenas and stadiums throughout Asia (SEVENTEEN, J-Hope, ENHYPEN and TOMORROW X TOGETHER), Europe (ATEEZ and TOMORROW X TOGETHER), Mexico (J-Hope) and the U.S. (SEVENTEEN and J-Hope).
Altogether, K-pop acts on the midyear Top Tours chart brought in a collective $228 million and sold 1.6 million tickets from 78 shows. That marks a 79% increase over the genre’s 2024 showing, which itself was a 93% jump from 2023. In just two years, K-pop has more than tripled its presence on the midyear chart.
Scroll down for details on the top five K-pop acts on Billboard’s midyear Boxscore report. The midyear tracking period covers all reported shows, worldwide, between Oct. 1, 2024, and March 31, 2025.
On Wednesday (May 28), Billboard revealed its midyear Boxscore report, tracking the top touring artists, concert venues and promoters around the world. From October 1, 2024, to March 31, 2025, the midyear recap focuses on the biggest tours from the end of 2024 and beginning of 2025, before global stadium tours and music festivals take over the summer.
The animated graphic below shows how the top 10 tours have shaped and shifted over this six-month period.
The immediate leader was Paul McCartney. The legendary Beatle played a sold-out stadium show in Montevideo, Uruguay on the first day of the tracking period, bringing in $4.5 million from 37,573 tickets sold. Later that week, he had two dates at Estadio River Plate in Buenos Aires, adding $20.6 million and 128,000 tickets to his totals.
But by October 9, Bruno Mars stole McCartney’s thunder. Four shows deep into a six-night run at Sao Paulo’s Estadio do Morumbi, Mars’ $28.2 million surpassed McCartney’s $25.1 million. These early shows, plus Luis Miguel’s seven nights in Mexico City and Aventura’s stadium shows in Argentina and Peru, helped establish Latin America as live music’s center of gravity for the early days of the 2025 Boxscore tracking period.
Before the end of October, estimates for Taylor Swift’s The Eras Tour overtook Mars, McCartney and everyone else, as she began the final leg of her record-breaking two-year trek. While overall tour gross and attendance was reported by The New York Times, show-by-show data has still not been reported to Billboard Boxscore. Therefore, Swift remains absent from official midyear charts and her specific grosses in this time period have not been officially submitted.
Swift stays on top throughout the rest of the video, ultimately grossing an estimated $250 million in the tour’s final months in the U.S. and Canada. But the top 10 continued to fluctuate with November and December shows from Aventura, P!nk and Usher.
After bouncing around the top five in the late months of 2024, Coldplay asserted itself under Swift in January. The band played shows in the United Arab Emirates and India, breaking stadium attendance records for the 21st century with its two nights in Ahmedabad, India (more than 111,000 tickets each show).
Late-in-the-game moves come from K-pop boy band SEVENTEEN and Latin pop icon Shakira. Both artists grossed more than $100 million by the end of March, with Shakira banking her entire $130 million in just the last two months of the tracking period.
Coldplay, Shakira, Eagles, and Usher have all had reported shows in April and May that set them up for bigger totals by year-end. And the last few weeks have seen the kick-off for major tours by Beyoncé, Lady Gaga, Kendrick Lamar & SZA and Post Malone. By the end of 2025, this top 10 will likely get shaken up several times over.
Most people wouldn’t expect to see pillows passed around a Dead & Company concert.
But for Bernie Cahill of Activist Artists Management — the firm that manages Bobby Weir, a founding member of the Grateful Dead and frontman of Dead & Company (which Cahill co-manages with Irving Azoff and Steve Moir) — the decorative pillows, handed out to fans with floor tickets during the band’s nightly performance of “Drums/Space” at its Sphere residency, serve an important purpose. Those on the floor are encouraged to lie down and gaze up at the cutting-edge venue’s towering screen, which during the instrumental segment often displays imagery of the cosmos; at other points during the band’s Dead Forever shows, audiences take in visuals from the San Francisco Bay Area to psychedelic animations.
Thanks to its massive video screen, its booking of superstar acts and its aggressively high ticket prices, Las Vegas’ Sphere — where Dead & Company alone grossed $21.6 million from six concerts in March, when it resumed shows there following a successful run last year — is again the world’s top-grossing building, according to figures reported to Billboard Boxscore. It surpasses the top stadium (Mexico City’s Estadio GNP Seguros) and two iconic New York venues (Madison Square Garden and Radio City Music Hall) with a $165.3 million haul at midyear, which spans from Oct. 1, 2024, to March 31, 2025.
