Billboard Boxscore
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Though the calendar year has flipped and Billboard’s January Boxscore report celebrates the beginning of a new year in touring, the top of the charts carry over what became a constant toward the end of 2022. According to figures reported to Billboard Boxscore, Elton John’s Farewell Yellow Brick Road Tour earned $40.9 million during the month, securing his seventh at No. 1 on the Top Tours chart overall, and third in the last four months.
Beyond extending his record for time atop the ranking, notably, January’s Oceania leg of John’s sprawling farewell tour pushed the entire run’s gross to $817.9 million – making it the highest grossing tour of all time. It surpasses Ed Sheeran’s The Divide Tour ($776.4 million), which set the previous high mark in 2019, and U2’s The 360 Tour ($736.4 million), which had held the title since 2011.
Simultaneously, John leads the Top Boxscores chart with $11.3 million at Sydney’s Allianz Stadium on Jan. 17-18. Since the charts launched in February 2019, it’s the ninth time an artist has ruled both rankings, and the second for John, who first did so in January 2020. BTS is the only other act to double-up twice.
John’s $40-million January breaks down to two stadiums shows apiece in Newcastle (Jan. 9, 11), Melbourne (Jan. 14-15) and Sydney (Jan. 18-19), plus single shows in Brisbane (Jan. 22) and Christchurch (Jan. 25).
Not only does John crown the Boxscores ranking, he follows himself at Nos. 2 (Melbourne), 4 (Newcastle), 6 (Brisbane), and 11 (Christchurch). Blanketing the chart with four top 10 appearances, he set himself apart from the pack in stadiums during Australia and New Zealand’s summer, while the Northern winter kept last year’s holdovers dormant and 2023’s from beginning later into the spring.
The strategy does extend to the Red Hot Chili Peppers at No. 2 on Top Tours and at Nos. 5, 9 and 12 on Top Boxscores. The funk-pop-rock band earned $15.1 million from the first three of its Oceania shows, with five more to chart in February. This follows the $59.6 million in Europe and $117.4 million in North America last year, playing stadiums in both continents during the warmth of June through September.
With far less history in Oceania than on the Western hemisphere, the Chili Peppers enlisted Post Malone to join the January and February shows. The bulked-up billing helped transform the band from an arena act to a stadium act in the region, having last reported shows in Oceania on 2007’s Stadium Arcadium Tour. Audience in Auckland flipped from 22,000 in ’07 to 48,000 in 2023, while Brisbane’s crowd grew from 22,000 to 40,000.
Playing Brisbane’s Suncorp Stadium just a week after John, the two combined for $13.9 million and 91,000 tickets sold, enough to be the top grossing venue of the month worldwide.
On the Top Venues, 15,001+ capacity chart, Suncorp is followed by Sydney’s Allianz Stadium and Melbourne’s AAMI Park at Nos. 2-3, respectively, plus Manchester’s McDonald Jones Stadium at No. 6, forming a powerful Oceania block over western mainstays like the Kia Forum in Inglewood, Calif. (No. 4), the O2 Arena in London (No. 5) and Madison Square Garden in New York (No. 8).
Continuing the 2022 carryover at the head of Top Tours, Harry Styles is No. 3, after finishing at No. 4 on last year’s annual recap. He earned $12.4 million from 62,000 tickets sold, all from four arena dates. On Jan. 26-27 and 29, Styles played the final three dates of his 15-show mini-residency at the Kia Forum in Inglewood, Calif. Those dates grossed $9.6 million and pushed the entire Inglewood run to a gross of $47.8 million, making it the fifth-highest grossing headline engagement in Boxscore history.
Additionally, Styles played two shows at Acrisure Arena in Palm Desert, Calif. One of those shows, played on Jan. 31, counts toward his monthly total, and the other, played on Feb. 1, will count toward his February earnings.
While January typically is a lull between the final dates of major tours in November and December and the opening nights for the year’s biggest attractions in February and March, January 2023 proved that there are ways to kick off the year in style, pun intended. From John and the Chili Peppers going to Australia, to The 1975 and Future conducting brief, monthlong runs before calendars get too packed, January can be a sneaky time for sleeper ticket sales.
Further flagged by Omicron-era woes, the January 2021 Top Tours chart featured six tours above $5 million, 18 above $1 million, and cut off the 30-position ranking at $548,000. One year later, those numbers improve to eight, 28, and $975,000.
Over nearly four decades, Billboard Boxscore has charted the biggest tours in the world. From Whitney Houston and Billy Joel in the ‘80s to Bad Bunny and Billie Eilish in 2022, artists have topped Boxscore charts in Vegas theaters, international stadiums, and everything in between.
