Billboard Boxscore
Page: 2
The Rolling Stones haven’t had a hit on the Billboard Hot 100 for two decades, but they continue to perform well on Billboard’s Top Tours chart. This year, the band, led by 80-year-old Mick Jagger, came in at No. 6 on the list of tours reported to Billboard Boxscore from Oct. 1, 2023, to Sept. 30, 2024, with $235 million in ticket sales. Perhaps more impressive, the group brought in that much money for playing just 18 concerts, less than any other act in the top 10. Its secret? Charging a lot for tickets.
By comparison, Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band, which edged out the Stones to come in at No. 5, grossed $235.5 million from 39 shows with an average ticket price of $147.25. Coldplay, which came in at No. 1 with $400.9 million, played 51 shows. Luis Miguel played 128 shows — the most of anyone in the top 10 — and grossed $290.4 million to come in at No. 4. With an average ticket price of $277.16, the Stones made an average of $13.1 million a show. Miguel played to more people — 2 million instead of 848,000 — but his tickets sold for an average of just over $143.37 and he made $2.3 million a show.
Since top acts typically sell out most dates, three major factors influence tour grosses: number of performances, size of venues and ticket prices. And 2024 was the year that price mattered more than ever. This year’s top 100 tours took in $9.1 billion, a 21.6% increase in revenue over the previous year. But those shows were seen by an audience of 69.8 million, an increase of 10.7% — only half as much. At a time when many promoters use dynamic pricing to maximize revenue without leaving seats empty, more pricing power meant more money.
Some of these increases come from changes in the way the chart is calculated. Last year, Billboard shortened its Boxscore reporting period from 12 months to 11 in order to make some one-time changes to eligibility for the Billboard Music Awards. This 2024 chart is once again based on a 12-month reporting period, so apples-to-apples comparisons are difficult. But the change is still easy to see. If one annualizes last year’s 11-month reporting period, attendance for the top 100 tours would be up about 4% and revenue would be up nearly 14%.
One more caveat: For the second year in a row, the Top Tours chart does not include figures for Taylor Swift’s The Eras Tour. Final figures were published by The New York Times on Dec. 9, but a show-by-show breakdown has yet to be submitted to Billboard Boxscore for chart eligibility. Given the tour’s two-year $2 billion gross, its 2024 sum would have pushed ticket sales totals for the year’s top 100 tours over $10 billion for the first time.
ROAD WARRIORS
A look at the top 10 tours shows the power of pricing. Overall the average ticket price for the top 100 tours was $132.30, up from $119.64 last year. The top touring act of the year, Coldplay, brought in $400 million from stadium shows in the United States, Europe, Australia and New Zealand. (Coldplay, promoted by Live Nation, was No. 2 last year with $342 million from 37 shows.) And it did so with an average ticket price of $132.79, the second-lowest among the top 10 acts.
P!nk, whose shows were promoted by Live Nation and the independent Marshall Arts, is No. 2, taking in $387 million from 73 concerts with an average ticket price of $139.47; she played more shows but to fewer people in total. (Last year, P!nk was No. 6 with $226 million from 37 shows.) Zach Bryan is No. 3 with $321.3 million from a 64-show tour promoted by AEG Presents. Bryan charged an average of $196.38.
The top ticket price in the top 10 was $367.13, for U2’s 38 shows at Sphere in Las Vegas, which took in $231.1 million, good for No. 7. Madonna came in at No. 8 with $225.4 million. Bad Bunny is No. 9 with $211.4 million and the second-highest average ticket price: $280.67. Metallica rounds out the top 10 with $175.2 million and a fan-friendly average price of $116.80.
One question the touring business has to deal with is, how high is too high? The $132.30 average ticket price for the top 100 tours is up 9.1% from 2023, when it had risen 10.5% from 2022. That’s an increase of 20.6% in two years. For most of the decade before the pandemic, ticket prices rose about 2% or 3% a year, close to the pace of inflation.
What happened? Over the past five years, the concert business has completely changed its view on pricing. Until around 2000, most promoters seemed to price tickets by calculating the cost of a show, adding a reasonable profit margin and then charging enough to reach that number. That changed over the following decade with the rise of resale sites like StubHub — and the accompanying realization that fans were willing to pay far more for tickets than promoters thought, especially for the best seats. To raise revenue, promoters and ticketing companies started using the same kinds of variable pricing and dynamic pricing strategies as hotels and airlines — in some cases opaquely. The idea, as in those businesses, is to maximize overall revenue without leaving empty seats. Over the past few years, companies like Live Nation’s Ticketmaster and AEG’s AXS have invested millions in software to price seats dynamically, in real time, according to demand.
A common reaction is that this puts concert tickets out of reach for many consumers. But a substantial part of the increase in average prices comes from the skyrocketing price of the best tickets. Also, dynamic pricing should adjust downward the price of unsold tickets to ensure that they, too, get sold.
It’s also worth noting that concertgoers have had sticker shock for decades. In 1969, according to an article in Rolling Stone, Jagger was asked at a press conference at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel if the Stones were gouging their fans by charging up to $8.50 a ticket at the Los Angeles Forum. “Is that a lot?” Jagger replied. “You’ll have to tell me.”
