Billboard Boxscore
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Tate McRae wrapped the sold-out Are We Flying Tour in October, but she’s busier than ever. After launching her next cycle with “Greedy,” she will be performing this weekend (Nov. 18) on NBC’s Saturday Night Live, en route to the release of the album Think Later in December. Next year, McRae takes the new album on tour on the biggest stages of her career.
The Are We Flying Tour grossed $2.2 million and sold 60,000 tickets between Sept. 5 and Oct. 15, according to figures reported to Billboard Boxscore. Expect those numbers to triple (and then some) next year, as McRae levels up from clubs and small theaters to boutique amphitheaters, and in one major case, an arena.
At its most extreme, McRae’s level-up expands her audience almost five times over. After selling out Dallas’ House of Blues at 1,674 tickets on Oct. 15, she’s scheduled to play the 8,000-capacity Toyota Music Factory in July. After playing House of Blues in Boston to a crowd of 2,705 fans on Sept. 16, she’ll play two nights at the MGM Music Hall at Fenway, to a potential combined crowd of more than 10,000. Similar jumps follow in Minneapolis, Nashville and San Francisco.
Of the 16 North American markets that line up with shows from her recent tour, McRae is playing a venue at least twice the size in 12. The only market with a dip in capacity is Los Angeles: She sold out two nights at the Hollywood Palladium (7,671 tickets on Oct. 4-5) and is scheduled to play the Greek Theatre (6,162 capacity) on July 11.
While McRae could move 10,000 tickets in Boston and at the Walmart Arkansas Music Pavilion in Rogers, Ark., two markets could break 15,000. In Toronto, she’ll play the Budweiser Stage, a 16,000-capacity amphitheater that has recently hosted sold-out concerts by Morgan Wallen, Post Malone, Janet Jackson and more. Hailing from Calgary, Alberta, it’s the only home-country show on the tour.
And after clearing two nights at The Rooftop at Pier 17 (7,494 tickets on Sept. 19-20), McRae is scheduled to close out the North American leg at New York’s Madison Square Garden, which has hosted A-list pop stars from Harry Styles to Madonna. Assuming she doesn’t play in-the-round, she could sell as many as 15,000 tickets.
With every show on McRae’s 2023 tour sold out, the upgrade in 2024 is warranted. There’s also her forthcoming album, already sporting the biggest single of her career. “Greedy” is No. 11 on the Nov. 18-dated Billboard Hot 100, bringing her closer to a top 10 hit than ever before. Previously, “You Broke Me First” slow-burned its way to No. 17. She has five other Hot 100 entries to her name, including collaborations with Khalid, Troye Sivan and Tiesto.
And while McRae can anticipate tripling her North American audience, and potentially expand her grosses further with accelerated demand, The Think Later World Tour will be her first major trip outside North America. The trek begins with 25 shows in Europe and ends with nine in Australia and New Zealand.
Without any Boxscore history on either continent, projections are tricky. But McRae’s international chart history bodes well for her live prospects. While “You Broke Me First” clawed its way to the top 20 of the Hot 100 in March of 2021, it got there five months sooner on the global stage, reaching No. 17 on the Billboard Global Excl. U.S. list in October 2020, and then peaking at No. 15 in November. Further, “Greedy” has spent its first eight weeks on the Global Excl. U.S. chart in the top 10, returning to its so-far high of No. 3 this week. On Billboard’s Hits of the World chart, “Greedy” already hit No. 1 in Australia, Austria, Denmark, Luxembourg, Norway, and the Netherlands. It’s a top 10 hit in 16 more territories.
Live Nation will promote the Think Later World Tour, with Presley Regier as support in North America, and charlieonafriday in Europe and Australia.
McRae, who is the latest Billboard cover star, is set to perform for the 2023 Billboard Music Awards, which streams Sunday (Nov. 19) at 8 p.m. ET via BBMAs.watch and the Billboard and the BBMAs’ social channels.
From Jay-Z to Nicki Minaj and beyond, here are the highest grossing artists, according to Billboard Boxscore.
Yet again, Beyoncé crowns Billboard’s monthly Boxscore recap. According to figures reported to Billboard Boxscore, the Renaissance World Tour grossed $121.9 million and sold 476,000 tickets across nine shows in September.
