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Madonna played the final shows of The Celebration Tour, closing her six-month trek with $225.4 million and 1.1 million tickets sold over 80 shows, according to figures reported to Billboard Boxscore.
The Celebration Tour is Madonna’s sixth trek to gross more than $100 million. The only other acts to achieve this are the Eagles, The Rolling Stones, Bruce Springsteen and U2, making her the sole woman in this elite group.
The Queen of Pop first announced The Celebration Tour in January 2023, with a planned start date in July of last year. But a medical emergency delayed the North American leg by five months, instead starting in Europe in October. There, she played 27 shows in 10 countries, finishing with $77.5 million and 429,000 tickets.
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By year’s end, Madonna played three shows in Brooklyn and two in Washington, D.C., before resuming the North American leg with 42 more shows from January through April. In the U.S. and Canada, she earned $133.1 million and sold 616,000 tickets, sending the tour’s total figures beyond $200 million and 1 million tickets.
Finally, Madonna went to Latin America for the first time since 2016, as part of the Rebel Heart Tour. Five shows at Mexico City’s Palacio de los Deportes grossed $14.8 million and sold 82,400 tickets.
In all, The Celebration Tour’s $225 million finish marks Madonna’s highest-grossing tour in over a decade. While in Europe, it surpassed her theater experiment on the Madame X Tour ($51.5 million in 2019-20). And during her North American leg, she partied past the Rebel Heart Tour’s $169.8 million from 2015-16.
Madonna’s recent high dates back to 2012’s MDNA Tour, which grossed $305.2 million and sold 2.2 million tickets. That trek played many of the same American arenas as The Celebration Tour, but took her to Europe’s outsized outdoor stadiums, plus a lengthier stadium run throughout Latin America. Her biggest tour ever was the one before that, earning $407.7 million from 3.5 million tickets on the Sticky & Sweet Tour (2008-09).
The apples-to-apples improvement over the Rebel Heart Tour – Madonna’s most recent all-arena run – combines an uptick in ticket prices ($162.42 – > $199.93) with a 12% increase in average per-show attendance count (12,750 – > 14,274).
That average attendance is missing an obvious asterisk. After playing her final show in Mexico City, Madonna staged a free concert at Copacabana Beach in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, marking her first stop in the city since a Dec. 2, 2012, performance on the MDNA Tour. The show’s gargantuan success does not factor into her official Boxscore results because it was a free event, but it’s plenty worth noting that she drew 1.6 million people – roughly 40% more than the combined attendance of her entire tour. According to concert promoter Live Nation, it’s the largest audience ever for a stand-alone concert by any artist in history.
The Celebration Tour pushes Madonna’s reported career total to $1.6 billion and – without accounting for the Brazil show – 12.8 million tickets.
Bad Bunny’s Most Wanted Tour crowns the Top Tours chart for the month of March. According to figures reported to Billboard Boxscore, it earned $64.6 million and sold 207,000 tickets over 13 shows.
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Bad Bunny logs his fifth month at No. 1, after topping the chart four times in 2022 — twice as part of the El Ultimo Tour Del Mundo in March and April, and then in August and September during World’s Hottest Tour.
Combined, those treks nabbed him the No. 1 spot on 2022’s year-end ranking, making him the first artist to primarily perform in any language other than English to crown the annual survey. The only other primarily-Spanish-singing act to lead the monthly chart is RBD, which topped the November 2023 list.
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Bad Bunny pulls out of a tie with Beyoncé and the Trans-Siberian Orchestra to have the second-most monthly wins, trailing only Elton John with seven.
Bad Bunny’s biggest stops during March were in Los Angeles and Chicago. Three nights in each city score him Nos. 2-3 on Top Boxscores, with $20.2 million at the former’s Crypto.com Arena on March 13-15, and $13.4 million at the latter’s United Center on March 28-30. All of his shows earned more than $3 million.
The Most Wanted Tour began on Feb. 21 in Salt Lake City. The first handful of shows secured a No. 10 rank on February’s tally with $19.5 million in the bank. All told, the trek has earned $84.2 million and sold 282,000 tickets so far, with 30 dates left to report through two hometown shows on June 7-8 at San Juan’s Coliseo de Puerto Rico. At his current pace of more than $4 million per show, the tour is likely to sail across the $200 million threshold.
Zach Bryan follows closely behind at No. 2, with $62.3 million and 313,000 tickets, falling just 4% short of Bad Bunny’s winning gross.
Bryan is in the middle of The Quittin Time Tour, which launched on March 5 and managed 18 shows before the end of March. Its’ so-far total of $62 million is already far beyond the $43.9 million he earned on 2023’s 32-date Burn Burn Burn Tour. In fact, it only took 13 shows to pass that mark, representing a 150% increase in per-show earnings since just last year.