Adjusted for inflation, that $8.50 would have buying power of $67.34 today, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics — and the price of Stones tickets is up more than four times that. Then again, the average Stones fan has much more money, as well as a sense that the band can’t keep touring forever.
FESTIVAL FUNK
As ticket prices increase, business is becoming harder for festival organizers, who have to pay more for compelling headliners. Festivals that used to make competitive offers for top-tier talent have seen their buying power diminished as more artists realize they have the pricing power to earn more revenue from traditional shows.
Only a few festivals report ticket sales revenue to Billboard Boxscore. But most promoters or festival ticketing experts agree that festival ticket sales declined in 2023 and 2024 for both flagships like Coachella and Bonnaroo, as well as smaller and independent events.
Artists that play festivals generally agree to increasingly rigid radius clauses that restrict how close to the event they can perform and when they can promote their nearby shows. They agreed to those deals because festivals could pay headliners $3 million to $5 million for a 90-minute set — more than the $1.5 million to $2.5 million most could make for an arena show. That was before average ticket prices rose so much.
This does not bode well for the long-term future of festivals, at least the way they currently operate. But festivals only represent a fraction of the business of Live Nation and AEG, the global concert promotion giants. Live Nation promotes Coldplay, Miguel and Madonna, among others. AEG handles Swift, Bryan and George Strait, the No. 24 touring act. On June 15, Strait performed the stadium concert with the highest attendance in Billboard Boxscore history at Texas A&M University’s Kyle Field in College Station, Texas, in front of 110,000 fans.
≈
Music Business Year In Review
On Sunday night (Dec. 8), Taylor Swift played the last of 149 shows on The Eras Tour. As reported earlier Monday, the record-setting trek grossed more than $2 billion and sold over 10 million tickets: $2,077,618,725 and 10,168,008, respectively, to be exact.
The news was first reported by The New York Times.
Without qualification, The Eras Tour is the highest-grossing tour of all time, by artists of any genre, and from any era in music history. If compared to data officially reported to Billboard Boxscore, it is the biggest tour ever by an unthinkable distance of more than $900 million, blasting past Coldplay’s Music of the Spheres World Tour (2022-ongoing) – the only other tour to gross more than $1 billion – by a margin of almost two-to-one.
Trending on Billboard
Even before The Eras Tour was announced, Swift was one of the most successful touring acts of her generation. Dating back to her first reported solo headline show at Sovereign Performing Arts Center in Reading, Pa. (April 6, 2007), she has grossed $3 billion across her career, when adding The Eras Tour’s sum to officially reported data for her prior tours to Billboard Boxscore.
Previously, her biggest tour – according to Billboard Boxscore – came when Swift brought in $345.7 million and sold 2.9 million tickets on 2018’s Reputation Stadium Tour, marking a 38% leap from the earnings on 2015’s The 1989 World Tour. The Eras Tour multiplies her prior best more than six times over.
The Eras Tour kicked off in Glendale, Ariz. on March 17, 2023. If the tour hadn’t already made a seismic impact just via its announcement, the actual performances sent Swift from superstardom to the stratosphere. The friendship bracelets, the surprise songs and all of Swift’s eras took over, sparking major economic booms in every city she visited and hysteria among Swifties around the world.
By August 9, 2023, Swift had released her re-recording of Speak Now (July 7), announced the re-recording for 1989 and wrapped the tour’s first U.S. leg. Quickly after, she played her first shows ever in Mexico with four nights at the capital’s Estadio GNP Seguros (then known as Foro Sol), followed by nine shows in South America.
In February 2024, Swift took her talents to Asia and Australia, but not before she won her record-setting fourth Grammy for album of the year for Midnights and announced her next new studio album during an acceptance speech. That one – The Tortured Poets Department, released April 19 – arrived while on break from tour, and once again, set a new career-peak with a debut week of 2.61 million equivalent album units earned in the U.S., according to Luminate, and the entire top 14 on the Hot 100. On the current, Dec. 14-dated edition of the Billboard 200, the set returns for a 16th week at No. 1 on the back of a physical release of the album’s deluxe Anthology version, sold exclusively at Target.
In May, Swift took on Europe, with 48 shows across the continent. While Tortured Poets spent most of the summer atop the Billboard 200, The Eras Tour continued its blistering pace, including eight nights at London’s Wembley Stadium.
Finally, Swift returned to North America for three shows each in Miami, New Orleans, and Indianapolis, plus six in Toronto and one last weekend in Vancouver.
Travis Scott closed out the Circus Maximus Tour on Halloween after more than a year of cross-continental shows. According to figures reported to Billboard Boxscore, the trek grossed $209.3 million and sold 1.7 million tickets over 76 dates.
Those numbers are massive without qualification, but they are monumental in hip-hop. No solo rapper has ever sold that many tickets on one tour. Previously, Jay-Z cracked two million while co-headlining the On the Run II Tour with Beyoncé in 2018. The only other unaccompanied rapper to report more than a million tickets on a single tour is 50 Cent on last year’s The Final Lap Tour (1.1 million), celebrating the 20-year anniversary of Get Rich or Die Tryin.’