Most recently, road warrior Elton John broke the record for the highest grossing tour of all time with the Farewell Yellow Brick Road Tour, now at $818 million after a brief leg of Australian shows. His tour began in September 2018, was interrupted by COVID for two years, and has returned stronger than ever — and stronger than everyone else.
The updated top 10 tours of all-time include previous record-holders by Ed Sheeran and The Rolling Stones, as well as live legends like Guns N’ Roses and Madonna.
John’s triumphant farewell tour is one of two in the top 10 with post-pandemic results, but more upheaval could be on the way. Still on the road, Coldplay, Harry Styles and previous record-holder Ed Sheeran are marching past the $200 million and $300 million marks with many shows scheduled for this year. And that’s not to mention newly announced 2023 treks by Beyoncé, Metallica, Taylor Swift, and more.
An influx of tours by these artists would not just help to modernize the top 10 but would add dashes of diversity, breaking up a current roster that includes eight tours by male rock acts from the U.K., Ireland and Australia.
Below are the 10 highest-grossing tours in the Boxscore archives, ranked by total earnings, according to figures reported to Billboard Boxscore. All 10 have grossed more than $400 million – who will be next to join the club?
Beyoncé released Renaissance, her seventh solo studio album, in July 2022 to rapturous acclaim and No. 1 status on the Billboard 200 and, for lead single “Break My Soul,” No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100. But unlike 2016’s Lemonade and 2013’s Beyoncé, there were no concerts and no televised performances — not even a music video.
But six months later, days ahead of a potentially pivotal Grammy ceremony (Feb. 5) where she’s the year’s leading nominee, Beyoncé has announced the Renaissance world tour. It’s bound to be one of the year’s biggest concert events, aiming to be her fourth tour to gross more than $200 million based on forecasts estimated by Billboard Boxscore. In fact, the tour could easily sail past the $275 million mark. The all-stadium trek is currently scheduled to play 41 shows in 10 countries from May 10 through September 27.
A Beyoncé tour used to be a given every couple of years, but the Renaissance world tour will launch seven years after her last solo outing, 2016’s The Formation World Tour. That was her first solo trek in stadiums, though neither the show’s stellar reviews nor fans’ insatiable demand hinted at her rookie status. The tour earned $256.1 million and sold 2.2 million tickets, according to figures reported to Billboard Boxscore, finishing atop Billboard’s year-end Top Tours chart.
In the years since, Beyoncé mounted On the Run II, her second stadium tour alongside Jay-Z following 2014’s On the Run. The stadium trek came close to Beyoncé’s solo high mark but finished with $253.5 million and 2.2 million tickets — coming within 1% of Formation’s gross and 3% of its attendance despite the doubled-up star-power. The strength of Beyoncé’s solo tour among her entire live history perhaps speaks to her unique draw as one of the century’s most singular live entertainers.
The Formation World Tour marked a 21% improvement upon the $212 million take of 2013-14’s The Mrs. Carter Show World Tour, which spanned 126 dates in arenas.
This summer’s Renaissance world tour was announced with 15 shows in Europe in May and June, followed by 26 shows in the U.S. and Canada.
That 41-show sum is slightly shorter than The Formation World Tour’s 49 and On the Run II Tour’s 48. But while Renaissance could trail her previous outings in cumulative gross because of a more compact schedule, that scenario is unlikely considering the industry’s plumped-up ticketing.
In efforts to redirect second-and-third-party ticket sales to the artist, dynamic pricing, platinum ticketing and fan-to-fan re-sale have sent grosses soaring in the post-pandemic era. Beyoncé’s 2016 and 2018 tours averaged $114 and $116 per ticket, but that number will likely be far closer to, if not more than, $200 in 2023.
And like with Billboard’s early projections for Taylor Swift and Madonna, Beyoncé’s initial routing announcement may just be the singer playing coy. Per the first announced round of shows, London is the only market with more than one show, while previous Beyoncé tours also doubled up in New York, Chicago, Paris, Houston and more. More dates could be announced in some of the routing’s open spaces due to expectedly high demand. As the routing stands at press time, there are often four or five days between shows, with long stretches between May 30 (London) and June 8 (Barcelona), and September 2 and 11 (Inglewood, Calif. and Vancouver).