This is the third consecutive month, and fourth overall, that Beyoncé has crowned Top Tours. That ties her with Bad Bunny for the second-most since the charts’ launch in February 2019, only behind Elton John’s seven. And while he, Bad Bunny, The Rolling Stones and others have achieved back-to-back wins, Queen Bey is the first act to go three-in-a-row.
It’s also her third consecutive month north of $100 million, after setting all-time monthly record with $179.3 million in August.
In addition to this monthly chart feat, Billboard previously reported upon Beyoncé’s Oct. 1 finale that The Renaissance World Tour is the highest-grossing tour by a woman, by a Black artist and by any American soloist in the Boxscore archives. Between its May 10 kickoff in Stockholm and its recent closing show in Kansas City, the tour grossed $579.8 million and sold 2.8 million tickets, making it the biggest of her career, and the seventh highest grossing trek of all time.
September is Beyoncé’s second month at No. 1 on Top Boxscores. After reigning in July with two shows at New Jersey’s MetLife Stadium, she claims the crown with three shows on the opposite coast. Playing SoFi Stadium in Inglewood, Calif. (Los Angeles area) on Sept. 1-2 and 4, the Renaissance World Tour brought in $45.5 million and sold 156,000 tickets.
More, Beyoncé follows herself at No. 2 with two hometown shows at Houston’s NRG Stadium. Those, on Sept. 23-24, grossed $31.3 million and sold 123,000 tickets. Though more than 30% off from her SoFi shows, the weekend in Houston earned more than double its next closest competition.
Depeche Mode’s trio of dates at Mexico City’s Foro Sol took in $15.4 million, leading a group of 13 reports between $10-15 million. Three of those 13 come from Beyoncé herself, at Nos. 6, 8 and 12.
While Beyoncé is one of a growing group of solo women who have shifted the make-up of Boxscore’s top earners in the last several months, she is one of just three on September’s Top Tours. P!nk follows at No. 6 with $30.2 million from a handful of North American stadium shows as part of the Summer Canival tour. Elsewhere, Lady Gaga is No. 29 with $11.1 million from eight dates as part of her Jazz & Piano residency at MGM’s Dolby Live in Las Vegas.
While these women make up just 10% of the acts on the chart, their grosses combine to 22% of the top 30’s combined earnings, in large part due to Beyoncé’s giant haul.
Notably, RBD adds to the gender shift, at No. 2. The Mexican pop group reunited with five of its six original members – three women and two men – to winning results. Through Oct. 1, the Soy Rebelde Tour has earned $90.2 million, $65.7 million on which came from shows in October. That’s more than the group’s entire concert revenues from before reuniting, from 2005-08.
The upper echelon of this month’s rankings is notably diverse. Morgan Wallen, Drake and Coldplay round out the top five spots on Top Tours, adding country, rap and rock to RBD’s Latin pop and Beyoncé’s mix of pop, R&B and dance music. In 39 editions of the Top Tours chart, this is the first time that each of the top five acts represent different genres.
While Beyoncé’s nine-figure haul includes revenue from her Sept. 11 show in Vancouver, Wallen gives Canada a spotlight among his September dates. Ten out of his 13 concerts were above the border, making up 61% of his total monthly earnings. Those include three in Toronto (Sept. 14-16; $7.2 million; 47,800 tickets) and others in Montreal (Sept. 23; $3.1 million; 15,200) and Calgary (Sept. 30; $2.9 million; 13,600).
After Wallen’s $25.8 million in Canada, Coldplay follows with $9.2 million from two shows in Vancouver, before Beyoncé with $7.9 million from her own Vancouver date. Ten other acts among September’s top 30 played shows in Canada, from Ed Sheeran and Guns N’ Roses in the top 20, to Lionel Richie and Marco Antonio Solis at Nos. 28 and 30, respectively.
While the stacked grosses by Beyoncé, RBD and others are certainly worth celebrating, September’s overall figures are record-breaking, well beyond the top-earning tours. For the first time since the charts launched, all 30 tours grossed more than $10 million, down to Solis’ $10.9 million. Previously, June ’23 set the high-mark with 27 tours.
September’s eight-figure treks go well beyond the top 30, in fact, with another eight artists above the benchmark. Fuerza Regida just misses the chart cut-off with $10.8 million, while Lana Del Rey ($10.7 million), The Postal Service & Death Cab for Cutie ($10.6 million) and blink-182 ($10.4 million), among others, follow.
Still looking at the big picture, though slightly zoomed in, Live Nation crowns Top Promoters, yet again. With over 8.4 million tickets sold in September, the concert giant has reported grosses of more than $1 billion for the first time.