Though the Circus Maximus Tour began in arenas, Scott interspersed stadium dates as 2023 rolled into 2024. First, amid 43 arena shows in the U.S. and Canada, he sold out SoFi Stadium in Inglewood, Calif. (12 miles from downtown Los Angeles). And while his European leg began indoors, he broke stadiums in London, Koln, and Milan, selling more than 71,000 tickets in the lattermost city.
Stadiums followed in Sao Paulo, Mexico City, New York and across Oceania. The last nine shows of the tour in September and October moved 415,000 tickets, or 24% of the tour’s total attendance, despite accounting for just 12% of the trek’s shows.
Melbourne, Australia, was the biggest stop of Scott’s tour. Two shows on Oct. 22-23 grossed $12.6 million and sold 115,000 tickets.
The scale of the Circus Maximus Tour – stadiums on four continents – is unprecedented in hip-hop. 50 Cent and Nicki Minaj, each of whom cracked $100 million on tours of their own over the last two years, played in North America and Europe. Drake, who has crossed the nine-figure mark multiple times, only played in the U.S. and Canada on It’s All a Blur. The language barrier for a particularly wordy genre could mean that extensive touring in Europe and Latin America is difficult, but Scott’s global hits and onstage spectacle helped translate his show to international audiences.
Even stateside, Scott’s 2023-24 stadium shows are groundbreaking for rappers. Eminem and Jay-Z have played similar venues, but the former toured alongside Rihanna and the latter has done it next to Beyonce and Justin Timberlake. Eminem and Jay-Z did play stadiums together in 2010 during a commercial boom for both, but just two in Detroit and two in New York on The Home & Home Tour.
As a soloist, Eminem played two shows at Detroit’s Ford Field in 2003, plus a show in Hawaii in 2019. He’s also a proven stadium sellout in Australia and New Zealand. 50 Cent has one reported solo stadium show in Sao Paulo.
Scott’s world tour improved upon his previous outing in every conceivable way. Scott sold 53% more tickets per show on The Circus Maximus Tour than on Astroworld: Wish You Were Here in 2018-19 (22,494 vs. 14,692), he played more than 20 more shows (76 vs. 55) and commanded 65% more per ticket ($122.46 vs. $74.43).
In total, the Circus Maximus Tour sold more than twice the tickets of its predecessor (1.7 million vs. 808,000) and grossed more than three times as much ($209.3 million vs. $60.1 million).
The Circus Maximus Tour was in support of Utopia, Scott’s fourth studio album. The set debuted atop the Billboard 200 and stayed there for four weeks, and sent three songs – “Meltdown,” featuring Drake; “FEIN!,” featuring Playboi Carti; and “K-Pop” featuring Bad Bunny and The Weeknd – to the top 10 of the Billboard Hot 100.
Dating back to a sold-out show at Los Angeles’ The Fonda Theatre ($42,000; 1,200 tickets), Scott has grossed $275.3 million and sold 2.6 million tickets.
On Nov. 20, P!nk played the last of 128 shows over the last year and a half. The run was sprawling, from the Summer Carnival Tour, which took place in stadiums, to the Trustfall Tour and P!nk Live, both of which brought her to arenas. Altogether, she earned $693.8 million and sold more than 4.8 million tickets, according to figures reported to Billboard Boxscore. One of her many box office achievements is recent: The nine shows she played in October make her the biggest touring act of the month.
Explore
Explore
See latest videos, charts and news
See latest videos, charts and news
Across nine shows between Oct. 1-18, P!nk grossed $44.2 million and sold 254,000 tickets, putting her at No. 1 on Billboard’s monthly Top Tours chart. That haul includes four stadium dates, including an Oct. 3 show at MetLife Stadium ($9.1 million; 60,400 tickets), and three arena stops, including double-headers at Detroit’s Little Caesars Arena and St. Paul’s Xcel Energy Center.
Another nine shows in November make P!nk eligible for one last monthly chart in 2024, when the November report is published next month.
Trending on Billboard
When separated by tour, P!nk’s 2023-24 run breaks down to $584.7 million for the Summer Carnival Tour, $60.8 million for last year’s Trustfall Tour and $48.3 million for this fall’s Live 2024 run. Since launching last June, Luis Miguel is the only musician who has played more shows.
The Summer Carnival is the second-highest grossing tour in history among women, accounting for Billboard’s billion-dollar-plus estimate for Taylor Swift’s as-yet-unreported The Eras Tour. P!nk narrowly passes Beyoncé’s Renaissance World Tour, which grossed $579.8 million last year during a comparatively brief 56-show sweep. Madonna’s Sticky & Sweet Tour (2008-09) and P!nk’s own Beautiful Trauma World Tour (2018-19) follow next, hovering on opposite sides of the $400 million threshold.
Among all artists, and including estimates for Swift, The Summer Carnival Tour ranks eighth in revenue, and just outside the top 10 based on attendance.
The Summer Carnival Tour spanned five legs – each of which grossed at least $100 million – across three continents. The biggest was a 22-show run in North America, bringing in $150.7 million from July to October of 2023. Ultimately, the U.S. and Canada delivered $266 million, Europe accounted for about $214 million and 20 shows in Oceania added $104.3 million.
Travis Scott follows on October’s Top Tours chart, scoring the highest monthly rank for a rap artist since returning from the pandemic shutdown. He grossed $41.2 million and sold 352,000 tickets on the final dates of the Circus Maximus Tour.
