Billboard Boxscore
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This fall, Charli XCX & Troye Sivan Present: Sweat will bring the British and Australian pop stars to arenas across the U.S. and Canada. It’s the first time that either of them will headline North American arenas, but following their respective recent releases and subsequent solo shows – let alone the growing force behind the fall shows’ sales – they need not sweat it.
The tour, which kicks off Sept. 14 in Detroit and went on sale in April, has already sold out more than 90% of its tickets, according to Brian Greenbaum, Sivan’s agent at CAA.
Greenbaum says the tour dates in Boston, Chicago, New York and San Francisco sold out immediately, while high demand pushed a second show in Los Angeles. He notes that tickets across the tour were 67% sold after the first weekend of availability, and 70% by the end of May.
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The Sweat announcement and on-sale were planted after Sivan’s latest album cycle (for the October 2023 release of Something to Give Each Other) had mainly run its course, but before Charli’s Brat rollout kicked into high gear (June 7 release date). That off-cycle and on-cycle rollout was by design, giving ample time to sell arena tickets by artists who were not historically arena acts.
But even with strong opening sales, the team behind Sweat knew they’d get “a second bite at the apple,” said Greenbaum. Since the on-sale, Sivan made his arena debut abroad, and Charli executed an entire album campaign. Rather than the typical drop-off, momentum has carried Sweat through the (Brat) summer, with Greenbaum noting that North American sales rose to 80% by mid-June and beyond 90% by the end of July.
Sivan’s third studio LP, Something to Give Each Other, earned him his first two Grammy nominations and became his first album to land multiple songs on the Billboard Hot 100.
That success set up the European leg of the Something to Give Each Other Tour, leveling him up to arenas in Europe on his own before coming Stateside with Charli. According to figures reported to Billboard Boxscore, he played 15 shows across the continent in May and June, grossing $5.7 million from 108,000 tickets sold, averaging $379,000 and 7,227 tickets per show.
Those figures mark a 225% increase over Sivan’s last European jaunt. In Amsterdam, he went from selling 6,000 tickets at AFAS Live on The Bloom Tour in 2019, to 13,500 at the Ziggo Dome in June. In Berlin, he leapt from 3,333 tickets at Tempodrom to 8,884 tickets at Velodrom. In London, his audience ballooned from 5,133 tickets at Eventim Apollo to 11,254 at OVO Arena Wembley.
In the eight European markets where Sivan returned, attendance grew by no less than double, and earnings multiplied by at least three. Assuming similar growth in the U.S., where he played more shows and commanded bigger grosses on The Bloom Tour, he is well set up for arenas in North America, especially teamed up with a similarly buzzy pop star.
In June, Charli XCX played a string of club and festival dates in North and South America. In contrast to Sivan’s international arena tour, she chose to tease their fall tour with underplays that lived in the more intimate, visceral world of Brat. Her handful of headline shows sold out, ranging from 850 tickets in Sao Paulo to 5,000 in Los Angeles.
The numbers on Charli’s live shows were intentionally smaller than Sivan’s, but the energy and word-of-mouth around them matched the intensity of the album. Not only did it debut to career-peak commercial returns (No. 3 on the Billboard 200) and universal acclaim, it has penetrated the cultural consciousness. Amid a string of music videos, remixes and viral dance challenges, Brat has infiltrated the 2024 U.S. election cycle via a swirl of memes and momentum behind Democratic presidential hopeful Kamala Harris (“kamala IS brat,” Charli virally tweeted last month).
It’s perfect timing, then, for Sivan and Charli to join forces on Sweat. In her own words, in Billboard’s July cover story, it finally made sense due to the dance-leaning nature of both of their albums – the first No. 1 for each of them on Top Dance/Electronic Albums. They’ve built toward arena status over their decade-plus careers, each building cult-pop success from one album to another.
Beginning her career with a smattering of hits with Iggy Azalea and Icona Pop and songwriting credits alongside Selena Gomez and Shawn Mendes, Charli continued to accrue acclaim for her solo projects, growing her base from 965 tickets per show on 2014’s Girl Power North America Tour, to 1,439 on 2019’s Charli Live Tour, and then to almost 4,000 tickets on 2022’s Crash the Live Tour. Sivan’s recent European leg grew his base two-to-one, while The Bloom Tour expanded his reach worldwide, with more than 60 shows on five continents.
With more than a month left before Sweat begins, sales are expected to creep closer toward a continental sell-out. Just this week, Brat track “360” jumped from No. 78 to No. 55 on the Hot 100, while “Apple” debuted, becoming the album’s third track to chart. A new remix looms, hinting at more gas in the tank in the remaining weeks before opening night.
Both Sivan and Charli will tour on their own again after Sweat wraps, with each artist playing hometown shows in Oceania and the U.K., respectively. By the end of the year, their combined ticket sales could approach 500,000 in 2024.