The continental splits for Formation and OTR2 were similar to that of Renaissance, with slightly more than a third of the entire tour in Europe and the other 60-65% in North America. Grosses and attendance lined up, too — $86.9 million and 867,000 tickets in Europe on Formation and $87 million and 871,000 tickets on OTR2, versus $169.1 million and 1.4 million tickets in North America on Formation and $166.5 million and 1.3 million on OTR2.
Given her consistent sell-out stadium business and an expected 30%-plus lift on ticket prices, the Renaissance world tour could be earning $6.8-$7.5 million per show. At the low end of that projection, with no additional shows, total gross would be heading for a personal-best $275 million. With just a few extra shows, at the top of that range, she’d notch her first $300 million tour.
Across her career, Beyoncé has grossed $767.3 million and sold 8.9 million tickets across 375 shows, including those with Jay-Z and the Verizon Ladies First Tour, a co-headline run with Missy Elliott and Alicia Keys in 2004. That means that the Renaissance world tour is setting her up to be one of three women to potentially cross the billion-dollar mark this year. Swift’s Eras Tour is sure to push her over the edge, while P!nk’s Summer Carnival Tour could do the trick as well.
Renaissance was Beyoncé’s seventh No. 1 album, while “Break My Soul” marked her eighth No. 1 song. When album cut “Cuff It” shot to No. 10 on the Hot 100 last month, it became the 21st top 10 Hot 100 song of her solo career. The Renaissance world tour is scheduled to kick off May 10 at Stockholm’s Friends Arena and wrap on September 27 at New Orleans’ Caesars Superdome.
In January 2018, Elton John announced his impending retirement from touring, but only after a worldwide, multi-year farewell tour to say goodbye. He kicked off the Farewell Yellow Brick Road Tour in September of that year and began a record-breaking run, though it isn’t over yet.
According to figures reported to Billboard Boxscore, the Farewell Yellow Brick Road Tour has grossed $817.9 million across 278 shows so far — more than any tour in Boxscore history. Bypassing Ed Sheeran’s The Divide Tour ($776.4 million), it is the first tour in Billboard’s archives to cross the $800 million benchmark.
The Farewell Yellow Brick Road Tour was promoted by AEG Presents, with select local partners in certain international markets.
Sheeran set the record in 2019 toward the end of his 258-show run, replacing U2’s The 360 Tour ($736.4 million). Both of those tours went far and wide, playing six and five continents, respectively, and spending most, if not all, of their time in stadiums. Conversely, John spent 2018-20 and the first quarter of 2022 in arenas in North America, Europe, and Oceania, before advancing to stadiums in each continent for the tour’s final year.
That advancement paid off. John’s first three North American legs combined to $268.2 million over 116 shows. His stadium run from July – Nov. 2022 brought in $222.1 million, or 83% of his arena grosses, in just 33 shows.
Similarly, his European stadium outgrossed his arena leg, $69.2 million to $49.9 million, despite playing 12 fewer shows. And most recently, his average per-show gross in Australia and New Zealand swelled from $2.5 million in 2019-20 in arenas to $5.1 million in stadiums.
In total, the January ’23 Oceania leg grossed $40.9 million and sold 242,000 tickets. Combined with updated North American grosses to account for previously unreported platinum lifts, the Farewell tour’s total revenue surges passed $800 million, with 51 European shows still to play through July 8.
While the tour’s first couple years in arenas certainly laid the foundation for John to scale the all-time ranking, it took three full legs in North America and Europe to hit the all-time top 40, at $217.8 million after 108 shows. His return to the U.S. and Canada in the Fall of 2019 lifted the tour’s total to $292.3 million, moving up to No. 20.
The following Oceania leg from Nov. 2019 – March 2020 (it was mercifully scheduled to end days before the global lockdown began) brought the gross up to $385.4 million, lifting to No. 13. John’s post-COVID North American arena run added $100 million, climbing into the all-time top 10 at No. 6 with $485.7 million. The stadium run in Europe brought him to No. 4, followed by a nudge to No. 2 with North American shows, finally ascending to the all-time crown with a brief run in Oceania from Jan. 8-24. 6
Sorting by tickets sold, John still has a way to go on the all-time ranking. The Farewell Yellow Brick Road has sold 5.3 million tickets, ranked behind Sheeran and U2’s previous record-holders, in addition to The Rolling Stones’ Voodoo Lounge Tour (1994-95), Coldplay’s A Head Full of Dreams Tour (2016-17) and Guns N’ Roses’ Not in This Lifetime… Tour (2016-19). Sheeran’s Divide Tour still stands atop the all-time attendance chart with 8.9 million tickets.