Scott kicked off the month with an Oct. 9 show at MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, N.J. (13 miles from New York City), bringing in $8.7 million from 61,700 tickets sold. That’s $400,000 less, but 1,300 more tickets than stats for P!nk’s October show at the same venue.
He then brought his world tour to three cities in Australia, plus a closing-night performance in Auckland, New Zealand. The Oceania leg grossed $32.5 million and sold 291,000 tickets, which is slightly more than half of the European leg (June-August), but more than double the Latin American run from September.
Usher is next at No. 3, with $36.6 million for Usher: Past Present Future. Since kicking off on Aug. 20, the tour has earned $90.6 million. With North American shows scheduled through mid-December and a European leg in the spring, it’s likely to close in on $150 million.
Future tourmates Post Malone and Jelly Roll round out the top 5 at Nos. 4 and 5, respectively. Last week, Post announced The Big Ass Stadium Tour with Jelly Roll as direct support, which will bring both acts to – you guessed it, stadiums – for the first time in their careers. Combined, they’ve brought in over $130 million this year, but they’ll head closer to $200 million in 2025.
And just outside the top five, Sabrina Carpenter makes her Top Tours debut at No. 6. The first handful of dates from the Short n’ Sweet Tour left her just outside the top 30 in September, but a full slate of shows lifts her into the top 10 for October, with a full gross of $27.8 million from 221,000 tickets sold. The first leg wrapped up on Nov. 18 at the Kia Forum in Inglewood, Calif., and 14 shows are set for March throughout Europe.
Melbourne, Australia’s Marvel Stadium the month’s top-grossing concert venue, thanks to a trio of double-headers. On Oct. 5-6, The Weeknd sold 92,100 tickets and earned $12.5 million. A couple weeks later, Travis Scott played on Oct. 21-22, upping the ante to 115,000 tickets and $12.6 million. And on Oct. 30-31, Coldplay played the first two shows of a four-night run, bringing in $14.4 million from 115,000 tickets. All three are among the top five on Top Boxscores.
Madison Square Garden returns to the summit among indoor venues, grossing $23.4 million from 13 shows in October. That includes a Halloween show by Duran Duran, a farewell performance from Cyndi Lauper (Oct. 30), and a get-out-the-vote concert from Stevie Wonder (Sept. 10).
MSG’s banner month pushes its Las Vegas sister-venue Sphere back to No. 2, supported by just four shows of Eagles’ residency. Those dates grossed $18.9 million, adding to the $23.2 million in September.
A quartet of American venues top the smaller-capacity rankings. Austin’s Moody Center is tops among rooms with a cap of 10,001-15k, Red Rocks Amphitheater in Morrison, Colo., Is No. 1 on the 5,001-10k chart, Atlanta’s Fox Theatre rules the 2,501-5k tally, and Grand Rapids, Mich., wins gold on the 2,500-or-less survey via DeVos Performance Hall.
When one door closes, another opens. Or rather, when one Post Malone tour finishes, another much bigger one announces.
Through closing night on Oct. 27, Post grossed $63 million and sold 470,000 tickets on the F-1 Trillion Tour, according to figures reported to Billboard Boxscore. And on Tuesday morning (Nov. 19), he announced The Big Ass Stadium Tour, which kicks off on April 29.
The move from amphitheaters to stadiums is a big one. The average capacity of Post’s fall shows was 18,786 seats, and the football stadiums on his 2025 route generally exceed 50,000. But all the F-1 Trillion Tour shows sold out – including two sprinkled-in stadiums in Boston and Nashville – and it appears he’s left some meat on the bone.
Post played a swift 25-show run in September and October, which is significantly less than the 39 shows on last year’s If Y’all Weren’t Here, I’d Be Crying Tour ($81 million; 802,000 tickets), which immediately followed the 63-date Twelve Carat Tour ($138.6 million; 1.1 million tickets) that stretched from 2022 into 2023. Post is a proven road warrior, and his brief fall trek simply whetted his base’s appetite.
Plus, his fanbase is expanding, as Post further transitions from hip-hop to pop to country. His fall tour – and presumably his upcoming one – is in support of F-1 Trillion, a country album that hosted more than a dozen of the genre’s cross-generational superstars, from Dolly Parton to Tim McGraw to Lainey Wilson.
The pivot was successful, as F-1 Trillion topped the Billboard 200 with 250,000 equivalent album units earned in its first week, more than doubling each of his previous two studio LPs. And while 2023’s Austin didn’t land a top 10 single on the Billboard Hot 100, this year’s “I Had Some Help,” featuring Morgan Wallen, spent its first six weeks at No. 1 and remains in the top 10 half a year later (as of the Nov. 23-dated chart). If he was selling out arenas and amphitheaters off less successful albums and starved his audience of a robust 2024 tour on the back of a comeback, the stage is well set for next year’s stadium trek.
And if he needs some help, he has it in the form of special guest Jelly Roll. Featured on F-1 Trillion’s “Losers,” he’s on his own fall tour navigating arenas and amphitheaters across the United States. Through Nov. 17, the Beautifully Broken Tour has earned $71.9 million and sold 615,000 tickets. Five shows are left on the schedule, wrapping up on Nov. 26 at Nashville’s Bridgestone Arena.