Sphere’s economic power isn’t in its show count — at midyear, the venue has hosted only 42 dates, including other residencies by the Eagles and dance artist Anyma — but in its average ticket price, which at $238 is roughly double those of Madison Square Garden ($133) or London’s O2 Arena ($105). While much of the music industry debates rising ticket prices, Sphere has shown there’s a vibrant market ready to pay a premium for special experiences delivered by top talent.
A DOWNWARD TREND: This year’s midyear charts are down significantly compared with 2024: Last year, the top 10 tours at this time had a combined gross of $1.4 billion, while in 2025, the top 10 outings have grossed a combined $1 billion, a drop of more than 28%. Among the top 50 tours, the combined gross disparity was less stark but still notable, going from $3.2 billion in 2024 to $2.5 billion in 2025, a drop of about 21%.
But this shift doesn’t necessarily signify weakness in the market. The main reason was show count: There have been fewer concerts in 2025 at the midyear point than there were in 2024. In 2024, the top 10 tours at midyear reported a combined 442 total shows for the period, compared with 245 in 2025, a 45% decline. For the top 50, the 1,425 shows reported in 2024 fell to 1,159 in 2025, a drop of 18.7%. On Billboard’s Top Promoters chart, Live Nation’s grosses were down to $2.2 billion in 2025 from $2.8 billion in 2024. But because shows are booked months, or sometimes over a year, in advance, changes in the number of total shows don’t reveal much about consumer spending or demand in early 2025.
The decline partially stems from timing. During a recent earnings call, Live Nation president/CEO Michael Rapino noted that more artists are waiting until the second and third quarters to launch their tours — and with more acts playing stadiums in 2025, more major tours are on the road in the summer, when the weather is better. The 2025 show count should increase in the next six months, which historically covers the busiest part of the year, especially in North America.
Importantly, last year’s touring numbers at midyear were unusually high thanks to U2’s venue-opening Sphere residency, which grossed $231.6 million from 38 shows during that time. That tracking period also included dozens of concerts from three major tours (Madonna, P!nk and Luis Miguel) that led to a high show count.
CHART STATS: Three acts in the 2025 midyear top 10 — Coldplay, P!nk and Eagles — also appeared in last year’s midyear top 10. And three more among the top 10 — Paul McCartney, Bruno Mars and SEVENTEEN — ranked among the top 20 at midyear in 2024. But there are some notable differences in the music genres atop the chart.
After three Latin tours reached the top 10 at midyear in 2024, only Shakira has done so in 2025. And after Travis Scott ranked No. 9 at midyear in 2024, no hip-hop artists cracked the top 10 in 2025. The highest-ranking hip-hop tour at midyear is Tyler, The Creator, who is No. 16 with $65.3 million grossed.
When it comes to ticket prices, Eagles at Sphere had the highest average price among the top 10 tours of $285 per ticket, followed by Usher, who charged an average of $179, and P!nk, whose tickets averaged $174.
The cheapest tickets among the top 10 tours were for Coldplay ($109), Mars ($118) and McCartney ($129). On average, the ticket price of the top 50 tours was $130, down 10% from 2024. On the Top Tours chart, 10 acts had an average ticket price that was under $100: Aventura ($99), Sebastian Maniscalco ($98), André Rieu ($94), Deftones ($88), Iron Maiden ($85), Trans-Siberian Orchestra ($84), Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds ($84), Cody Johnson ($77), Feid ($77) and Strait ($49).
THE TOP 10: Keep scrolling for details on the top 10 touring artists of Billboard’s midyear Boxscore period, tracking all shows worldwide from Oct. 1, 2024, to March 31, 2025.
Justin Timberlake
Image Credit: Kevin Mazur/Getty Images
On May 9, Beyoncé wrapped a historic run of five shows at SoFi Stadium in Inglewood, California, 10 miles from downtown Los Angeles. According to figures reported to Billboard Boxscore, the Cowboy Carter Tour kick-off grossed $55.7 million and sold 217,000 tickets.
Beyoncé’s $50 million-plus run in Los Angeles is the biggest reported single-venue engagement of 2025 so far, eclipsing multiple stops on Coldplay’s tour through Asia and Shakira’s seven-night stay in Mexico City. Further, it’s the fifth-highest grossing tour stop in Boxscore history, only behind two legs of U2’s Sphere residency in Las Vegas (2023-24), Harry Styles’ 15 shows at Madison Square Garden in New York (2022), and eight nights of Take That at Wembley Stadium in London (2011). Notably, it’s the highest-grossing reported single-venue engagement ever by a woman.