While it’s next-to-impossible for John to catch up to the tickets-sold record with just one leg of shows, his European dates will allow him to pass Coldplay and GNR, presumably moving into fourth place on the all-time list. Returning to “intimate” arenas for the final leg, John could be setting his sights on another unprecedented benchmark, sure to approach and likely to cross $900 million by his final performance.
Dating back to reports for John’s Ice on Fire Tour (1986), and including his share of co-headline runs with Eric Clapton, James Taylor, Tina Turner, and, many times over, Billy Joel, John has grossed $1.863 billion and sold 19.9 million tickets over 1,573 reported shows. That’s the highest career gross and attendance for a solo artist in Boxscore history, having passed Bruce Springsteen and Madonna while on this tour. On Billboard’s 2019 recap of the top 125 artists of all time, John finished at No. 3, behind The Beatles and The Rolling Stones.
Another December Boxscore report, another triumph for Trans-Siberian Orchestra. Since Billboard launched its monthly touring recap in February 2019, TSO has made a habit of topping each December’s Top Tours chart, cranking up its annual seasonal routing to the max. According to figures reported to Billboard Boxscore, Trans-Siberian Orchestra grossed $50.9 million and sold 691,000 tickets over 71 shows in the 31-day period.
Peaking at four shows per day, TSO employs two ensembles. One travels the eastern half of the U.S. and the other covers the western half, each playing matinee and primetime concerts in some markets.
The band hit a high point on Dec. 23, with two shows at Nationwide Arena in Columbus, Ohio ($1.7 million) and two at Xcel Energy Center in St. Paul, Minn. ($1.9 million), totaling $3.6 million in one day from four concerts. It was one of five days in December that it grossed more than $3 million.
TSO’s entire 2022 haul generated $66.5 million in gross revenues from 914,000 tickets sold – with 77% of that sum coming from December dates alone. That’s the second-highest grossing tour in the band’s history, narrowly missing 2019’s pre-pandemic $66.8 million. Still, this was its biggest December yet, at $50.9 million, eclipsing 2019’s $46.8 million.
In 2021, TSO played 98 shows – equal to 2022’s run – but the Omicron wave slowed ticket sales, dipping to $42 million in December, and $54.6 million for the entire run.
In all, Trans-Siberian Orchestra has grossed $734.1 million and sold 14.1 million tickets over 1,789 shows. The modestly priced (and mostly U.S.-based) family show hovers around the top 20 grossing acts in Boxscore history, but is within the top 10 according to tickets sold, slightly less than Coldplay’s 14.6 million, but moving past Bon Jovi’s 13.3 million.
With its annual trip to the summit, TSO’s third monthly Boxscore win puts the act in rare company. Since the launch of Top Tours in February 2019, only Elton John (six) and Bad Bunny (four) have spent more time at No. 1, while The Rolling Stones match with three months of its own. Considering John and Bad Bunny dominated the previous four months, it hasn’t been since July that an act scored its first Top Tours victory, when Coldplay ruled with $66.7 million.
And while John, the Stones and Coldplay have each disappeared for now, Bad Bunny remains a factor on the December charts, at No. 3 on Top Tours and at No. 1 on Top Boxscores. He crowns the latter chart with his two shows at Estadio BBVA in Monterrey, Mexico. That double-header earned $17.1 million on Dec. 3-4, pushing World’s Hottest Tour to a final gross of $314.1 million.
In December, Billboard named Bad Bunny the top touring act of 2022 based on the combined activity of the spring’s El Ultimo Tour Del Mundo and World’s Hottest Tour, accumulating $373.5 million in the tracking period of Nov. 1, 2021-Oct. 31, 2022. But with additional grosses in November and December, he finished the year with $434.9 million, the biggest calendar-year gross for an artist in Boxscore history.
In between TSO and Bad Bunny, Daddy Yankee finished the year at No. 2 on Top Tours, hitting a new peak after spending October and November at No. 3. His December haul began with three shows at Mexico City’s Foro Sol (after playing two shows at the venue in November) and stretched through a final American run, ending with two shows at Miami’s FTX Arena.
Over 15 shows, he earned $37.5 million, pushing his farewell tour’s total to $197.8 million. That makes it the second-biggest tour by a Spanish-speaking act, following, who else, Bad Bunny and his own fall ’22 tour.
Daddy Yankee follows Bad Bunny, again, by hitting No. 2 on Top Boxscores with those three Foro Sol shows. The entire five-night run grossed $23.6 million, split between $9.8 million on Nov. 29-30, and $13.8 million on Dec. 2-4.