Quite notably, Jelly Roll’s 2024 tour has out-grossed and outsold Post’s own trek, positioning him as more than just an opening act as both artists prepare to play the biggest stages of their careers. But total volume does not tell the whole story: While Post has perhaps intentionally kept his routing sparse, Jelly hasn’t held back, as the latter’s show count is more than double the former’s. On a per-show level, Post is the stronger earner ($2.5 million vs. $1.4 million) and the bigger seller (18,786 vs. 12,291).
The initial announcement for The Big Ass Stadium Tour includes 25 dates, matching the length of Post’s fall tour. But while Post played to 470,000 fans in 2024, next year’s run will bring him to well over 1 million. It will all-but-certainly play as his highest-earning tour, flirting with a $200 million gross.
Dating back to Post Malone’s first show reported to Boxscore, a 2016 performance at Emo’s in Austin, Texas ($16,449; 660 tickets), he has grossed $415.6 million and sold 3.9 million tickets across 254 shows.
Over the last year-and-change, Charli XCX and Troye Sivan launched two album campaigns, topped Billboard charts, earned Grammy Award nominations, and took their careers to new heights. The pinnacle of their synergized success was their North American co-headlining arena tour.
Charli XCX and Troye Sivan Present: Sweat played 22 shows in the U.S. and Canada in September and October, wrapping with $28 million and 297,000 tickets sold, according to figures reported to Billboard Boxscore. This surpasses Billboard’s own projections of $23.5 million and 270,000 from just last month.
From the tour’s April announcement, tickets gradually encroached on sell-out territory. Major markets like New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco blew out immediately, but overall, the tour averaged 67% after the first weekend of sales. As Sivan toured Europe and Charli turned the summer green, sales grew to 70% by the end of May, 80% by mid-June, 90% by the end of July, and to 97% by opening night. With final numbers reported, the tour was completely sold out, even if Sivan once lovingly joked that they were “flopping” in Nashville.
Jared Braverman (SVP of Global Touring at Live Nation) commented to Billboard, “The Sweat Tour selling out all 22 shows is a true testament to both Charli and Troye as arena-level acts. We believed in their ability to fill these venues from the moment we announced the tour and went on sale back in April. The success reflects the strong fanbases they’ve built and how their music continues to connect deeply with fans live.”
Los Angeles was the highlight, where they played two nights at Inglewood’s Kia Forum, pulling in $3.2 million from 29,500 tickets sold. Closing night (Oct. 23) at Seattle’s Climate Pledge Arena scored the tour’s best single-night attendance (15,016), while the Sept. 23 show at New York’s Madison Square Garden posted the highest one-night gross ($1.7 million).
On average, the Sweat shows grossed $1.3 million and sold 13,479 tickets per show. That’s more than ten times either artist’s previous best as a solo headliner, even considering shows they played earlier this year.
It’s rare for artists who make pop and dance music to sell out arenas without an extensive slate of chart hits. In conversation with Zane Low, Charli reflected that “niche is being rewarded in a way that we haven’t seen for a while.” The world-building that each artist has done with their recent albums and throughout the Sweat tour with guest stars in their orbit like Addison Rae, Kesha and Lorde, super-served fans. In Charli’s words, “We just have to do it for them. And we have to make them feel so special, because they are, because they’ve championed me and us for so long.”
Live Nation’s Lesley Olenik (SVP, Global Touring) agreed, calling it “the can’t-miss live event of the year.” She continued, “What made it truly special was the energy — fans were free to express themselves in ways we haven’t seen in years, and Charli and Troye fed off that vibe every night. It was a no-judgment zone where everyone could unapologetically be themselves.”
That’s not to say that they have not broken through on a mainstream level before. Charli reached the top 10 of the Billboard Hot 100 in 2014 and even claimed that year’s Song of the Summer as a featured guest on Iggy Azalea’s “Fancy.” Sivan has four top 10s on the Billboard 200 and nine hits on the Hot 100. In the last year, both acts hit No. 1 on Top Dance/Electronic Albums and logged multiple top 10s on Hot Dance/Electronic Songs, separately and together.
Both artists will return home for brief runs of shows in November. Sivan will re-up the Something to Give Each Other Tour with six shows throughout Australia and New Zealand. After hosting and performing on the Nov. 16 episode of Saturday Night Live, Charli will launch the Brat Tour with four shows in the U.K. Combined, they’ve already moved 419,000 tickets and earned $34 million on the road in 2024. By year’s end, those numbers will swell beyond 500,000 and $45 million.
A little over eight months ago, Olivia Rodrigo had only headlined theaters. Flash forward to today, and she has sold out arenas on four continents and staged one of the year’s biggest tours. The pop phenom wrapped the Guts World Tour last week, bringing in $184.6 million from over 1.4 million tickets sold, according to figures reported to Billboard Boxscore.
The Guts cycle began in June 2023, when Rodrigo unleashed “Vampire,” the Grammy Award-nominated single that topped the Billboard Hot 100 for two weeks. The album followed, debuting atop the Billboard 200, landing its entire track list on the Hot 100, and earning two Grammy nominations of its own. After hedging bets with a theater tour following 2021’s gargantuan debut with Sour, the stage was set for an upgrade to arenas now that the sophomore slump had been avoided.