More specifically, last year Bryan played two shows in New York at Queens’ Forest Hills Stadium. For the Quittin Time Tour, he expanded to six, split between Brooklyn’s Barclays Center, Belmont Park’s UBS Arena and Newark, N.J.’s Prudential Center. He didn’t visit Chicago in 2022 or 2023 but kicked off this year’s run with three sold-out shows at the United Center, generating $12.6 million in ticket sales for No. 5 on Top Boxscores.
Bryan has nearly 50 more shows on the books in 2024, one-third of which bring him to football stadiums. Already 50% beyond his 2023 grosses, he’s likely to join Bad Bunny in the $200 million club by year’s end.
Women dominate much of March’s top 10, with P!nk and Madonna at Nos. 3 and 4. The former banked $55.1 million and sold 543,000 tickets from 11 shows, scoring the month’s highest attendance count. The latter added $37.9 million to The Celebration Tour, which crossed $200 million in early April. The queen of pop’s tour wrapped last week (April 26 – except for one free show on May 4 in Brazil) with final numbers expected to be reported soon.
Karol G and Nicki Minaj represent Latin and hip-hop at Nos. 5 and 6, respectively. For Karol G, it’s a continuation of a winning streak that began with the kick-off of the Manana Sera Bonito tour last August. For Minaj, it’s her first monthly Boxscore appearance, with the first batch of shows on the Pink Friday 2 World Tour bringing in $26.9 million.
Three festivals appear on Top Boxscores, topped off by Pa’l Norte in Monterrey, Mexico at No. 1. The weekend-long festival grossed $26.2 million on March 29-31, nearly tripling its 2022 revenue of $9.3 million. At No. 6 is Esterio Picnic with $11.8 million. Both events are promoted by OCESA, helping the Mexican juggernaut rank at No. 3 on Top Promoters.
Across the Pacific Ocean, Pitch Music & Arts Festival represents for Melbourne, Australia, at No. 16 with $8.4 million and 35,900 tickets sold between March 8-12. Otherwise, Oceania is bolstered by several appearances by P!nk, including top 10s for shows in Melbourne and Perth.
Asia sneaks onto the Boxscores ranking, with Ed Sheeran and SEVENTEEN rounding out the chart at Nos. 29 and 30. Both hover around $6 million, with Sheeran in Manilla, Philippines and SEVENTEEN in Incheon, South Korea.
Each year, an uncountable number of recording artists transform their discographies into live shows, going on tour to super-serve their biggest fans around the world. But a select few have the power to bring their fans to them, staging extravagant productions in one city as the masses travel to see a once-in-a-career performance. Here, we’re […]
On February’s Top Tours list, U2 is in the winner’s circle with monthly earnings of $56.5 million from 166,000 tickets sold.
February is U2’s first month at No. 1, after sitting at No. 2 in December of 2019 and 2023, both behind Trans-Siberian Orchestra. This marks the first Irish act to claim monthly honors.
Since launching in 2019, the monthly Boxscore recap has detailed touring breakthroughs, particularly in country and Latin music — highlighted by Morgan Wallen and Bad Bunny, respectively — as well as reporting quirks along the way, including Trans-Siberian Orchestra’s dual coastal ensembles during the holiday season. The latest oddity: U2’s recent domination makes the band the first act to lead Top Tours without actually going on tour.
The group’s haul north of $50 million comes from 10 shows, all at Las Vegas’ Sphere. The rock quartet christened the Sin City arena with the first show from its U2:UV Achtung Baby Live residency in September, and to date, is still the only act to play at the venue. Concert series by Dead & Company and Phish are scheduled for later on Sphere’s 2024 calendar.
Residencies at this scale – 40 arena shows in six months – are unprecedented. Prior to U2’s kickoff, Lady Gaga and Bruno Mars were the only residency acts to crack the top 10 of Top Tours. The traditional Vegas model is for acts such as them to play sold-out theaters to roughly 5,000 fans each night, with the flexibility to charge extravagant prices for the opportunity to see an A-list artist in a more intimate setting.
U2 is playing by similar rules, with its $340 average ticket within 5% of Mars (No. 19), but expanded to an arena audience. Demonstrating the same intensity of demand as theater residencies but broadened to an audience three times as big, U2’s monthly victory, ahead of stadium tours at Nos. 2-3, is groundbreaking.
With all that activity from one arena, U2 also crown Top Boxscores, with Sphere reigning as the month’s top-grossing venue. Both victories were decisive, by a margin of more than 3:1.
U2’s recent run began on Jan. 26 and stretched through March 2, earning $84.7 million during that period. Dating back to opening night (Sept. 29, 2023, and through its close on March 2), the U2: UV Achtung Baby Live residency brought in $244.5 million and sold 663,000 tickets over 40 shows.