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Among the highest grossing venues of the month, a combination of holiday-themed concerts and sporting events make it the No. 1 on the ranking among venues with a capacity of 15,001+. In most months, the venue atop that chart is also the No. 1 venue among rooms of any size, given the high capacity. But, just as TSO annually shoots to No. 1, December’s crown is virtually reserved for New York’s 5,900-cap Radio City Music Hall.
Home of the Christmas Spectacular starring The Radio City Rockettes, RCMH grossed $76.7 million across 130 shows (averaging more than four performances per day), trampling the arena’s $22 million take. In all, between Nov. 18 and Jan. 2, the Rockettes show brought in $96.9 million and sold 945,000 tickets. If counted as a musical touring act, it would quite easily rule the Top Tours and Top Boxscores charts.
Though not a touring act per se, there are two Jingle Ball appearances on Top Boxscores, another seasonal regular. Of six reported Jingle Ball events, totaling $8.7 million, highlights are New York’s show at Madison Square Garden ($3.5 million; 18,178 tickets) and London’s two-night event at the O2 Arena ($2.5 million; 27,080 tickets).
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When Madonna hits the road later this year for her career-spanning Celebration Tour, she’ll be taking a global victory lap, further cementing her legacy as the Queen of Pop. She’ll also be taking home big money — upwards of $100 million, by Billboard‘s estimate.
The parade of concerts will feature Madonna’s greatest hits from across her 40-year career, a rare straightforward ambition for one of the world’s most enigmatic artists. With 38 top 10 songs on the Billboard Hot 100 and 23 top 10 albums on the Billboard 200, the tour stands to continue her streak as the highest-grossing solo female artist in Billboard Boxscore history (provided she can fend off Taylor Swift‘s upcoming Eras tour). How high will it go?
Madonna’s touring career began in earnest with 1985’s The Virgin Tour, averaging more than 10,000 tickets and $100,000 per night, according to figures reported to Billboard Boxscore. (The average ticket price on that tour was $14.74, a distant whiff of what her — and all artists’ — arena concert tickets cost in the 2020s. In today’s dollars, adjusted for inflation, that skimpy price would translate to $29.56.)
Already a sell-out force, Madonna’s next trek, 1987’s Who’s That Girl World Tour, tripled her draw and nearly quintupled her selling power in just two years, pacing 35,000 tickets and $756,000 per show in a mix of arenas and stadiums that year.
Both of those figures were just the beginning. They were followed by 1990’s Blond Ambition Tour, 1993’s The Girlie Show and seven tours in the 21st century that have grossed at least $50 million each.
Madonna’s highest-grossing tour thus far is the 85-date Sticky & Sweet Tour in 2008-09, playing stadiums around the world to the tune of $407.7 million and 3.5 million tickets. Fifteen years later, it remains the highest-grossing tour by a woman ever. (Her next trek, 2012’s MDNA Tour – her lengthiest tour by number of shows at 88 – played a mix of stadiums and arenas, and became her second-highest grossing run, with $305.2 million.)
The Celebration Tour was announced on Tuesday (Jan. 17) with 26 shows in North America and 12 in Europe. Throughout this week, that routing expanded to 41 and 20, respectively. Madonna begins the trek on July 15 in Vancouver and is scheduled to wrap Dec. 2 in Amsterdam. Thus far, no dates outside the U.S., Canada and western Europe have been announced.
To gauge the tour’s financial prospects, it would be unfair to simply reflect on Madonna’s most recent tour. That was the 2019-20 Madame X Tour, an experiment that placed the Queen of Pop in intimate theater-based mini-residencies in major markets on both sides of the Atlantic. The 75-show run sold itself out at 179,000 tickets and $51.5 million, but it’s an outlier in a career comprised of (much) larger venues.
A more apt comparison would be the Rebel Heart Tour of 2015-16, a string of 82 arena shows after the stadium madness of her previous two treks. That tour grossed $169.8 million and sold 1.05 million tickets worldwide, including quick stints in Asia and Oceania. On the Rebel Heart Tour, more relevant to the Celebration routing, Madonna averaged $1.8 million and 12,500 tickets in the U.S. and Canada, and $1.7 million and 14,600 tickets in Europe. Given her current 61-show routing for The Celebration Tour, maintaining those averages would put the entire run on track to gross $106.9 million and sell 802,000 tickets.
But ticket prices have risen since Madonna was charging $15-and-under in the ‘80s, including a significant spike in the last five years. Platinum ticketing and dynamic pricing have blown out arena and stadium grosses in the post-pandemic era, with Bad Bunny, Harry Styles, The Rolling Stones and more approaching $200 averages on tour last year.