Cowboy Carter Tour launched on Monday, April 28, with successive performances on May 1, 4, 7, and 9. On average, Beyoncé grossed $11.1 million per night, playing to more than 43,000 fans at each show. In completing this week-long run, she has now played more shows at SoFi Stadium than any other artist in the venue’s history – eight, including three in 2023 – since its opening at the beginning of the decade.
The L.A.-area shows may not even remain the tour’s peak, as an upcoming five-night stay at MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, N.J. (13 miles from New York) could challenge that $55 million take. Beyoncé will have her longest run at one venue in London with six nights at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, though ticket prices overseas often fall below the surging rates in the United States.
Using Cowboy Carter Tour figures in the Los Angeles area as a guide, with city-by-city comparisons to previous tours, it appears that Beyoncé’s 2025 run is barreling toward Billboard’s initial projections of $300 million. It will out-gross all of her previous tours with the lone exception of 2023’s Renaissance World Tour, which ran for 56 shows compared to Cowboy Carter Tour’s current routing of 32. According to Live Nation, total ticket sales will eclipse one million.
The initial reports for Cowboy Carter Tour push Beyoncé’s reported career Boxscore earnings past $1.4 billion, with 11.9 million tickets sold. Those totals will continue to rise until the trek closes on July 26 at Las Vegas’ Allegiant Stadium.
Shakira is No. 1 on Billboard’s Top Tours chart for March, back on top after ruling the February edition. She led last month’s list with $32.9 million but doubles her earnings on the newest update. According to figures reported to Billboard Boxscore, Las Mujeres Ya No Lloran World Tour earned $70.6 million from 11 reported shows. That’s more than any act has grossed in any March since the charts launched in 2019.
Monthly grosses typically balloon during the summer, when summer weather allows for stadium shows in the U.S. and Europe. With most acts confined to indoor arenas in the fall, winter, and spring, Shakira’s Latin roots fueled a massive stadium run in Central and South America and Mexico. She surpasses Bad Bunny’s March 2024, Coldplay in 2023, Bad Bunny again in 2022, the Backstreet Boys in 2020, and P!nk in 2019. (There was no ranking in March 2021 due to COVID-19).
Mexico was the setting of Shakira’s March shows, hitting Monterrey and Guadalajara before climaxing in Mexico City. There, the Colombian superstar played seven shows at Estadio GNP Seguros from March 19-30, bringing in $46.6 million from 396,000 tickets sold. Those shows are No. 1 on Top Boxscore, more than tripling the gross of No. 2.
Shakira’s seven Mexico City shows set a venue record, eclipsing RBD’s six nights (2023), Daddy Yankee’s five (2022), and Taylor Swift’s four (2023). But demand was so outrageous that she announced four more dates at the same stadium in August, extending to 11 shows.
The Estadio GNP Seguros shows alone would have secured Shakira the No. 1 spot on Top Tours, but her schedule also included two shows apiece in Monterrey ($12.5 million; 88.2K tickets) and Guadalajara ($11.5 million; 70.3K).
Including the tour’s first shows in February and further dates in April, Las Mujeres Ya No Lloran World Tour has earned a reported $111 million and sold 910,000 tickets in Latin America. Shakira re-ups in Charlotte, N.C. on May 13 to begin a 23-show run in the U.S. and Canada. Then, she’ll be back in Mexico, Dominican Republic, and Peru for 18 more dates through November.
Just as Shakira was No. 1 in February and one-upped herself in March, Tyler, the Creator scores a second consecutive month at No. 2 with increased totals. This month, Tyler earned $36.2 million and sold 221,000 tickets, up 25% and 17%, respectively, from last month. It’s the first time that two acts repeated on top in consecutive months in three years, when Bad Bunny and Elton John went 1-2, respectively, in February and March 2022.
Three years after crowning Boxscore charts with his six band mates, BTS’ J-Hope is No. 3 on Top Tours with his first solo shows. Across 10 dates in March, he brought in $26.6 million and sold 149,000 tickets. After three home-town shows in Seoul, he toured North America. Like Shakira, his March peak was in Mexico City, with a $6.1 million double-header at Palacio de los Deportes on March 22-23.
TOMORROW X TOGETHER and NCT 127 represent K-pop elsewhere, with $10.6 million and $7 million, respectively.
Dead & Company follows at No. 4, with the Eagles trailing at No. 7. Both classic rock acts played shows at Las Vegas’ Sphere. As has become common in the last year and a half, the Sin City arena is No. 1 on the Top Venues (15,001+ capacity) chart, combining both bands’ dates – plus two from Anyma – for $45.4 million and 195,000 tickets.