Zach Bryan rules Billboard’s June Boxscore report with 10 shows from The Quittin’ Time Tour. According to figures reported to Billboard Boxscore, Bryan grossed $68.9 million and sold 340,000 tickets in June.
It’s the first monthly win for Bryan, after scaling as high as No. 2 in March, seated behind Bad Bunny. He clocked two more top 10 placements in April (No. 10) and May (No. 4) before hitting the summit. Following Morgan Wallen (April 2023), he is only the second country artist to top the list.
The Quittin’ Time Tour has earned $184 million and sold 929,000 tickets since launching on March 5, current through the end of June. Barely past its halfway point, the trek has already quadrupled the gross of Bryan’s Burn Burn Burn Tour from last year, which itself had quadrupled 2022’s The American Run Tour. In two years, he has multiplied his average per-show gross by more than 14, up from $292,000 in ’22, to $4.3 million.
Coldplay is June’s runner-up, logging its third month at No. 2, in addition to its three months at No. 1. During the month, the British rockers grossed $68 million and sold 576,000 tickets.
The band’s consistency – six months in the top two, plus eight more elsewhere in the top 10 – has paid off: the Music of the Spheres Tour has grossed $875.8 million and sold 8.2 million tickets since launching in March 2022.
Both the tour’s gross and attendance are the second biggest in Boxscore history. Elton John’s Farewell Yellow Brick Road Tour (2018-23) grossed $939.1 million, and Ed Sheeran’s The Divide Tour (2017-19) sold 8.9 million tickets. With more dates scheduled, Coldplay is likely to overtake both by the end of the summer.
The major asterisk for these all-time highs is that Taylor Swift has not reported figures for The Eras Tour. Billboard estimated more than $900 million in the bank and over four million tickets sold by last November. Since then, she’s performed in Asia, Australia and Europe, with a return to North America scheduled for the fall, meaning that she is likely far beyond $1 billion and nearing Sheeran’s attendance total to boot.
While Bryan leads Coldplay on Top Tours, they reverse fortunes on Top Boxscores, with the latter’s three shows at Groupama Stadium in Lyon, France, ($22.6 million, 165,000 tickets) beating the former’s double-header at Mile High Stadium in Denver ($20.5 million, 110,000 tickets). The Lyon venue rules Top Stadiums.
Both acts litter the rest of Top Boxscores, with Coldplay appearing four times in the top half, and Bryan totaling six entries. That’s each artist’s entire slate of shows from June, dominating the chart in stadiums – Coldplay in Europe and Bryan in the U.S.
In a first, the entire top 10 artists – Bryan, Coldplay, P!nk, Dead & Company, Aventura, Justin Timberlake, Kenny Chesney, Chris Brown, Green Day and Luke Combs – boast grosses of $30 million or more. Nine tours had done it in August and September 2022, and again in June and July 2023.
Further, the entire Top Tours chart is stronger than ever. German singer Roland Kaiser rounds out the list at No. 30, via $11.5 million from nine shows. That’s higher than the bottom of the list has ever been, outpacing the $10.8 million from Marco Antonio Solis last September. June marks the second month since the charts launched in 2019 that all 30 ranked tours reported grosses of $10 million or more.
June’s top 30 artists mix veteran artists such as Dead & Company, Billy Joel and Luis Miguel with fresh faces including Bryan, Feid and Noah Kahan. Classic pop groups make their mark, as Girls Aloud’s 2024 reunion lands at No. 14 with $19.1 million and Take That’s U.K. tour continues at No. 26 with $13 million.
The top-grossing venue of June is Las Vegas’ Sphere. The room hosted 10 shows across four weekends with artist-in-residency Dead & Company. The supergroup brought in $50.2 million and sold 162,000 tickets, enough to land at No. 4 on Top Tours and sprinkle Top Boxscores at Nos. 4, 5 and 8.
Up 38% from May, it’s Sphere’s second consecutive month at No. 1, with its one-of-a-kind concert experience driving high ticket prices. Madison Square Garden out-sold Sphere by more than 80,000 tickets and grossed about $12 million less, with the latter nearly doubling MSG’s average ticket ($309 vs. $156).
The lower-capacity venue charts are dominated by Glasgow (OVO Hydro), Atlanta (Fox Theatre) and Las Vegas (Dolby Live and Encore Theater at Wynn Las Vegas). Historically blocked by larger venues on the 5,000-capacity-and-under ranking, Encore Theater scores its first month at No. 1 on the new chart that breaks out venues with a cap of 2,500 or less.
Karol G wrapped the Mañana Será Bonito Tour on Tuesday night (July 23) to record-breaking results. According to figures reported to Billboard Boxscore, the trek grossed $307.1 million and sold 2.3 million tickets over 62 shows.