For example, on Elton John’s Farewell Yellow Brick Road Tour, his average arena ticket in North America jumped from $139 in 2018 to $181 in 2022. That’s a 30% increase, which would bolster Madonna’s projected gross to $140.6 million. But the surge in prices hasn’t been as great in Europe, which could soften our prediction back toward the $130 million mark.
Further, Madonna has long been a global icon. So far, The Celebration Tour spans two continents, while she has frequently hit South America, Asia and Oceania throughout her career. An expansion of the tour — which seems like a natural idea based on the marketability of an all-hits show — would drastically change what is realistic for the 2023 trek. And as noted above, Madonna already increased the number of North American shows for the tour by more than 50% before The Celebration Tour’s general on-sale began on Jan. 20. Demand could dictate further additions.
Today’s on-sale generated over 600,000 tickets sold, with 35 sold-out shows and more to become available next week.
Over nearly 40 years, Madonna has grossed a reported $1.376 billion and sold 11.7 million tickets across 575 shows. That makes her the most successful female act in Boxscore history. The Celebration Tour will nudge her closer to the $1.5 billion mark. Among all acts, only four have grossed more in Boxscore history.
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.
Few things faze Noah Assad, Bad Bunny’s manager. But even he admits that launching a stadium tour barely three months after an arena tour was a bit daunting.
“We knew it was going to be a learning experience and something none of us had done before,” Assad says now, “but we went for it and worked through it with the help of old and new partners and set new industry standards.”
Bad Bunny ends the year as the top touring act of 2022, grossing $373.5 million from 1.8 million tickets across 65 shows, according to Billboard Boxscore, and that number doesn’t even include his last 20 Latin American stadium shows. This makes Bunny — born Benito Martinez Ocasio — the first act who doesn’t perform in English to ever top the year-end tally.
World’s Hottest Tour broke venue revenue records in 12 of the 15 U.S. markets that it hit, including Chicago and Washington, D.C., and New York, where he played Yankee Stadium. All told, the North American leg of tour averaged $11.1 million per show – the biggest per-show average gross by any artist in any genre in Boxscore history (dating back to the late 1980s).
Bunny also became the only artist to ever launch separate tours each topping $100 million in the same calendar year. His stadium tour launched after he played his 35-date El Ultimo Tour Del Mundo, an arena tour that earned $116.8 million from 35 shows.
So, how did an artist who only records in Spanish, who is signed to an independent label and has only been five years in the market achieve this feat? To find out, Billboard spoke with agents, promoters and producers to piece together the ingredients of Bunny’s spectacular touring success.
The seeds for World’s Hottest Tour, which ends with sold out shows Friday (Dec. 9) and Saturday (Dec. 10) at Mexico city’s Estadio Azteca, were sown April 15, 2021, when tickets went on sale for Bunny’s April 2022 arena tour. The tour sold out in a matter of hours, says Jbeau Lewis, one of Bunny’s agents at UTA, with some 200,000 to 300,000 people in virtual queue in individual arenas trying to score tickets, and it became clear how much demand there was for Bad Bunny concerts.
“I remember vividly Noah having a discussion that day and saying, ‘We have to hold some stadiums for next year.’ We saw the unprecedented demand for [2022 arena tour] Ultimo Tour del Mundo,” says Lewis. “And knowing that tour was going to be nine months away and that Benito had plans to release more music, the only way to provide enough supply to alleviate the demand was to move to bigger venues. And that’s when we started working on it.”
Last year Assad signed on with Henry Cardenas of Cardenas Marketing Network (CMN), Bunny’s longtime promoter who was already doing his arena tour who’d been booking him since he played 1,000-people club shows back in 2017 and 2018 in cites like New York and Miami. Cardenas brought in Live Nation, which has vast experience with stadiums, as his partners in the U.S.
In the U.S., the biggest challenge was not the prospect of selling out stadiums; Lewis felt very confident that wouldn’t be an issue if they stuck to those markets where Bunny had strongest demand. Scheduling was the problem, given that the tour was being booked just 15-16 months in advance, and MLB and NFL teams already had dates locked down. Assad and Bunny were also adamant that he not play more than two dates per city, so fans wouldn’t think that one market was preferred over another.
In the end, they settled on 15 U.S. cities and tickets went on sale before the tour design even was finalized, something tour producer Roly Garbalosa says is unusual. “Normally for a tour this big, you design, then look for the markets. Not here. Here we just went.”