Country music is rooted in the U.S. and has historically struggled to export internationally. So it’s a welcome surprise that this month’s roster of charting country tours include Jelly Roll in Canada, Chris Stapleton in Australia and New Zealand, and C2C Country To Country across the United Kingdom.
Shakira and J-Hope provided Mexican promoter OCESA with some of its biggest wins during March. But they crowd the top 10 of Top Boxscores further with two festivals. Mexico City’s Vive Latino Festival grossed $14.2 million and sold 146,000 tickets in the middle of the month, and Bogota’s Festival Estereo Picnic earned $10.1 million in March’s final days. Altogether, OCESA grossed $140 million and sold 1.3 million tickets.
On Saturday (April 19), Kendrick Lamar and SZA will kick off their co-headlining Grand National Tour at Minneapolis’ U.S. Bank Stadium, playing the first of 39 scheduled shows in North America and Europe. It’s not just the only all-stadium hip-hop world tour to launch in 2025 – it’s the first such trek this decade.
In the post-pandemic era, the definition of “stadium artist” has expanded to include younger and more diverse artists, across genre. Not only have contemporary pop and rock acts graduated beyond arenas, but artists from country (Zach Bryan, Luke Combs, Morgan Wallen), Latin (Bad Bunny, Karol G, Shakira) and K-pop (BLACKPINK, SEVENTEEN, TWICE) have staged sold-out stadium runs in several continents.
But while R&B/hip-Hop’s reign as America’s most popular genre continued into the 2020s, rappers have yet to scale their tours in the same way. Lamar’s upcoming run will mark the first all-stadium tour for a rap act since JAY-Z joined Beyoncé on 2018’s On the Run II Tour.
Notably, rap acts have historically leveled up to stadiums alongside a pop or R&B co-headliner: Lamar with SZA, JAY-Z with Beyoncé and Justin Timberlake (separately), and Eminem with Rihanna.
Rappers have played stadiums on their own (or together, as in the case of Eminem & JAY-Z’s four-show The Home & Home Tour in 2010), but only in brief runs or isolated dates. Eminem reported 16 such shows across three separate outings during the 2010s and 50 Cent played one in 2004. Drake and Kanye West co-headlined the Free Larry Hoover benefit show in 2021, but it was a free gig.
The pairing of Lamar and SZA echoes the makeup of past successful stadium runs, but it’s also uncommon for R&B acts to tackle the biggest venues. Beyoncé has mastered the art, having broken records with 2023’s Renaissance World Tour, and is weeks away from kicking off Cowboy Carter Tour. But it’s worth noting that both treks are in support of albums that detour into other genres, having won Grammys for best dance/electronic album and best country album, respectively.
Similarly, Bruno Mars continues to sprinkle stadium shows amid his theater residency in Vegas, but his two latest top 10 Billboard Hot 100 hits – “Die With A Smile,” with Lady Gaga, and “APT,” with Rosé – eschew contemporary R&B for different strains of pop.
Still, the Grand National Tour’s double-billing is simply a no-brainer, not a hedged bet. SZA’s SOS was released in December 2022, landed nine Grammy nominations in 2023, won three of them in 2024, and added a 12th week atop the Billboard 200 to kick off 2025 following its SOS Deluxe: LANA expanded reissue. Lamar himself has had a whirlwind last 12 months, amassing four No. 1s on the Hot 100 – two inspired by his infamous beef with Drake and two from GNX. He won five Grammys in February for “Not Like Us” and headlined the Super Bowl halftime show a week later. As a cherry on top, the pair’s “Luther” will be enjoying its eighth consecutive week atop the Hot 100 when the tour kicks off this weekend.
Hip-hop has not taken up much space on stadium calendars, but Lamar and SZA are part of a rising tide of momentum for rap and R&B. An established arena headliner, Chris Brown will mount his first stadium tour this summer. Breezy Bowl XX kicks off on June 8 with a packed lineup, featuring Jhene Aiko, Bryson Tiller, and Summer Walker as special guests. And after touring arenas on 2018’s Astroworld: Wish You Were Here Tour and for the first leg of the Utopia Circus Maximus Tour, Travis Scott began to mix stadium dates in 2024. This fall, he will continue the multi-year trek with a handful-plus of grand scale shows in Asia and South Africa.
Scroll below for a recap of the rap acts who have played — or are scheduled to play — stadium shows, according to reports to Billboard Boxscore.
Kendrick Lamar
Image Credit: Cindy Ord/Getty Images
Last week (March 26), Lady Gaga announced dates and venues for The MAYHEM Ball, marking her first tour in three years and the sixth such “ball” of her career, dating back to 2009’s The Fame Ball. With ticket sales rolling out this week (beginning March 31), Billboard estimates that the tour could land as her fourth trek to gross $100 million.