The Mañana Será Bonito Tour spanned almost a full year, kicking off Aug. 11, 2023, at Las Vegas’ Allegiant Stadium. Karol G played 15 stadium dates in the U.S., bringing in $138.4 million, landing at No. 1 on last year’s annual Latin recap.
Then, Karol G played 29 shows in Latin America, adding $125.4 million. Finally, she played 18 shows in Europe, topping off with another $43.4 million.
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The Mañana Será Bonito Tour is the highest-grossing Latin tour by a woman in Boxscore history, topping her own $trip Love Tour from 2022. On average, her per-show gross grew from $2.2 million on that trek, to $4.9 million on this trek. Her per-show attendance blossomed from 12,836 tickets to 36,371. And with almost double the workload – 62 shows on three continents, compared to 33 in the U.S. and Canada – her total tour gross multiplied more than four times, from $72.2 million to $307.1 million, with total attendance up 432%, from 424,000 to 2.3 million.
Karol G’s tour followed the release of its namesake album, Mañana Será Bonito. Released on Feb. 24, 2023, it became not only her first top 10 album on the Billboard 200, but her first No. 1. On a macro level, it was the first all-Spanish-language album by a woman to top the chart.
While Spanish-language music has blossomed in North America over the last decade, Karol G’s recent run of shows in Europe is particularly noteworthy. High-grossing tours by pan-generational Latin artists like Aventura, Bad Bunny, Daddy Yankee, Peso Pluma and RBD have stuck to the U.S., Canada and Latin America. Luis Miguel is playing shows in Europe this summer, though he’s exclusively in Spain. Karol G played multiple arena dates in France, Germany, Italy and more, breaking ground for Latin acts abroad.
The Mañana Será Bonito Tour ended on a high note, with four shows at Madrid’s Estadio Santiago Bernabeu. Those dates collectively earned $23.6 million and sold 220,000 tickets. Both figures set venue records, passing previous appearances by Luis Miguel, The Rolling Stones and Bruce Springsteen. It’s the second highest-grossing engagement from the tour, just under the $25.4 million double-header at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, Calif.
Ultimately, the Mañana Será Bonito Tour is the 30th trek in the Boxscore archives (dating back to the mid-80s) to gross $300 million. Among women, it’s just the seventh, joining a group with stints by Beyoncé, Madonna, P!nk and Taylor Swift.
Grouped by genre, the Mañana Será Bonito Tour is only the second tour by a Latin artist to clear the $300 million threshold, barely missing the 2022 high mark set by Bad Bunny’s World’s Hottest Tour ($314.1 million). Luis Miguel will likely join them with one more update, as his current tour sits at $298.7 million through July 13. Further, Karol G is the first Latin woman to join the $300 million club.
Dating back to reports from January 2018, Karol G has grossed $400.9 million and sold 2.96 million tickets over 128 reported shows, extending her margin as the highest-grossing woman in Latin music.
One more time, Bad Bunny’s Most Wanted Tour secures the No. 1 spot on Billboard’s monthly Top Tours chart. According to figures reported to Billboard Boxscore, the Puerto Rican superstar earned $60.4 million and sold 212,000 tickets from 14 concerts in May.
Bad Bunny is no stranger to the pole position, having reigned over the March and April reports, plus four wins in 2022. That matches him with Elton John for the most months at No. 1 since the charts launched in 2019. And while Bad Bunny played three more shows in June, his tie with John is secure for now, as that weekend of shows won’t be enough to score an eighth No. 1.
The Most Wanted Tour started on Feb. 21, with five shows earning $19.5 million before the end of the month. Then, Bad Bunny kicked off his undefeated streak, ruling the March list with $64.6 million (13 shows) and April with $63 million (14). Including his run of shows in May, he is the second artist to string together three consecutive months at No. 1, following Beyoncé last summer.
During May, Bad Bunny focused on the Southeast. He started in Houston on May 1, before maneuvering through New Orleans, Nashville, Atlanta, Orlando and other surrounding markets.
As is the case for many Spanish-speaking artists, Miami proved to be the month’s highlight, with $18.8 million and 49,300 tickets over three shows at the Kaseya Center from May 24-26. That nets Bad Bunny another No. 1 on the Top Boxscores chart. Among the 31 North American cities on the entire tour, only Los Angeles yielded a bigger gross, with $20.2 million. Brooklyn, Chicago and San Francisco also broke the $10 million threshold.
Bad Bunny makes two more appearances on Top Boxscores, at Nos. 13 and 15 with double-headers at Orlando’s Kia Center and Dallas’ American Airlines Center, respectively.
Including Bad Bunny’s three shows at San Juan’s Coliseo de Puerto Rico (June 7-9), the Most Wanted Tour grossed $211.4 million and sold 753,000 tickets across 49 shows.