After repeated monthly triumphs, a series of broken records and 39 cities turned to mute, Beyoncé closed out the Renaissance World Tour on Oct. 1. According to figures reported to Billboard Boxscore, the tour grossed $579.8 million and sold 2.8 million tickets across 56 shows in North America and Europe.
In a vacuum, those are massive numbers. And in the context of Boxscore’s nearly 40-year history, they are monumental. The Renaissance World Tour is the highest grossing tour by a woman, by a Black artist and by any American soloist.
Among women and domestic solo acts, Beyoncé passes Madonna’s Sticky & Sweet Tour, which broke ground upon its 2009 finale with $407.7 million. Among Black acts, she replaces herself atop the heap, exceeding The Formation World Tour’s 2016 gross of $256.1 million by a margin of 2.26 to 1. In the interim, The Weeknd’s ongoing After Hours Til Dawn Tour has slid in the middle, with a gross of $305.9 million as of Sept. 30.
Doubling her previous peak – already a towering high that topped Boxscore’s 2016 year-end round-up – and digging deep into the record books, Beyoncé breaks the top 10 highest grossing tours of all time, hitting No. 7. She’s barely blocked by Guns N’ Roses’ Not in This Lifetime… Tour, which earned $584.2 million from 2016-19, and ahead of The Rolling Stones’ A Bigger Bang Tour, which brought in $558 million from 2005-07.
Notably, those tours ran for four years and three years, respectively. In fact, the Renaissance World Tour is the only one among the all-time top 10 to take place within one calendar year. At 56 shows, it played for roughly half the length of all-timers by Coldplay, The Rolling Stones and U2; about one fifth of Ed Sheeran’s The Divide Tour; and one sixth of Elton John’s Farewell Yellow Brick Road Tour.
Post-pandemic-era ticketing practices such as dynamic pricing and primary market resale have allowed fan demand to push an artist’s market value higher than ever before. The Renaissance World Tour averaged $253 a ticket, allowing grosses to bloom quicker than her fellow all-time leaders.
The next highest one-year earner is Taylor Swift’s Reputation Stadium Tour, which brought in $345.7 million in 2018. Coincidentally, Beyoncé and Swift have shared a very bright spotlight this year, as their concurrent treks have dominated headlines and boosted economies. Official numbers have yet to be reported for The Eras Tour, but it’ll likely join the Renaissance World Tour in this vaulted space.
In speeding to the all-time top 10, Beyoncé maintained a breathtaking pace from May through October. The Renaissance World Tour earned $141.8 million and sold more than a million tickets from 21 shows in Europe. (Previous reports cited $154 million, but official numbers have since been adjusted.) That evens out to $6.8 million and just under 50,000 tickets (49,873) per show.
Though those averages were already the highest of any leg of any Beyoncé tour, (much) bigger business awaited across the pond. Her 35 Renaissance shows in the U.S. and Canada averaged $12.5 million each night. In all, the North American leg earned $438 million, alone enough to break the global touring records referenced above.
Three shows at the SoFi Stadium in Inglewood, Calif. (Los Angeles area), earned $45.5 million and sold 156,000 tickets. That makes it the sixth-highest grossing engagement in Boxscore history. Like the tour it was a part of, it’s the biggest reported Boxscore for a woman, Black artist and American soloist. And like its parent tour, it reaches its all-time status with brevity. The five higher-grossing engagements range from a six-night stay at London’s Wembley Stadium for Coldplay to Harry Styles’ 15-show mini-residency at New York’s Madison Square Garden.
The tour follows Renaissance, Beyoncé’s latest solo LP. The set debuted atop the Billboard 200 last year and spawned two top 10s on the Billboard Hot 100 – “Break My Soul,” which became her seventh No. 1 hit, and “Cuff It,” which became her longest-charting song on the tally earlier this year. Renaissance and both singles won Grammy awards at this year’s ceremony, making her the most awarded singer in Grammy history.
And while the Renaissance World Tour has come to a close, its lifespan hasn’t ended just yet. Renaissance: A Film by Beyoncé opens in theaters on Dec. 1, distributed directly by AMC Theaters.
Across her 20-year solo career, Beyoncé has grossed more than $1.3 billion and sold 11.6 million tickets, including her portion of co-headline runs with Jay-Z, and Alicia Keys and Missy Elliott.