Rodrigo kicked off the Guts World Tour on Feb. 23 at Acrisure Arena in Palm Desert, Calif. That show sold 9,998 tickets, marking the smallest attendance for any stop on the tour. Things picked up quickly, ending her first North American leg with four shows at New York’s Madison Square Garden, earning $10 million from 57,900 tickets between April 5-9.
Though the New York run stands as the highest-grossing engagement of the Guts World Tour, that was not the end of Rodrigo’s run. She played 29 shows across 19 cities in Europe before returning to the U.S. and Canada for another 20 dates. To cap things off, she hit six Asian markets, plus four-night runs in Melbourne and Sydney, Australia.
During Rodrigo’s stint in Asia, her Oct. 5 performance at Manila’s Philippine Arena grossed $1.2 million and sold 48,800 tickets. It’s the best-selling single show of the entire tour – and her entire career – eclipsed only by four-night engagements in major markets like New York, London and Los Angeles. But out of 62 stops throughout 2024, it’s her third-lowest earner. That’s because she purposely kept tickets cheap, averaging $25.04 USD, which stands as less than a fifth the tour’s average of $128.81. Rodrigo is Filipino-American, and the show was a special stop – she is one of just seven artists to report concerts in Philippines this year – where all net proceeds went to local charity Jhpiego through the Fund 4 Good.
In terms of venue capacity and global reach, the Guts World Tour was a major step up for Rodrigo. While reporting for the Sour Tour was incomplete, its 16 reported shows averaged $415,000 and sold 5,517 tickets per show. Two years later, her nightly attendance is up 173% to 15,084, and her average gross jumped by 369% to $1.9 million. In 2022, she played 33 shows in North America and 16 in Europe. In 2024, those numbers bloated to 48 and 29, respectively, plus the 18 combined shows in Australia and Asia.
Still, there might be more room to grow. Co-manager Zack Morgenroth told Billboard that, per tour promoter Live Nation, demand indicated that Rodrigo could’ve packed stadiums just as well. Even at a low price, Rodrigo moved nearly 50,000 tickets in Manila, giving proof of concept.
The numbers are huge, but the tour’s greater impact extends beyond the accolades. Rodrigo’s Fund 4 Good led the way, in collaboration with HeadCount, the National Network of Abortion Funds and more. And then, there’s the secondhand buzz that helped guide Chappell Roan from the first leg’s opening act to industry noisemaker, eventually returning as a special guest in August, rousing the crowd with a choreographed sing-along of her own “Hot To Go.”
At 21 years old, Rodrigo’s Guts World Tour is the highest-grossing tour for someone of her young age (or younger) in a decade, dating back to when One Direction ruled the year-end Top Tours chart in 2014 with the Where We Are Tour. But that’s not enough – Rodrigo herself laments “When am I gonna stop being great for my age and just start being good” on Guts deep cut “Teenage Dream.” Her 2024 trek is now one of the 10 biggest pop tours of the decade so far, ranking among treks by peers like Harry Styles and icons like Madonna.
Is it really summer without The Rolling Stones on tour? The rock icons have toured North America, Europe, or both, for every summer but three in the last 12 years, consistently topping charts and setting records. After a break in 2023, the Stones returned for the Hackney Diamonds Tour, playing 18 shows in 15 cities throughout the U.S. and Canada from the end of April through the middle of July. According to figures reported to Billboard Boxscore, the trek earned $235 million and sold 848,000 tickets.
The tour was in support of the band’s Hackney Diamonds album, released in October 2023. The set marked the band’s first album of original material since 2005’s A Bigger Bang. Hackney Diamonds debuted at No. 3 on the Billboard 200 – the group’s highest-charting album since Bang also hit No. 3 – and extended the band’s record for the most top 10s on the chart.
The Hackney Diamonds Tour kicked off at Houston’s NRG Stadium on April 28, 2024,, bringing the Stones to more than 40,000 fans. By the time the band wrapped at Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara on July 17, it had scored the highest-earning summer of its career. Sixty, its 2022 jaunt, earned $120.8 million, and the biggest of its four No Filter Tour legs brought in $177.8 million in 2019. While they’ve made more money on years-long treks, Mick Jagger & co. have never earned more than $200 million in a single season.
The Stones’ 2024 run was highlighted by double-headers in East Rutherford, N.J. (17 miles outside New York City), Chicago and Inglewood, Calif. (11 miles from downtown Los Angeles). Each of those engagements grossed more than $20 million, topped by the New Jersey shows at MetLife Stadium on May 23 and 26, which earned a combined $29.2 million and sold 105,000 tickets.
Those MetLife dates mark a career peak, setting the highest gross of the Stones’ 35-year Boxscore history. The Inglewood and Chicago dates also fall in the top 10, while Denver, Foxborough, Las Vegas and Philadelphia line up in the band’s all-time top 20, all between $15-16 million.
Every market on the tour delivered an eight-figure gross, with the lone exception of Glendale, Ariz., whose May 7 State Farm Stadium show grossed $8.4 million and sold 44,800 tickets.