That is the lowest show count – by far – for any residency with a gross of $100 million or more. Mars and Billy Joel (Madison Square Garden) are the only others with a nine-digit gross and fewer than 100 shows.
Former chart-topper P!nk is No. 2 on Top Tours with a $48.3 million gross. Shows from the Australian leg of the Summer Carnival Tour sold 437,000 tickets in February, marking the highest attendance total of the month. This is P!nk’s third time at No. 2, following stints in April 2019 and August 2023, adding to her three months at No. 1 (March 2019, July 2019, October 2023).
Oceania brought in more revenue than North America or Europe on P!nk’s I’m Not Dead Tour (2006-07), the Funhouse Tour (2009) and The Truth About Love Tour (2013-14). Her recent leg, stretching through March 23, marks her first time in stadiums in Australia and New Zealand, having made the outdoor transition elsewhere on the Beautiful Trauma World Tour (2018-19).
Including her March dates, P!nk’s 20 continental shows grossed $104.3 million and sold 980,000 tickets, bringing the tour’s total to $361.8 million and 2.8 million tickets. With more dates scheduled in the U.S. and Canada, and Europe through November, the Summer Carnival will easily become P!nk’s first to cross $400 million. The Beautiful Trauma World Tour came agonizingly close when it wrapped in 2019 with $397.3 million.
Karol G follows at No. 3, leading a trifecta of Latin stars in the top 10. Luis Miguel sits just beneath at No. 4, and Bad Bunny rounds out the group at No. 10. Across shows in the U.S. (Bad Bunny), Mexico (Karol G) and South America (Luis Miguel).
Stars of the 21st century fill out most of the rest of the top 10, with Madonna, Depeche Mode, Blink-182 and the Eagles filling out Nos. 5 and 7-9, respectively. Ed Sheeran rounds out the top 10 at No. 6 as the last of six $30 million tours from February. Emerging from the slow winter months, the last time more acts crossed the $30 million threshold was August, when Beyoncé led P!nk, Metallica, Morgan Wallen, The Weeknd, Drake and the Jonas Brothers.
Behind Sphere as the month’s top venue, London’s O2 Arena and Sydney’s Qudos Bank Arena bring the U.K. and Australia to the top of the heap at Nos. 2-3, respectively, peppered by Melbourne’s Rod Laver Arena at No. 6 and Manchester’s AO Arena at No. 7.
A version of this story will appear in the March 30, 2024, issue of Billboard.
2023 was a banner year for live events, with grosses from the top 100 tours up 53% from 2019, the last full year before the pandemic, according to figures reported to Billboard Boxscore. But beyond these record-breaking earnings, concerts also affect artists’ recorded music consumption, spurring local boosts as they tour the country.
Luminate and Billboard collaborated to dig deeper into touring’s effect on streaming totals. Examining a sample of nearly 1,000 shows from 50 of 2023’s top-grossing acts, the analysis found that the median concert yielded a 42% increase in local on-demand audio streams during the week of each event as compared to the eight weeks prior.
Of course, the size of the bump varies by artist. There’s a spectrum of effects, from Odesza doubling its local consumption after an average concert (+143%) to Blake Shelton‘s bump coming in slightly below the overall median (+32%).
But one of the defining factors in how big of a local streaming bump an artist receives is genre. Fan bases across pop, rock, country and beyond boast their own demographic and geographic characteristics, and as a result, their consumption habits vary widely.
Some of the biggest boosts in local consumption are reserved for the dance/electronic acts included in this analysis. The genre’s live footprint is often tied to festivals or nightclubs, meaning few of its marquee acts tour in the traditional sense. When they do play ticketed headline shows, in many cases those concerts amount to mini residencies in particular pockets of the country.
Pretty Lights exemplifies this phenomenon. When the producer played three shows in two Colorado markets — plus three each in Atlanta and Philadelphia — last year, his local streams averaged a 132% bump. And shows played by LCD Soundsystem during the group’s 20-date residency at New York City’s Brooklyn Steel translated to a 125% jump in its New York-area streams, which sustained throughout the residency’s duration.
K-pop acts function in a similar way. In the United States, K-pop is a relatively young genre that has firmly established itself in only a handful of markets. SUGA and TOMORROW X TOGETHER each played a small number of American cities on tour in 2023, with both hitting New York and Los Angeles as well as cities like Atlanta, Chicago, San Francisco and Washington, D.C. Similar to dance acts, SUGA and TOMORROW X TOGETHER enjoyed local weekly streaming gains of 133% and 129%, respectively — roughly three times higher than the average touring artist.
In stark contrast, R&B/hip-hop acts see comparatively small upticks in their local streaming activity after concerts. For much of the last decade, R&B/hip-hop has been the most popular genre in America, and its rise coincided with the dawn of the streaming era. For these artists, sky-high streaming activity tends to be a baseline, so adding a concert to the mix doesn’t yield the same growth rates.