An ever-expanding slate of shows have pushed Gaga’s 2025 projections from the brink of $100 million to surging toward $125 million. But firm estimates for The MAYHEM Ball are tricky, because much in the spirit of Lady Gaga, the 2025 routing zigs where she has previously zagged. To use figures from her most recent outing – $5.6 million and 41,700 tickets per show on 2022’s The Chromatica Ball – would be to ignore the nuances of this year’s schedule.
The MAYHEM Ball winds Gaga through arenas in Europe and North America, following warm-up dates at Mexico City’s Estadio GNP Seguros and Singapore’s National Stadium (plus a free show in Rio de Janeiro) – at least as much as stadium shows can serve as a warm-up. It’s a swerve from the all-stadium routing on The Chromatica Ball, not to mention her theater residency in Las Vegas from 2018-24.
Upon the tour’s announcement, Gaga took to social media to celebrate her upcoming calendar. “We chose arenas this time to give me the opportunity to control the details of the show in a way you simply can’t in stadiums – and honestly, I can’t wait.”
Not only has Gaga oscillated from intimate theaters to football stadiums, but The MAYHEM Ball re-introduces some markets that she hasn’t played in decade, while foregoing some of the sold-out cities from her recent treks. Her shows in Seattle and Manchester will be her first proper concerts in those cities in 11 years. More dramatically, those stand-alone stops in Mexico City and Singapore will be her first since The Born This Way Ball in 2012.
Time is also a factor. Since Gaga’s last mostly-arena tour in 2017-18 (The Joanne World Tour), she has starred in three major-studio films, one of which won her an Academy Award for songwriting, plus a nomination for acting. She also released Chromatica and MAYHEM, both of which topped the Billboard 200 and spawned Billboard Hot 100 No. 1s, in addition to two jazz albums and the chart-topping soundtrack to A Star is Born.
Just as key, the concert business has undergone major transformation, first shutting down entirely for more than a year due to COVID-19 and then returning bigger than ever with skyrocketing ticket prices.
While recent projections for Beyoncé’s Cowboy Carter Tour were simple enough, carrying over many of the same venues from her previous tour just two years ago, the shape of The MAYHEM Ball is all its own.
Using the average ticket price from the markets that do carry over from The Chromatica Ball, and average-to-high capacity from each venue’s recent history, this year’s initial routing would be headed toward $80-85 million from about 700,000 tickets sold. A 15% rise in ticket prices would push the projected gross beyond $90 million and a 25% increase would clear the $100 million mark.
Those bumps consider the way that ticket prices have risen beyond the rate of inflation since her 2022 tour. And while The Chromatica Ball did take place after the post-COVID return as prices were already on the rise, tickets for six of its 20 shows were sold primarily in the (barely) pre-pandemic era, as the then-limited tour was first announced on March 5, 2020, just a week before venues were forced to close.
Notably, as Gaga undergoes a relative downsizing from stadiums to arenas, supply-and-demand could drive higher prices than on The Chromatica Ball, with far fewer seats available each night. Including multiple shows in certain locations, her 2025 schedule includes just six cities in the U.S. and Canada. That’s slightly less than eight for Chromatica, and much tighter than 35 on The Joanne World Tour and 33 on ArtRave: The Artpop Ball (2014). She makes up for it with multiple shows everywhere, including six at Madison Square Garden. Much like Beyoncé’s upcoming trek, sales could be even more competitive as fans from surrounding cities flock to Chicago, Miami, and New York, among few others.
Momentum behind The MAYHEM Ball and its international spin-offs has already gathered, with early demand forcing extra shows in those three markets plus a handful of others. Originally 38 shows, Gaga’s current slate of 50 ticketed dates is likely to surpass of The Chromatica Ball’s stadium-sized $112 million, potentially making it Gaga’s biggest year on the road since 2012.
Isolating the proper tour’s arena run, The MAYHEM Ball should approach the $100 million mark, possibly becoming Gaga’s forth tour to crack the nine-figure mark. It’d follow The Monster Ball (2009-11), The Born This Way Ball (2012-13) and The Chromatica Ball. The Joanne World Tour earned $94.9 million before cancelling its last 10 shows due to Gaga’s struggle with fibromyalgia. Plus, the Lady Gaga Enigma + Piano & Jazz residency brought in $110 million from 2018-24.
Dating back to her first reported headline show at San Diego’s House of Blues on March 12, 2009 ($18,500; 1,000 tickets), Gaga’s tours have grossed $723.1 million and sold 6.4 million tickets from a reported 462 shows.