Bad Bunny hit road Aug. 5 with a massive production hauling his massive “beach,” palm trees, LED screens and of course, the contraptions needed for his flying stunt, where he gets on top of a small island with a palm tree and soars over the crowd, singing all the way. While a typical tour will take about 20 cargo trucks, Bunny traveled with up to 36, carrying 100 tons of equipment. While CMN and Live Nation promoted the entire U.S. trek of the tour, in Latin America CMN took over seven concerts. The others went to independent promoters Assad has long worked with in the past, including Bizarro in Chile, Westwood Entertainment in Mexico and Dale Play in Argentina.
“Noah has a code of honor,” says Fede Lauria, the founder of Dale Play, who promoted Bunny’s two shows at Velez Sarsfield Stadium in Buenos Aires. “I promoted Benito’s first tour here in Luna Park in 2016. This time, it’s been the biggest production I’ve ever done. We sold 90,000 tickets, but I would have sold 900,000. We sold out in half an hour. I had over a million people in virtual line trying to buy tickets.”
For Latin America, Bunny again insisted on his no more than two shows per city rule. He also insisted that his show had to be exactly the same as what his fans saw in the U.S. This is easier said than done. Usually, promoters will pay artists their guarantee plus the cost of local production. But Bunny couldn’t rely on local production for such a technically complicated show. Many countries and venues simply don’t have the equipment necessary to replicated what can be done in state-of-the-art stadiums in the U.S. And many local promoters can’t afford to pay the costs of importing production and still break even, especially in countries that are suffering from massive devaluation. So, instead of modifying the show to meet local production standards, “He took all his equipment, put it inside a 747 jet, and took it with him,” Cárdenas says. “And he paid for that.”
Even then, says Garbalosa, adjustments were required. Bunny’s flying stunt in the U.S. is done commonly by hitching the equipment to the lights and towers. Because many stadiums in Latin America don’t have that capability, “We had to rent cranes and place them outside the stadium,” says Garbalosa.
Bunny traveled through Latin America with the 747 cargo jet for his more than 100 tons of equipment; a passenger jet for his 130-plus crew and personnel and a private jet for himself and his immediate five-to-six-person team. And he paid those costs.
“No other artist does that,” says Cárdenas.” I will say it in plain English: He’s the only artist who invests that kind of money in his production in Latin America.”
What that decision translates to is less money for the artist. Shows in the U.S. make more because ticket prices are higher and the cost of production, in this case, can be far less.
“But he said, my fans deserve the same show,” Cárdenas says. “It will pay off in the future.”
In some ways, you could say it’s already paying off.
“I’ve been doing this for 30 years,” adds Garbalosa, the production manager. “I’ve never worked with an artist that creates this kind of frenzy.”
With so much time between the tours of 2019 to early 2020 and late 2021-22, new arena stars were minted in the in-between, ready to play the biggest stages of their career despite a possibly limited tour history. Bad Bunny, Billie Eilish and Dua Lipa transferred the goodwill of chart-topping hits into juiced-up arena tours, now suddenly reliable for sell-outs due to the ghost of success during the pandemic.
Also transforming from a club-level up-and-comer to a global touring powerhouse is Rosalía. The Spanish singer-songwriter’s Motomami World Tour — named after her album released in March of this year — earned $28.1 million and sold 343,000 tickets across three continents, according to figures reported to Billboard Boxscore. With more dates to come, she lands at No. 7 on the year-end Top Latin Tours chart.
Before Rosalía became an arena-conquering superstar, she was playing scattered headline shows in clubs in North America. Her April 2019 shows at New York’s Webster Hall, San Francisco’s Regency Center Grand Ballroom and L.A.’s The Mayan all sold less than 1,500 tickets while she built her base via festival sets around the world. She finished that year with theater shows in London and Paris, and a few arena shows in Barcelona and Madrid.
A sludge of one-off singles, award show performances, and ultimately, the release of 2022’s Motomami helped fill the gap between tours. Since then, she and her team scaled her live business.
Rosalía’s 2019 concerts in Barcelona and Madrid transformed into a 12-date tour in her native Spain. Those shows grossed $13.4 million and sold 154,000 tickets.
Performances at the ‘19 Argentina and Chile installments of Lollapalooza became 11 shows on the Motomami World Tour, adding $7.5 million and 114,000 tickets.
And her North American club shows ballooned into 13 shows in large theaters, earning $7.3 million from 75,000 tickets.