Tours
Billboard
The Hackney Diamonds Tour sets a new high for The Rolling Stones and pushes the band further into uncharted Boxscore territory. This is its sixth tour to earn more than $200 million and 10th to gross more than $100 million. Both counts are Boxscore records, extending their lead for the most nine-figure tours, now three $100-million tours away from the group’s closest competitors.
Dating back to a report for two shows at Philadelphia’s Veterans Stadium on Aug. 31-Sept. 1, 1989, The Rolling Stones have earned $2.873 billion and sold 28.9 million tickets.
Across Green Day’s 12 shows in September — 11 at stadiums, plus an amphitheater show in Austin, Texas — the band sold 415,000 tickets at an average ticket price of $114.71, combining for earnings of $47.5 million according to figures reported to Billboard Boxscore. That puts the California trio’s The Saviors Tour at No. 1 on Billboard’s monthly Top Tours ranking.
The Saviors Tour kicked off in June with a $33.8 million run in Europe, before crossing the Atlantic for a 26-city tour of the United States and Canada. Though Green Day had sprinkled stadiums late in the 2004-05 American Idiot World Tour and then committed fully to the venues with Fall Out Boy and Weezer on the 2021-22 Hella Mega Tour, this marks the band’s first solo headlining run to predominantly play stadiums.
The Saviors Tour is named after Green Day’s 14th studio album. The set debuted at No. 4 on the Billboard 200 earlier this year and spawned “Dilemma,” which spent eight weeks atop Alternative Airplay. But the trek helped juice up the band’s reach by calling back to two of its landmark albums, celebrating the 30th anniversary of Dookie and the 20th anniversary of American Idiot by playing both LPs in full each night.
In September, Green Day hit a high for its entire North American leg, with $5.7 million and 47,800 tickets at SoFi Stadium in Inglewood, Calif. That’s one of three entries for the band on Top Boxscores, at No. 24. Dates at San Francisco’s Oracle Park and San Diego’s Petco Park follow at Nos. 27 and 29, respectively.
It’s uncommon for an act to be No. 1 on Top Tours without a similarly high placement on Top Boxscores. Throughout 2024, the highest-grossing touring act has always had at least one entry in the top 10 of Top Boxscores, with the same act ruling both charts in five of the right months before September.
Further, in the 51 editions of Billboard’s monthly Boxscore charts since Feb. 2019, the artist at No. 1 on Top Tours was in the top 10 of Top Boxscores 43 times. Of the eight instances where they did not overlap, four were by Trans-Siberian Orchestra during their annual December takeover. That group routinely rules Top Tours without making impact on Top Boxscores, assembling its massive monthly total by playing multiple shows per day, with the help of two coastal touring ensembles.
Though there is only one iteration of Green Day responsible for its September victory, the strategy is similar. The punk-rock icons have the month’s biggest tour by volume, playing 12 stadium shows between Sept. 1-28. The acts that lead Top Boxscores – Coldplay, Metallica, Bruno Mars – all held splashy multi-night engagements in international territories, but didn’t tour consistently throughout the month.
Timing also helps. In August, Green Day’s $47.5-million gross would have sat behind the entire top five, helmed by Zach Bryan above $90 million and Coldplay over $80 million. The former took September off and the latter wrapped its European leg on Sept. 2, clearing a path for Billie Joe & co. to claim their first monthly victory.
Still, the individual shows on The Saviors Tour mark the biggest of Green Day’s storied career. While the SoFi Stadium shows were the biggest of the North American leg, a June 29 show at London’s Wembley Stadium ($7.9 million; 76,000 tickets) topped the entire tour. It was also the highest-grossing and best-attended night of the band’s entire reported Boxscore history.
Further, Green Day’s 25 top-earning concert engagements all come from this year’s tour. In all, The Saviors Tour grossed $132.4 million and sold 1.2 million tickets, easily ending as the band’s highest-grossing and best-selling tour ever.
Directly following Green Day on Top Tours are two of the biggest R&B acts on the road. Bruno Mars is No. 2 with $43.8 million and Usher is No. 3 with $36 million. The former played in Indonesia, Malaysia and Taiwan (plus one show in Las Vegas). Three shows at Jakarta’s Beach City International Stadium account for nearly half of Mars’ total monthly gross, bringing in $21.5 million from 142,000 tickets.
Notably, Mars is not technically on a tour, rather playing one-off engagements around his ongoing residency at Las Vegas’ Dolby Live. His last trek was the 24K Magic World Tour, which earned $396.1 million and sold 3.6 million tickets in 2017-18. His current Vegas stint is among the top 10 residencies in Boxscore history, now up to $138.8 million.
Usher, on the other hand, is amidst his first proper headline tour since 2015, after closing out his own Vegas residency late last year. Usher: Past Present Future kicked off in August, averaging $2.3 million per show in September. Its biggest stop so far was a four-night run at Brooklyn’s Barclays Center, which brought in $10.2 million and sold 58,000 tickets.
Related
Click ‘Edit’ to Select Content
10/24/2024
Rock tours flood the rest of the top 10, with Metallica, Jeff Lynne’s ELO and Pearl Jam following at Nos. 4-5 and 8, respectively. Coldplay, Twenty One Pilots and the Eagles line up consecutively just outside the top 10.