Those totals are smaller than those of 2022’s World’s Hottest Tour, which raked in $314.1 million and sold 1.9 million tickets in North and South American stadiums. It remains the highest grossing tour by a Latin artist in Boxscore history.
But on a more even comparison, they’re larger than the finals for his most recent arena tour, El Ultimo Tour del Mundo, which earned $116.8 million and sold 576,000 tickets earlier that year. The Most Wanted Tour averaged $4.3 million per night, which marks a 29% increase from his same-sized 2022 shows.
The Most Wanted Tour is the fifth trek by a Latin artist to gross more than $200 million, following Bad Bunny’s own 2022 tour, RBD’s Soy Rebelde Tour, and ongoing stints by Karol G and Luis Miguel.
The upper region of the Top Tours chart is dominated by Latin and country acts. Right behind Bad Bunny, Aventura is No. 2 with $43.1 million and 261,000 tickets sold from a busy month of 20 shows. Luis Miguel is No. 9 with $25.7 million over 16 shows, as he becomes the first artist in the history of the monthly Boxscore charts to string together 10 consecutive months in the top 10 of Top Tours.
Among country acts, Luke Combs, Zach Bryan and George Strait line up at Nos. 3-5 with monthly earnings of $43.1 million, $40.5 million and $38.1 million, respectively. Kenny Chesney rounds out the upper tier at No. 10 with a combination of stadium and amphitheater shows on the Sun Goes Down Tour.
The rest of the top 10 is split between pop and rock, with nostalgia driving sales for both. Veteran British boy band Take That is No. 6, followed by Dead & Company at No. 7, earning $36.4 million from eight shows at Las Vegas’ Sphere. Justin Timberlake is No. 8. All three score multiple appearances on Top Boxscores.
After being unveiled as part of Billboard’s midyear touring report, May marks the monthly debut of two new venue charts. Historically, Boxscore’s capacity-specific venue charts have gone as far down to rooms that hold 5,000 people or less. In an effort to spotlight more clubs and small theaters, there are now separate charts for venues with capacities of 2,501-5,000, and 2,500 or less.
Morsani Hall, part of the David A. Straz, Jr. Center for the Performing Arts in Tampa, is No. 1 on the 2,501-5,000 chart, bringing in $3.1 million from 34,600 tickets over 16 shows. As such with the runner-up, Atlanta’s Fox Theatre, Morsani Hall scores its victory in large part thanks to touring stage productions. Still, the former featured Kevin Hart and the latter hosted Casting Crowns and Hasan Minhaj.
The rest of the top 10 is filled out by venues in the U.S., Canada and the U.K., with Las Vegas’ The Chelsea at The Cosmopolitan at No. 3, Niagara Falls’ Fallsview Casino Resort at No. 6, and London’s O2 Academy Brixton at No. 9.
On the 2,500-and-under ranking, the DeVos Performance Hall in Grand Rapids, Mich., reigns with $5.2 million and 61,100 tickets. Las Vegas shines again, with Encore Theater at Wynn Las Vegas at No. 2. Brooklyn Steel represents for New York at No. 6, and San Francisco’s Warfield Theater lifts the Bay Area at No. 8.
Since its founding in 2001, Cardenas Marketing Network (CMN) has grown into one of the most dominant concert promoters in the world, leading the charge as Latin music continues to assert itself on arena and stadium stages. Case in point: In the midyear Boxscore tracking period, the company is up in every conceivable metric, posting the biggest gross and attendance in its history.
According to figures reported to Billboard Boxscore, CMN grossed $233.3 million and sold 1.9 million tickets from 148 shows between Oct. 1, 2023, and March 31, 2024. That attendance figure marks a 12% increase from the company’s 2023 midyear showing, which was already up by 71% from 2022 — a year that saw a 94% rise in attendance from pre-pandemic 2019.
CMN’s $233 million gross marks the company’s first midyear tracking period that finished north of the $200 million threshold, rising 43% from last year’s $163 million. Its 2024 midyear earnings are notably almost 4.5x higher than its pre-pandemic business. That achievement comes from working both smarter and harder: in essence, by putting on more shows by more artists in bigger venues with maximized potential.
Luis Miguel leads the charge among CMN’s touring artists. The Mexican music icon finished at No. 1 on the midyear Top Latin Tours ranking, grossing $165.6 million and selling 1.2 million tickets during the tracking period — eclipsing the biggest Latin tour of 2023 (Karol G) on both metrics in just six months. That marks the biggest gross for a Latin artist in the history of Billboard Boxscore’s midyear charts.