Still, tours by Drake, 50 Cent and J.I.D. & SMINO generated local weekly boosts of 28%-34% — far less than K-pop or dance/electronic artists and below the 42% average, but a material increase across lengthy national tours nonetheless.
Local streaming increases for the country genre also tend to be slightly below average, with the size of the increases often dependent upon how long the acts have been around. Little Big Town and Blake Shelton, both of which began their careers in the early 2000s, post typical post-show gains of 36% and 32%, respectively. Jelly Roll and Morgan Wallen, both of whom scored the biggest hits of their careers last year, sit lower at 18%.
Jelly Roll and Wallen have led a new class of crossover country stars who have enjoyed more success on the Billboard Hot 100 and Streaming Songs charts than the genre has seen in years. Much of that success is owed to a more focused digital footprint, with robust activity across social media and streaming platforms compared to acts like Shelton and Little Big Town, who rose to fame in the CD era. That positions them closer to hip-hop acts who boast higher consumption figures on streaming platforms than older artists, therefore giving them less room to grow.
Of course, many artists cross genre lines or operate within sub-genres or different sects of genres, blurring its effects. The Jonas Brothers, a pop band that blossomed in the 2000s and reunited five years ago, typically see massive local streaming increases, with the group averaging a 129% boost following last year’s shows. RBD, a Latin pop vocal group with a similar timeline as the JoBros, demonstrated even bigger local streaming gains, which were up an average of 285% following dates on the band’s reunion tour last year. This pattern continues with tours by Backstreet Boys and New Kids on the Block (172%), suggesting that classic pop acts are perhaps the biggest benefactors in terms of streaming numbers when they go on tour.
Speaking of reunions, last year also marked the 20th anniversary of landmark records by Death Cab for Cutie and The Postal Service, both of which are the brainchildren of indie-rock stalwart Ben Gibbard. Both acts, fronted by Gibbard, returned to the stage in 2023 to co-headline the Give Up & Transatlanticism 20th Anniversary Tour. During that run, their local streams bloomed by 195% — a number outdone only by RBD among the 50 artists in the analysis.
Click here for more on the symbiotic relationship between touring and streaming.
It’s no secret that Taylor Swift and Beyoncé staged the two biggest tours of 2023, with Swift even continuing the Eras Era throughout 2024. But not only did both artists earn record-breaking grosses and affect local economies with their treks, the stage shows also juiced each artist’s recorded music consumption.
Luminate and Billboard partnered to dig deeper into the connection between touring and streaming, capping a colossal year of headline tours. Beyoncé and Swift proved perfect examples of artists’ abilities to capitalize on their concert calendar to not only score a local bump in each city but sustain long-term national interest throughout the duration of their tours and beyond.
Both Beyoncé and Swift saw expected bumps to their consumption totals upon their respective tour kick-offs. When The Eras Tour launched, Swift’s U.S. on-demand audio streaming count increased by 59% in the week ending March 23, according to Luminate. For Beyoncé, the effects were teased out, as the tour’s first leg in Europe allowed domestic streaming to build slowly before her North American arrival. By the end of their U.S. runs, streams were up – from the week before each tour began through the release of each artist’s concert film – by 106% and 34%, respectively.
Initially, these bumps could be explained by the analysis of touring’s local short-term impact on consumption. In each city that Beyoncé and Swift played, market-level streams immediately grew by 89% and 95%, respectively, on average. But as their tours continued, isolated regional bumps compounded on one another, with particular narratives and trends aggregating to a mountain of consumption at the national level.
The mere announcement (Feb. 1, 2023) of Beyoncé’s Renaissance World Tour – coupled with the 65th Annual Grammy awards, where she did not perform but accepted two record-breaking trophies – spurred three weeks of gains, as the tour’s on-sale kept excitement alive. The beginning of Beyoncé’s domestic dates naturally fueled consumption in dramatic fashion with six consecutive weeks of increases (July 7 – Aug. 17).
Beyoncé stretched out her summer streaming bump with intention, focusing on individual moments of choreography and arrangements within the setlist. For “Energy,” a deep cut from Renaissance, she made a meal out of the lyric, “Look around, everybody on mute.” She took it literally, pausing the song and freezing alongside her dancers and band, teasing the audience before resuming, “Look around, it’s me and my crew/ Big energy.”
The Mute Challenge soon became an integral part of the show. By the time “Energy” hit its own streaming peak of 1.7 million clicks (week ending Sept. 7), it had nearly tripled its consumption from before the tour.
When Beyoncé performed “My Power,” a non-single from The Lion King: The Gift, she was joined by daughter Blue Ivy Carter on stage. Their much-memed and much-imitated dance routine entered the cannon of iconic Beyoncé choreography, with fans tracking Blue’s progress throughout the tour. The track posted explosive streaming gains over several months, ultimately up 449% by its peak (the week ending Aug. 17) from before the tour’s launch (the week ending May 4).