The Motomami World Tour has played 36 shows so far, already a fuller run than 2019’s El Mal Querer Tour. And with increased venue capacity and ticket prices, Rosalía’s pace is that of a completely different artist than her pre-pandemic touring. Her North American shows in ’19 averaged $52,000 and 1,369 tickets. Fast forward to her recent domestic leg, and she’s earning $558,445 and 5,781 tickets – more than 10 times her last tour.
The Motomami World Tour has a string of nine European arena dates left before the end of the year. Even without those grosses or attendance totals reported yet, the venues and routing is already outsized compared to the pair of major-market shows in Europe in 2019.
Rosalía joins the aforementioned club of acts that include Bad Bunny, Eilish, Lipa and more, who have leveled up to arenas between tours separated by the pandemic. But unlike those acts’ top 10 albums (on the Billboard 200) and songs (on the Billboard Hot 100), Rosalía’s crossover success remains relatively limited. She has spent one week in the top 40 of the Billboard 200 and has yet to crack the region on the Hot 100.
Elsewhere, Rosalía has received widespread critical acclaim for Motomami (as with her previous albums), engaged on TikTok, and built a name as one of the most exciting new live acts of the last decade. As the monogenre continues to fracture, it only makes sense that this pop-Latin-electro Spanish-singing hybrid artist is one of the most vital touring acts of the year.
Back on the road after a three-year break following his record-breaking The Divide Tour, Ed Sheeran tops the year-end Top Ticket Sales chart after playing to more than 3 million fans in Europe in 2022.
This is not the first time that Ed Sheeran has won a year-end Boxscore trophy. The Divide Tour made him the first artist to repeat atop Billboard’s annual Top Tours ranking, winning the gold in 2018 and 2019. The first of those two victories was the biggest year-end total in Boxscore history, with $429.5 million. Further, that tour ended in 2019 with the highest gross and biggest attendance of any tour ever, at $776.4 million and 8.88 million tickets.
Now back with The Mathematics Tour, Sheeran winds up at No. 3 on the 2022 Top Tours chart with $246.3 million. But separated from gross revenue, his current tour is No. 1 on the Top Ticket Sales chart, ranking the top tours by total cumulative attendance. According to figures reported to Billboard Boxscore, Sheeran moved 3,047,696 tickets in the 2022 tracking period.
Sheeran played 63 shows between Dec. 13, 2021, and Sept. 25, 2022, averaging out to 48,376 tickets per night. But that is a misleading number, as the first 11 of those shows were “rehearsal” dates, setting the British singer-songwriter in small clubs and theaters in London and Dublin. Those shows ranged from 357 tickets at Dublin’s Whelans on April 19 to 5,230 tickets at London’s Royal Albert Hall on March 27. All 11 shows combined to 16,810; even at the top of that range, he was still selling less than 15% of the year’s average.
Removing those rehearsal shows from the equation, the picture of The Mathematics Tour comes into focus. Sheeran’s 52 “proper” tour dates in 2022 paced 58,287 tickets.
Almost every market – each one except for Helsinki, Finland – required multiple shows. Sheeran mostly played double-header weekends, moving from city to city and maximizing audiences with Friday and Saturday shows. He topped off with a five-show run at London’s Wembley Stadium, moving 420,269 tickets.
And while there is no attendance-based chart for Boxscores, the Wembley streak does have the highest attendance total of any engagement this year, beating Coldplay’s four shows at Paris’ Stade de France by more than 100,000 tickets.
Elsewhere, Sheeran broke the 200,000 threshold with four shows at Manchester’s Etihad Stadium and Munich’s Olympiastadion.
These numbers are huge, but even compared to his record-setting predecessor, The Mathematics Tour is ahead of schedule. The Divide Tour included three European legs in 2017, 2018 and 2019. Those runs averaged 14,321 tickets (the 2017 leg was in arenas), 54,485 and 51,898, respectively. Sheeran’s ’22 stadium pace is 7% in front of Divide’s strongest year, setting him up quite well as he prepares to leave his home base.
The Mathematics Tour is scheduled for 12 shows in Australia in February and March, followed by 24 shows in North America throughout the summer. Whether or not Sheeran can match (or even approach) The Divide Tour’s three-year total may be entirely up to him. Fans showed up in droves to his European shows, but the expanse of his pre-pandemic tour was so huge. And not only did the tour last, it went wide, including shows in Asia, South America and South Africa. If Mathematics routing remains modest, it will be difficult to triple the tour’s current totals.
Based on his scheduled 36 shows in 2023, The Mathematics Tour should pick up another 1.5 million to 1.75 million tickets as it approaches the 5 million mark. Should more dates be added, the sky’s the limit.