But as proven by Karol G last year and CMN’s run with Bad Bunny in 2022, the promoter’s reach exceeds genre restrictions. At midyear, Miguel is No. 4 on the all-genre Top Tours chart, behind only U2, P!nk and Madonna. He also ranks third in terms of tickets sold. Elsewhere, Marc Anthony is No. 48 on Top Tours with $23.4 million, while Don Omar and Christian Nodal also pulled in eight-figure earnings with $14.1 million and $11.8 million, respectively.
Notably, CMN is absent from the midyear Top Promoters chart. Having recently entered into a partnership with AEG Presents, the company’s totals were rolled into those of AEG — which ranked No. 2 with grosses of $976.6 million — for midyear chart purposes. AEG’s total is up nearly $300 million from last year thanks to the touring giant’s own promotions and the addition of CMN to its tally. Had CMN been listed individually on Top Promoters, it would have ranked in the top five.
While the midyear tracking period closed on March 31, CMN’s tours have continued rolling. Reported grosses from April and March amount to more than $100 million, outpacing the midyear period thanks to big assists from recently launched treks by Aventura and Victor Manuelle.
CMN’s would-be top five midyear placement tracks, as the company spent the last three years in the upper region of the year-end Top Promoters chart — the culmination of a steady climb since its 2001 inception. CMN volleyed on and off the chart throughout the 2000s before rising from No. 15 in 2018 to No. 10 in 2019 to No. 7 in 2020. It ranked at either No. 3 or No. 4 in 2021, 2022 and 2023.
What a difference a year makes. After a difficult post-pandemic opening in late 2022, UBS Arena in Elmont, N.Y., has found its footing in its sophomore year, nearly doubling its year-over-year gross on Billboard’s 2024 mid-year rankings and finding its stride in the busy New York Metro market.
At the mid-year point in 2023, UBS Arena had posted $22 million in gross concert receipts from 39 shows. This year, the venue has posted $42 million in gross receipts from 56 shows.
That success comes from building off 2023 sellouts that included two nights of Bruce Springsteen, two nights of SUGA and shows from Blink-182, Peso Pluma, Aerosmith and Billy Joel. In 2024, UBS has already seen sellouts from Stevie Nicks, Elevation Worship, Machel Montano, ENHYPEN, Aventura (two nights), Drake (two nights) and Zach Bryan (two nights).
Delayed by pandemic-related construction issues, including the Metropolitan Transportation Authority missing a key date to connect the venue to the Long Island Rail Road, UBS Arena struggled with attendance early on.
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USB Arena
UBS Arena/Dennis DaSilva
“There was really no playbook on how to open an arena in the most competitive major market in the world during a pandemic,” says Mark Shulman, senior vp of programming at the Oak View Group-managed arena, which was built in partnership with the New York Islanders.
“You can take everything that we know about how to launch a venue and you throw it all out because so many of those strategies just weren’t feasible at the time,” Shulman adds of the 745,000-square-foot, 17,200-seat hockey and entertainment arena designed by Populos and constructed by Aecom Hunt. “But what was undeniable is that UBS Arena is a world-class, stunningly beautiful and acoustically superior venue. And we had a highly experienced team that we assembled. We had the right people for the challenge.”
The first order of business was tapping into the diversity of Nassau County and the nearby borough of Queens, “which are some of the most diverse areas in America,” says Shulman. “They have residents coming from 120 countries. They speak 130 languages. We spend a lot time developing inclusive programming that reflects that diversity and we’ve had great success with not only rock, pop and country, but also Caribbean, soca, K-pop, C-pop and artists from India.”
UBS Arena’s large 430-acre campus at Belmont Park is a rare asset in the New York market “that’s become a fantastic activation space for artists and their fans,” Shulman says. During the Zach Bryan shows, held on March 30 and 31, the country star’s father, Dwayne, “hosted events outside for fans and actually discovered a local artist who ended up performing on the show the next night,” Shulman adds.
Another example of this came on May 3, when UBS hosted K-pop group ENHYPEN and put on “a full day of activities where the fans could meet up, play games, create art and dance to their favorite music,” Shulman says. “We love seeing artists and fans take advantage of all that UBS Arena and the campus have to offer.”
The hard work involved in establishing the venue is set to culminate with two massive upcoming events. The first is the MTV Video Music Awards, which will be held at UBS Aarena on Sept. 10, marking the show’s return to New York.
“The team at MTV is designing a completely new show and really going to utilize every space in the building and the park outside,” says Shulman, including the full arena bowl, all seven of the venue’s club spaces and the venue’s two outdoor terraces.
UBS Arena will also host the 2026 NHL All-Star Game, as announced by NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman during the NFL Winter Classic on Jan. 1.