While Green Day crowns Top Tours while missing the top 10 of Top Boxscores, Coldplay does the opposite, at No. 1 on the latter chart while sitting at No. 11 on the former. Coldplay only had two shows during September, but they made them count. The British quartet played four concerts at Dublin’s Croke Park – two on Aug. 29-30, which counted toward the August chart, and two on Sept. 1-2. The September dates grossed $24.8 million and sold 165,000 tickets.
Further down on Top Boxscores, Sebastian Maniscalco grossed $10.7 million across five nights at Madison Square Garden, earning the No. 8 entry. It’s the highest-grossing report for a comedian in Boxscore history. The number of comedy acts who can play one night at an arena is small, so consider Maniscalco one of very few who could sell out five.
For the sixth consecutive month, Zach Bryan has one of the 10 biggest tours in the world. For the second of the last three, he’s at No. 1. According to figures reported to Billboard Boxscore, Bryan grossed $93.2 million and sold 467,000 tickets from 13 shows around the U.S., returning to the top of Billboard’s monthly Top Tours chart.
When Bryan topped the list in June, Billboard noted that he was only the second country act to rule the tally since it launched in early 2019, following Morgan Wallen. Now, he’s the only artist in his genre to claim multiple months at No. 1. Bad Bunny and Elton John lead overall, each having topped seven monthly charts.
Bryan kicked off The Quittin’ Time Tour in March at a string of North American arenas. By the end of May and into June, he began sprinkling in stadium plays, multiplying his potential nightly audience by three or four and prompting his first monthly win. In August, stadiums made up the majority of his calendar — for 10 of his 13 shows. Those were spread across major markets such as Atlanta, Philadelphia and Minneapolis, leaving only Kansas City and Grand Forks, N.D., in arenas.
Created with Datawrapper
This transition from indoor basketball courts to outdoor football fields joins Bryan with fellow country superstars such as Luke Combs and Wallen as well as the biggest of the big beyond genre, like The Rolling Stones and Taylor Swift.
A double-header at Philly’s Lincoln Financial Field earned the biggest gross of Bryan’s career. The Aug. 6-7 stay earned $20.7 million and sold 103,000 tickets, followed immediately by another six-digit attendance total at Atlanta’s Mercedes-Benz Stadium on Aug. 10-11 ($17.8 million; 100,000 tickets).
Since beginning in Chicago on March 5, The Quittin’ Time Tour has grossed $318.1 million and sold 1.6 million tickets. Bryan will resume the trek with 18 shows in November and December. Most of his remaining 2024 dates bring him back to arenas, which means he could add another $60 million by year’s end, approaching the $400 million mark.
Created with Datawrapper
Bryan’s summer on top was briefly interrupted by Coldplay’s July victory. This month, Chris Martin & Co. dip to No. 2, with a gross of $86.4 million from 626,000 tickets sold. Though the band misses Bryan’s high mark by about 7%, its attendance total is tops for August.
As has been customary amid the Music of the Spheres World Tour, Coldplay’s August schedule was compact, including three shows in Munich, four in Vienna and two in Dublin. The extended run at Vienna’s Ernst Happen Stadion on Aug. 21-22 and 24-25 is both the highest grossing ($33 million) and bestselling engagement of the month (251,000 tickets).
As Billboard reported, The Music of the Spheres World Tour is already the highest grossing and bestselling rock tour in Boxscore history, with $1.06 billion and 9.6 million tickets sold through Sept. 2. Next on its record-breaking schedule is the 10 million ticket threshold, which will certainly clear during the Australia and New Zealand leg in October and November.
Created with Datawrapper
Created with Datawrapper
Created with Datawrapper
Metallica follows at No. 3 on August’s Top Tours chart with $74 million and 621,000 tickets. The latter figure barely misses Coldplay’s ticket sales, separated by just 5,000 tickets, or less than 1%. The hard-rock legends sport two appearances in the top 10 of Top Boxscores, at Nos. 8-9 with stints at Foxborough’s Gillette Stadium and Chicago’s Soldier Field, respectively.
At No. 4, P!nk is the lone woman in August’s top 10 at $55.6 million and 329,000 tickets, next followed by Jhene Aiko’s $16.3 million and 150,000 tickets. While gender representation can be marked by the whims of monthly schedules – there were five women on the charts for June and July, and September marks the launches of major treks by Sabrina Carpenter, Charli XCX and Billie Eilish – it’s startling to see women make up less than 7% of August’s top-30 pie.
Created with Datawrapper
Created with Datawrapper
Interrupting Coldplay’s sweep of Top Boxscores, Outside Lands Music and Arts Festival is No. 2. The San Francisco festival grossed $29.5 million and sold 184,000 tickets across its Aug. 9-11 run.
Outside Lands is joined by Montreal’s Osheaga Music & Arts Festival, which rounds out the chart’s top 10 with $14.7 million and 137,000 tickets sold. It’s one of a string of festivals, along with Ilesoniq and Lasso Montreal, that pushed Evenko to No. 5 on the month’s Top Promoters ranking.
On the venue rankings, it’s the fourth consecutive win for Sphere among rooms with a capacity of 15,001 or more (excluding stadiums). Again, Dead & Company ushered the immersive arena to its victory, which closed out its summer-long residency on Aug. 10.
Created with Datawrapper
Created with Datawrapper