Spotlights for under-the-radar tracks like “Energy” and “My Power” yielded organic, drawn-out increases in consumption that snowballed alongside a parade of guest stars, controversy over the Queens Remix of “Break My Soul,” and a constant influx of social media content showcasing Beyoncé’s rotating wardrobe from local designers.
Swift’s catalog soared as soon as her tour began on March 17. Even before the July 7 release of Speak Now (Taylor’s Version), which warped her streams beyond the impact of The Eras Tour, consumption had almost doubled, at 372.9 million clicks in the week ending June 1. After the new release receded, her catalog maintained, at 391.4 million by the U.S. leg’s end in the week ending Aug. 10.
Like Beyoncé, Swift found songs within her ever-expanding catalog to highlight, particularly those that weren’t already world-conquering hits. Even with a nightly setlist of more than 40 songs, she left room each night to perform two rotating “surprise songs.” On average, the surprise songs got a 27% bump the week of their performance. Removing performances of songs from Speak Now after the release of the Taylor’s Version set, more affected by new-release streaming patterns than the typical tour impact, the average gain bumps to 31%.
After the exposure and subsequent streaming increase, the typical next-week drop was just 5%, indicating that inclusion in the surprise-song section encouraged sustained streaming action.
Within the show’s routine set pieces, Swift turned a fan-favorite into a Billboard Hot 100 No. 1 hit. Lover’s “Cruel Summer,” from 2019, was the first properly performed song each night at The Eras Tour, helping to reignite Swifties’ passion for the album cut. Without an official music video or announcement, even as Swift launched the 2022 Midnights track “Karma” as a single with its Ice Spice remix, “Cruel Summer” showed unstoppable growth from the tour’s launch. Steady between 1.9-2.1 million streams in the early months of 2023, the song ballooned to 16.7 million by the final U.S. show (in the week ending Aug. 10).
The prolonged championing of “Cruel Summer” and the one-after-another success of Swift’s surprise songs underlined The Eras Tour’s ability to transform her from superstar to stratosphere. Her relationships, philanthropy and seemingly every move during the tour continued to fuel her consumption, consistently more than double the streams she drew from earlier that year.
Both Beyoncé and Swift extended their good fortunes with the release of record-breaking concert films, each delivering profits for distributor AMC and more consumption boosts for their catalogs. The seeds they planted with “Energy, “Cruel Summer” and more took full bloom, even inside movie theaters, with audiences singing and dancing along — except when they had to be on mute.
Months after each tour wrapped in the U.S., Renaissance: A Film By Beyoncé scored the pop-dance-R&B(-country) chameleon a streaming increase of 54% the week of its Dec. 1 release, while Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour earned its once-country-now-pop star a 20% boost upon its Oct. 13 release.
Beyoncé and Swift are, of course, enormous stars that were likely to attract some amount of attention for going on tour even if they didn’t plan and work for these kinds of long-term rewards. But this kind of long-term, national growth isn’t only reserved for top-of-the-line megastars, as Maluma, ODESZA and Weezer experienced similar touring impact last year.
Both five years removed from their last stadium tours, Beyoncé and Swift designed their shows for maximum impact and staged campaigns that turned each trek into an era of its own.
Click here for more on the symbiotic relationship between touring and streaming.
Kicking off the new year in style, Coldplay leads Billboard’s Top Tours chart for January. According to figures reported to Billboard Boxscore, Chris Martin and company grossed $58.8 million and sold 417,000 tickets during the month, essentially doubling its closest competition.
January is traditionally the slowest month of the year, with Elton John and Tool crowning lists in 2020 and 2022, respectively, with less than $20 million each. John himself set a high mark in 2023 with $40.9 million, and now Coldplay improves upon that by 44%. This year’s top 30 tours grossed a collective $271 million, up 75% from last January’s total.
This marks the third time that Coldplay has been No. 1 on Top Tours, having crowned lists in March 2023 and July 2022. The band achieved its hat-trick with eight shows in Asia. Including another two dates in early February and eight shows in November, the latest leg of the Music of the Spheres tour earned $143.3 million.
Coldplay’s January shows break down to two at the Philippine Arena in Manila and six at Singapore’s National Stadium. The latter batch grossed $43.4 million and sold 321,000 tickets, leading Top Boxscores by a margin of 2.8-to-1.
While the phrase “world tour” often translates to the U.S., Canada and western Europe, Coldplay has taken its time to travel the globe. The Music of the Spheres Tour launched in March 2022 and has included three legs in Latin America, two in the U.S. and Canada, two in Europe, and now 18 shows in Asia. More dates in Europe and Oceania await in 2024.