USB Arena
UBS Arena/Dennis DaSilva
A big selling point for UBS Arena, Shulman adds, are the different experiences that can be hosted within the building, including the American Express Lounge speakeasy and the Heineken Terrace, which hosts large parties and group dinners. The arena even features sensory spaces designed by Northwell Health for guests of any age who may have sensory processing sensitivities. Open for all arena events, each room features custom hand-painted murals, special sensory equipment including a Vecta machine, infinity tunnels, heat sensitivity play panels and gel floor tiles along with a customizable sound system and bean bag chairs.
Says Shulman, “Our goal is to create a space that is comfortable for everyone and meets the entire needs of the community.”
Billboard Boxscore unveiled its midyear 2024 charts earlier today, and in addition to U2’s Sphere shows dominating various rankings, there are brand new venue charts that highlight some of the most iconic concert halls in the world. Historically, Boxscore’s capacity-specific venue charts have gone as far down to rooms that hold 5,000 people or less. In an effort to spotlight more clubs and small theaters, there are now separate charts for venues with capacities of 2,501-5k, and 2,500 or less.
Leading the inaugural 2,501-5k chart is Atlanta’s Fox Theatre. Across the eligibility period of Oct. 1, 2023 – March 31, 2024, its 110 shows earned a combined $34.5 million and sold 434,000 tickets. The theater hosted several national touring companies performing iconic Broadway shows, such as Annie, Beetlejuice and Hamilton. There were also highlights from Janelle Monae, My Morning Jacket, Steve Miller Band and the double-bill of Tina Fey & Amy Poehler.
The Fox Theatre finished second on year-end rankings in 2022 and 2023 and was No. 6 on last year’s midyear tally for venues with a capacity of 5,000 or less. Several other perennial theaters appear, with the Beacon Theatre (New York), Chicago Theatre (Chicago), Resorts World Theatre (Las Vegas) and the Au-Rene Theater at the Broward Center for the Performing Arts (Fort Lauderdale) rounding out the top five.
Among rooms with a capacity of 2,500 or less, Teatro Telcel in Mexico City reigns supreme, with a $14 million take from 248,000 tickets sold. Like the Fox Theatre, the CDMX venue’s gross was plumped up by theatrical productions, specifically Anastasia The Musical. Just beneath, Las Vegas’ Encore Theater at Wynn Resort is No. 2 with $13.2 million. Both venues would have been in the top 10 on the old combined 5k-cap-and-below chart.
What follows is a parade of some of the most iconic clubs and small theaters in the U.S. (Teatro Telcel is the only international venue on the chart). New York and Washington, D.C. are each represented twice. The former appears at Nos. 11 and 13 with Brooklyn Steel and Webster Hall, respectively, both booked and promoted by AEG Presents/The Bowery Presents. The latter is at Nos. 12 and 17 with IMP Presents’ 9:30 Club and Lincoln Theatre.
On the west coast, Seattle doubles up. Again, it’s a two-fer from AEG Presents, with Showbox SODO at No. 7 and its sister venue Showbox rounding out the list at No. 20.
Theaters still dominate the lower-capacity ranking, with the top six spots devoted to seated venues. But starting with Showbox SODO, general-admission clubs proliferate the back-end, with Atlanta’s The Eastern (No. 9) and Montreal’s MTelus (No. 15) rubbing up against San Francisco’s Warfield Theatre (No. 10) and the Philadelphia-area Keswick Theatre (No. 18).
Concert industry experts generally thought 2024 would be a down year — or at least less busy than 2023, when Taylor Swift and Beyoncé catapulted the sector to new heights and challenged the personnel within it to keep pace amid its explosive growth.
But so far, 2024 hasn’t brought much rest for the weary. The touring business is entering the summer fueled by huge concert grosses that are unprecedented for the midyear mark, according to Billboard Boxscore.
At midyear, grosses for the top 10 entries on the Top Tours chart total a collective $1.5 billion, up a staggering 83% from last year’s figure of $814.9 million. That marks the first time the combined gross of the top 10 tours has crossed $1 billion by the halfway point. Last year, only two tours — Elton John and Harry Styles — had generated more than $100 million at midyear. This year, eight of them have.
Leading the chart period, which spanned from Oct. 1, 2023, to March 30, 2024, is U2, which opened the new Sphere venue in Las Vegas with a residency that grossed $231.6 million from 38 shows during that time. (U2’s full 40-date Sphere run grossed $244.5 million, though the first two shows, which took place Sept. 29 and Sept. 30, occurred just before the chart period began.)
On the strength of her fall North American tour along with February and March dates in Oceania, P!nk ranks second on the midyear tally with $196 million grossed from 42 shows. At No. 3, Madonna logged 67 of her Celebration Tour’s 80 dates during the period and grossed $190.6 million for a No. 3 rank (the trek wrapped in early May). Rounding out the chart’s top 10 are three Latin tours (Luis Miguel; RBD; and Enrique Iglesias, Pitbull and Ricky Martin), three pop and rock acts (Coldplay, Depeche Mode and the Eagles) and Travis Scott, the sole hip-hop artist in the ranking’s upper tier, who brought in $96 million from 44 North American arena shows on his Circus Maximus Tour — marking the rapper’s first outing since the deadly 2021 Astroworld festival.
The big revenue gain for the chart period’s top-earning tours, during what is normally the slower half of the year, is further evidence that — driven largely by international growth in Asia, South America and Australia — the concert business has become an increasingly year-round business.
Leading the Top Promoters midyear chart with $2.8 billion grossed is Live Nation, which has long advocated for steady, incremental international growth. Its main competitor, AEG — No. 2 on Top Promoters with $976.8 million grossed — produced Taylor Swift’s ongoing The Eras Tour through its partnership with Messina Touring Group and has also continued to expand its footprint globally. Swift did not report her The Eras Tour data to Billboard during the chart period, when she played 26 shows across South America, Australia and Asia.
SPHERE IS HERE
Individual music venues rarely change the entire touring landscape, but few facilities have captured the public’s imagination quite like Las Vegas’ Sphere. With its ground-breaking interior sound and video display — not to mention its light-up, skyline-dominating exterior — the venue has effectively created a new tier of high-end concert experience.
U2’s No. 1 ranking on Top Tours was driven solely by the 38 U2:UV Achtung Baby Live at Sphere shows from Oct. 1, 2023, through the residency’s conclusion on March 2, 2024. Those concerts grossed $231.6 million from 630,000 tickets sold, with U2 averaging a $6.1 million gross per show from an average ticket price of $368. While a few megastars have earned more from Vegas residencies, none have ever earned so much from so few shows.
While those in the industry largely view fans’ willingness to increasingly shell out for premium concert experiences as a net positive, some live executives predict that other parts of the sector — festivals, namely — may begin to feel a competitive pinch.
“It’s already getting difficult for festivals to find headliners,” says Wasserman Music agent Sam Hunt, who represents major acts such as Diplo, Run the Jewels and The xx, noting that artists used to make substantially more money headlining festivals than they did headlining arenas. But new ticket-pricing tools have significantly increased what artists can make playing the latter.
That shift in financial posture for the touring business comes amid increasingly frequent festival cancellations, and those woes have extended to the top of the market: This year, Coachella was slow to sell after its initial on-sale and ended up down about 20% in attendance compared with 2023.
Given the choice between festivals and headlining concerts at arenas and stadiums, fans are increasingly choosing the latter. “There is no more comfortable way to enjoy a show than an arena — especially the newer facilities,” says Mark Shulman, senior vp of programming at UBS Arena in Elmont, N.Y., just outside of Queens, which opened in late 2021. “The modern arena is a concert palace, with incredible acoustics, comfortable seats and tons of bathrooms, plus all kinds of food and beverage options.”
DOJ LAWSUIT LOOMS
The sector’s momentum may be hindered by the lawsuit filed by the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) in late May seeking to break up Live Nation and Ticketmaster 14 years after the government approved the merger of the two companies. Twenty-nine states and the District of Columbia joined the lawsuit, which alleges an illegal monopoly in the live entertainment industry. “It is time to break up Live Nation-Ticketmaster,” Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a statement announcing the suit.
For the government to prove that Live Nation is a monopoly, it must demonstrate that the company has a dominant market share. Though Billboard’s midyear report only measures the top line of the concert market — during the slowest two quarters of the year — it does offer context about the mega-promoter’s clout.
Take the Top Promoters chart. Live Nation and AEG rank first and second, respectively, followed at No. 3 by OCESA — the Mexican promotion company Live Nation purchased in December 2021 — with $403 million in sales. Of the $5.4 billion spent globally on concert tickets to events promoted by the top 20 promoters during the midyear period, according to Boxscore, Live Nation and OCESA accounted for $3.2 billion in sales — about 60% of the total.
That tracks closely to the Top Tours chart, where 31 tours — nearly two-thirds of the overall list of 50 — were produced by Live Nation. Of the top 10 tours, only one, Luis Miguel, was produced by another company. (If Swift had reported data for her AEG-produced The Eras Tour, she undoubtedly would have swelled the number of non-Live Nation productions in the top 10 to two. However, Billboard’s analysis is based only on global data that is voluntarily reported to Billboard Boxscore by promoters, venues and artists.)
A large part of the DOJ’s inquiry into Live Nation will revolve around the company’s ownership of Ticketmaster, which it acquired in 2010, along with the platform’s current market share of the concert ticketing business. On that front, Billboard found that 69 of the top 100 venues across Boxscore’s five highest-capacity charts at midyear were Ticketmaster clients.
This story will appear in the June 1, 2024, issue of Billboard.