In all, Coldplay’s massive global trek has sold 7.7 million tickets. Only Ed Sheeran’s Divide (÷) tour (2017-19) has sold more, at 8.9 million. With 43 shows scheduled between June and September, Coldplay would need to average about 28,000 tickets per show — less than half of the tour’s global average so far — to close the gap and become the bestselling tour in Boxscore history.
Speaking of Sheeran, he sits at No. 2 on January’s Top Tours chart with Asian concerts of his own. He grossed $31.7 million and sold 194,000 tickets over six dates, with five more in February to count toward next month’s recap.
Sheeran grossed $11.6 million over two nights in Osaka and another $10.6 million from a double-header in Dubai. Similar to Coldplay, his dates in Asia are part of a global endeavor, following legs in Europe, Oceania and North America.
Not only do both acts rub shoulders atop the all-time tally, they wrestle on the opposite end of the top 10. Sheeran’s The Mathematics Tour has now grossed $556.4 million and sold 5.8 million tickets since its April 2022 debut, squeezing into the top 10 highest grossing tours of all time. Collateral damage, Coldplay’s Music of the Spheres tour (2016-17) dips to No. 11, just as the British rock band encroaches on Sheeran’s prior tour at the all-time summit.
At No. 3 on Top Tours, Madonna brought in $31.2 million from a string of arena dates in January. That leaves her just $500,000 away from Sheeran’s runner-up spot, held back by a margin of less than 2%. All of Madonna’s 11 January dates appear on Top Boxscores, spotlighted by her three shows at Madison Square Garden. Those grossed $10.3 million from 41,200 tickets sold.
Now at $121 million, The Celebration Tour is Madonna’s sixth to cross the nine-digit threshold. Only The Rolling Stones (nine) and U2 (seven) have more. Bruce Springsteen and the Eagles also have six $100 million tours to their names.
Madonna has 32 shows left to report in the U.S., plus five in Mexico City. When all is said and done, The Celebration Tour will likely become her third to gross $200 million or more, behind stadium runs Sticky & Sweet Tour ($407.7 million; 2008-09) and the MDNA tour ($305.2 million; 2012).
K-pop offers bright spots in the top 10, with SEVENTEEN at No. 4 with $19.6 million and ENHYPEN at No. 7 with $13 million. Each group played batches of shows in Asia, just like Coldplay and Sheeran. With restrictive weather in the U.S. and Europe, stadiums in southern Asia and Australia are often pillars of early-in-the-year box office.
Comedians make their mark on Top Tours as well, with Tina Fey and Amy Poehler, Peter Kay, Kevin Hart, Jo Koy and Brett Goldstein all ranking between Nos. 14-20.
Though not without significant highlights, the Top Tours chart embraces the winter doldrums of years past, delivering the lowest top-30 gross since last January. John Mulaney and NieR Orchestra close out the top 30 under $1 million, matching 2023’s two sub-million earners. February marks the stage returns of Blink-182, Karol G and P!nk, while introducing new tours from Bad Bunny and Olivia Rodrigo.
A version of this story will appear in the March 2, 2024, issue of Billboard.
It’s a big week for Usher. On Friday (Feb. 9), he’ll release Coming Home, his first studio LP in eight years. Two days later, he’ll perform as the official headliner of the 2024 Apple Super Bowl LVIII Halftime Show. On Tuesday morning (Feb. 6), he announced Usher: Past Present Future, his first solo headline tour in a decade.
But that doesn’t mean that Usher has been away from the concert stage. In July 2021, he kicked off Usher: The Las Vegas Residency at The Colosseum at Caesars Palace. A year later, he moved down the strip to MGM’s Dolby Live for My Way: The Vegas Residency. As he looks forward to a new album and some of the biggest performances of his career, he can celebrate the success of these two residencies: According to figures reported to Billboard Boxscore, Usher has grossed more than $100 million across these Vegas stints.
The Caesars residency was relatively brief, with 14 shows in July and August 2021, and another six around the turn of the new year. Those 20 dates earned $18.8 million and sold 84,000 tickets. The MGM run was more extensive, hitting 80 shows between July 15, 2022, and Dec. 2, 2023. There, he grossed $95.9 million and sold 394,000 tickets.
Altogether, these theater shows grossed $114.6 million and sold 479,000 tickets across 100 dates. That’s a higher revenue total than any of Usher’s prior tours, previously topped by the OMG Tour, which brought in $76 million in 2010-11. That lined up with Usher’s other Super Bowl halftime appearance, when he made a cameo during the Black Eyed Peas’ 2011 set.
On a per-show scale, My Way: The Vegas Residency has averaged $1.198 million each night, surpassing $1.026 million from the OMG Tour and $698,000 from Truth Tour (2004-05). The latter run supported Confessions, the 2004 album that spawned four Billboard Hot 100 No. 1s and was the top Billboard 200 album of the year.