Bad Bunny is no stranger to the top of Boxscore charts. In 2022, he led four monthly rankings and then crowned the year-end list of the highest grossing tours worldwide. Naturally, he also topped that year’s Top Latin Tours tally, before Karol G took over in 2023, staging her own sold-out North American stadium tour. Now, as Billboard recaps the biggest tours of April 2024, Bad Bunny and Karol G team up at Nos. 1 and 2 on Top Tours and Top Boxscores.
According to figures reported to Billboard Boxscore, Bad Bunny grossed $63 million and sold 210,000 tickets in April, logging his second consecutive month at No. 1. The Most Wanted tour’s three-night run at Brooklyn’s Barclays Center contributed $17.8 million of that total, taking the lead on Top Boxscores. Five of his 14 shows in April marked all-time venue highs, among the 16 venue records he’s set since beginning the tour in February.
Including 14 shows in May, the Most Wanted Tour has grossed $207.8 million and sold 703,000 tickets since kicking off in Salt Lake City. Bad Bunny has three more shows to go at San Juan’s Coliseo de Puerto Rico on June 7-9.
Just beneath, Karol G’s Mañana Será Bonito Tour banked $45.1 million and sold 419,000 tickets from nine shows. It’s No. 2 on the gross-based Top Tours chart, but is the best-selling tour of the month, as the only trek to move more than 300,000 and 400,000 tickets. It’s April highlight was three shows at Estadio Nacional in Santiago, Chile, which is No. 2 on Top Boxscores with a gross of $15 million from 168,000 tickets sold.
It’s the first time that two Latin artists top both charts in succession. On Bad Bunny’s five previous No. 1s, stadium rock and country supported at No. 2, via Elton John, Def Leppard & Motley Crue, and Zach Bryan. When Los Bukis and RBD were on top, Dead & Company and Coldplay were runners-up, respectively.
Both artists have been major contributors to Latin’s growing prominence on the Boxscore charts in the post-pandemic era. Bad Bunny was the first artist to finish at No. 1 on the year-end Top Tours ranking who primarily performs in any language other than English, after BTS wound up at No. 3 in 2019. Karol G’s nine-figure gross in 2023 assured that Bad Bunny’s success was not a one-off or a fluke.
Before COVID-19 turned venues dark in 2020, no Latin artist had a tour that grossed more than $200 million. Now, there have been five, two of which are Bad Bunny and Karol G’s ongoing highlights atop the April recap. In addition to Most Wanted Tour’s $207.8 million, the Mañana Será Bonito Tour has earned $263.8 million and sold 1.8 million tickets since launching last August.
To add to the current noise, the Luis Miguel Tour 2023-24 (No. 6) is up to $258.5 million, current through May 19. Plus, RBD concluded its reunion tour in December, with a final gross of $227.1 million.
The other $200-million Latin tour is Bad Bunny’s own World’s Hottest Tour, which grossed $314.1 million in 2022. Both current tours by Bad Bunny and Karol G are ongoing, but it’s unlikely that either will break the all-time high mark among Latin artists set by World’s Hottest Tour. While the former has just three shows remaining, the latter will play 18 dates in Europe in June and July.
Karol G has averaged $6 million and 41,800 tickets per show across North and South America. That pace would guarantee her the Latin touring record, but her shows in Europe will be mostly in arenas, which cuts the potential per-show attendance in half, at least. To boot, ticket prices are lower in Europe than the U.S., across genres.
Europe is an uncommon territory for Latin artists to sell out arenas and stadiums, but the final leg of the Mañana Será Bonito Tour, especially its final four shows at Madrid’s Estadio Santiago Bernabeau, will likely push its overall haul very close to, or over the $300 million mark.
In addition to Latin’s dominance, country artists take another three of the top 10 spots on Top Tours. Luke Combs is No. 3 with $35.7 million, Kenny Chesney is No. 7 with $18 million, and last month’s runner-up, Zach Bryan, is No. 10 with $12.3 million. Beyond the top 10, Kane Brown and Tyler Childers follow at Nos. 11-12, with $11.5 million and $11.4 million, respectively.
Madonna (No. 4) and Nicki Minaj (No. 5) solidify a woman-dominated top five, while pacing the month’s tours among pop and rap artists, respectively. The former is No. 3 on Top Boxscores, with a five-night engagement at Mexico City’s Palacio de los Deportes. Rounding out the proper routing of her Celebration Tour, those shows grossed $14.8 million and sold 82,400 tickets on April 20-21, 23-24 and 26.
While New York is often represented atop the Top Venues (15,001+ capacity) chart via Manhattan’s Madison Square Garden, Brooklyn’s Barclays Center takes the No. 1 spot for the first time in April, with $26.7 million and 99,200 tickets sold across seven shows. That’s an all-time high monthly rank and gross for the arena, having previously inched past the $20 million mark last July, when it sat at No. 2 behind MSG.
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.