By almost any metric, that album and tour was a rare commercial peak for an artist with multiple No. 1 singles before and after. To improve upon his demand as a live act by more than 70% with his Vegas residencies proves the strength of his talent, discography, and brand, more than 30 years after he first hit the Billboard charts with “Call Me A Mack (From “Poetic Justice”)” in the summer of 1993.
Of course, inflation and an ever-changing ticketing market make comparing concert revenues from 20 years apart a difficult task. But in a Vegas theater a third the size of most North American arenas, Usher is a high-demand destination ticket. Both residencies have averaged a $239 ticket, far beyond the post-pandemic highs at Resorts World Theater and Caesar’s Bakkt Theater.
And while Usher arrived in Vegas in 2021 with new-and-improved demand, he leaves Sin City with even bigger momentum thanks to word-of-mouth around both residencies, a well-received Tiny Desk Concert and a run of single releases. His first stretch of shows at Caesars averaged $928,000, before increasing on almost every leg, peaking at $1.5 million on his last run of 21 shows from Oct. 11-Dec. 2.
After he releases Coming Home and plays the Super Bowl stage this weekend, he will embark on Usher: Past Present Future later this year. The arena trek launches on Aug. 20 in Washington D.C. and is scheduled through two shows in Chicago on Oct. 28-29. The initial announcement’s 24 North American stops could yield more than $50 million at the box office. But a successful album rollout and Super Bowl performance could lead to additional dates, extending his routing and pushing potential earnings further toward the $100 million threshold that he cleared after two and a half years in Las Vegas theaters.
Trans-Siberian Orchestra (TSO) once again rules Billboard’s monthly Top Tours chart in December, with the act now ringing the No. 1 bell for the final month of the year in 2023, 2022, 2021 and 2019. (Of note, there was no chart in 2020 due to COVID-19’s impact on touring.) Over 73 shows between Dec. 1-30, the classical holiday collective grossed $51.5 million and sold 657,000 tickets according to figures reported to Billboard Boxscore.
With ensembles on both the East and West Coasts, TSO was able to play at least two shows per day — and used the additional bandwidth to its advantage, squeezing the most performances into this December than it has in any year since 2016. Despite a 6% dip in attendance compared with last year, revenue increased by 1%, marking the highest grossing month for TSO in its illustrious 25-year touring history.
Overall, TSO grossed $68.2 million and sold 873,000 tickets on its 2023 tour. The group saw consistent increases in its annual grosses through the end of the 2010s, up 10%, 13%, and 18% in 2017, 2018 and 2019, respectively.
The 2021 season, flanked by the first wave of COVID-19’s Omicron, dipped back by 18%, while last year’s tour came within half a percentage point of the 2019 peak. Finally, with the effect of COVID in the rearview mirror, this year’s revue establishes a new high dating back to the collective’s 1999 touring debut.
TSO hit 21 markets in November and another 42 in December. As always, major markets prime for double-headers are saved for mid-to-late December when seasonal hype reaches its apex. The average gross per city in November was $835,000, while December’s pace rose to $1.2 million.
Cleveland and Tampa were standout markets, and the first to ever generate more than $2 million in TSO history. Two shows at the former’s Rocket Mortgage Fieldhouse grossed $2.02 million from 26,000 tickets, and a double-header at the latter’s Amalie Arena earned $2.08 million from 25,600 tickets.
Including its Y2K launch (Dec. 10, 1999, to be exact), TSO has grossed a reported $802.4 million and sold 15 million tickets from 1,893 shows. While that situates it just outside the top 20 grossing acts in Boxscore history, its rank based on attendance makes it one of the top 10 artists since Boxscore’s late-‘80s start.
TSO’s fourth month at No. 1 ties Bad Bunny and Beyoncé. Only Elton John has spent more time on top, having reigned for seven months, spread between 2019, 2020, 2022 and 2023. While its annual touring window is limited to holiday months, its dominance is reliable, likely to be repeated in Decembers to come.
Given the sheer abundance of shows in TSO’s calendar throughout all of December — compared with most tours wrapping up halfway through the month — the group’s victory this time of year can feel inevitable. Still, the No. 1 spot was claimed by just a 3% margin, narrowly fending off U2’s eight-show run at Las Vegas’ Sphere.
U2 earned just over $50 million and sold 133,000 tickets during the Dec. 1-16 leg of its residency at Sphere, claiming the No. 1 spot on Top Boxscores. Combined with the first leg, which stretched from late September to early November, the rock legends have earned $159.8 million at the groundbreaking Vegas arena. Beginning this weekend, Bono & Co. are slated for 15 more shows through March 2.
U2 isn’t the only Vegas residency act to impact the December recap. Bruno Mars is No. 4 on Top Boxscores with a five-show return to MGM’s Dolby Live. The pop-R&B chart-topper grossed $10.3 million toward the end of the month, including a New Year’s Eve performance. At the same venue, Usher is No. 30 with the final two shows of a 12-date leg that began in early November. At Resorts World Theatre, Carrie Underwood pops up at No. 22, with $4.1 million from eight of nine shows that kicked off on Nov. 30.
While Vegas leads the way, half of the 30-position Top Boxscores chart took place outside of the mainland U.S., ranging from Latin America (RBD) and Europe (Madonna) to Asia (SEVENTEEN) and Australia (50 Cent). Paul McCartney takes up the most real estate with four appearances, all of which were in Brazil. Shows in Sao Paulo, Belo Horizonte, Rio de Janeiro and Curitiba rank at Nos. 3, 12-13 and 18, respectively. Three shows at Allianz Parque lead the pack with a $16.2 million gross and 149,000 attendance count over three shows.
And while Sphere enjoys a commanding lead over the Top Venues (15,001+ capacity) chart, it’s a New York theater that reigns over all concert halls in December. Radio City Music Hall crowns the Top Venues (5,001-10,000 capacity) list with $80.6 million and 133 shows. Even more efficient than TSO, The Radio City Rockettes headlined this year’s annual Christmas Spectacular, earning a gargantuan $116.7 million over 193 shows between Nov. 17 and Jan. 4.
Mariah Carey’s Merry Christmas One and All! tour grossed $29.6 million and sold 214,000 tickets according to figures reported to Billboard Boxscore. On a per-show basis, the tour’s 15 dates sold more tickets than any Carey tour in 25 years, dating back to the Butterfly World Tour in 1998.
Carey released Merry Christmas in 1994, featuring the iconic and evergreen smash single, “All I Want for Christmas Is You.” That would be enough to cement her status as the Queen of Christmas, but Carey has put in the work each year and assumed her throne on stage as well. For every year since 2014 (except for the 2020-21 COVID years), she has toured and/or held mini residencies honoring her holiday material.
For four years, Carey played a stint at New York’s Beacon Theatre, building from 16,200 tickets in 2014, to 20,700 in 2015, and to 23,400 in 2016. She cut down to just three shows at the Beacon in 2017, before rebuilding at Madison Square Garden in 2019, 2022 and 2023. Her two shows there in December sold a combined 28,700 tickets and grossed $4.5 million, both of which are bigger than ever.
Not only has Carey increased her efficiency in New York, she’s built out across the country and into Europe. What began as a NYC-only event in 2014, expanded to Europe in 2017 and 2018, plus more North American cities in 2019. After last year’s post-pandemic return focused on just New York and Toronto, the 2023 tour boasts Carey’s biggest holiday routing yet, never playing to fewer than 12,500 fans across the U.S. and Canada. Holiday classics or not, it’s her first such major arena tour since 2006.
Considering “All I Want for Christmas Is You” re-entered the Billboard Hot 100 based on the tracking week of Nov. 10-16, and stayed at No. 2 through the first week of 2024, it’s possible she could expand beyond the Nov. 17-Dec. 17 window of this year’s run.
The Merry Christmas One and All! tour averaged $2 million and 14,200 tickets per show. Those revenue figures are Carey’s biggest ever, dating back more than 30 years since she crashed the Billboard charts.
But while a bustling concert economy and decades of inflation can explain some of her recent success, Carey’s reach – the sheer number of tickets she sold – is also sky high. That 14,200 average is the best per-show attendance for any of her tours since 1998, when she was supporting the previous year’s Butterfly.
Leading up to that 1998 tour, Carey amassed four No. 1 albums on the Billboard 200 and 12 No. 1 songs on the Hot 100. Since then, there have been another two No. 1 albums and seven No. 1 songs, including 14 weeks on top, spread across the last five holiday seasons, for “All I Want for Christmas Is You.” In 2019, one month before that track reached the summit, Carey ranked No. 4 on Billboard’s Greatest of All Time Artists chart, leading among women and Black artists.
Still, Carey has never toured with the same intensity as many of the acts that surrounded her on that list, such as Elton John, Madonna or Taylor Swift. Her first three concert tours, in the midst of her ‘90s chart-topping spree, each lasted for no more than 11 shows, almost one eighth of Swift’s calendar for 2024.
It’s encouraging that Carey has arguably been busier than ever on the road in the last decade, including her annual holiday series, two Las Vegas residencies and three international tours. Far removed from releasing her last chart-topper, her 2023 upswing in concert attendance, not to mention the all-time-high grosses, tells a positive story about Carey’s legacy as the Queen of Christmas, using her unique niche (and 19 No. 1 hits – a record among soloists – expanding their presence in the holiday show setlist) to fill arenas.