Gone is the typical start and stop of touring cycles. Releasing an album and going on tour every few years can make for a simple structure for a pop star career, but particularly in the post-pandemic era, artists are blurring multiple albums into one tour. Or, after postponing a tour for a couple years due to COVID, some are ending their originally scheduled treks and then jumping into a new one the following year.
But no one is doing it quite like P!nk: After wrapping 41 stadium dates on Monday, she’s hitting pause on Summer Carnival only to kick off an entirely separate arena tour on Thursday night (Oct. 12).
So far, according to figures reported to Billboard Boxscore, P!nk’s Summer Carnival has grossed $257.6 million and sold 1.8 million tickets across 41 shows. (P!nk will play a makeup date at Globe Life Field in Arlington, Texas, on Nov. 26 before the Summer Carnival resumes Feb. 9 in Sydney for a sweep of 20 shows in Australia and New Zealand.)
Summer Carnival began with 19 shows in Europe, bringing in $106.8 million from 871,000 tickets. The run was highlighted by two shows at London’s Hyde Park on June 24-25, earning $20.9 million and selling 130,000 tickets. Just behind The Rolling Stones’ $22.4 million, it’s the biggest gross by an American act or by a soloist in the venue’s storied history.
Just over the pond, P!nk flew Stateside for a $150.7 million run in the U.S. and Canada, selling 914,000 tickets. Boston and Philadelphia earned double-header status, claiming the North American leg’s tallest tallies. Two shows at Fenway Park (July 31-Aug. 1) grossed $13.6 million and sold 78,000 tickets, while two at Philly’s Citizens Bank Park topped out at $14.2 million and 93,000.
Not only were those the two biggest engagements on P!nk’s recent domestic run, they are the biggest continental engagements of her entire career. It’s not surprising, given this was her first stint in North American stadiums, after leveling up in Europe on the Beautiful Trauma World Tour in 2019.
The upcoming run in Oceania will be P!nk’s first try in stadiums over there, but one needn’t worry. On past tours, she’s stuck to arenas but played several shows in each city, sticking around for 18 nights in Melbourne on 2013’s The Truth About Love Tour. That equaled 235,000 tickets in the market, leaving more than enough room for multiple stadiums per city for the February-March leg.
But before we get there, P!nk has a 20-date arena trek. Consider Summer Carnival to be her grand reintroduction after a four-year gap since the Beautiful Trauma World Tour, while the impending start of the Trustfall Tour acts as the true celebration of its namesake album, released in February. Kicking off Thursday night in Sacramento and wrapping Nov. 19 in Orlando, it’s expected to earn more than $70 million and sell more than 300,000 tickets, according to promoter Live Nation.
Within 12 months, P!nk will have played three legs of Summer Carnival, all while squeezing in an entirely separate tour with the Trustfall shows. It’s likely to be the biggest year of her touring career, exceeding the $397.3 million from the Beautiful Trauma World Tour in 2018-19. When that wrapped, it was one of the 10 highest-grossing tours in Boxscore history. Edged out by recent runs by Elton John, Harry Styles and others, P!nk’s all-time stature continues to rise, as her career gross climbs to $973.6 million and total attendance just under 9 million. When it’s all said and done, Billboard projects she’ll be the newest member of two elite Boxscore clubs, blowing past $1 billion and 10 million tickets.
This summer, Disturbed launched a North American amphitheater tour in support of Divisive, the band’s eighth studio album over a three-decade career. For a group that deep into their journey as live performers, another summer tour can feel like a bit of plug-and-play. But this time around, the band’s Boxscore results were bigger than ever before. According to figures reported to Billboard Boxscore, the Take Back Your Life Tour earned $17.4 million and sold 336,000 tickets.
That makes 2023 the biggest year of the band’s touring career, surpassing the $14.6 million earned in 2019.
On a per-show basis, Disturbed averaged $601,000 per night, beating previous career-bests of $473,000 in 2011 and $405,000 in 2019. But as proven by an endless list of post-pandemic examples, inflation and platinum ticketing and dynamic pricing and primary-market re-sale make bulking up tour grosses more possible, if not easier, than ever. But in Disturbed’s case, this peak revenue cannot be explained by exploiting 2023’s chaotic ticketing market.
The average ticket price for the Take Back Your Life Tour was $51.07. That’s actually down by 11% from 2019’s $58.66, and only 7% above the average from 2016 ($48.72). That means that the band’s soaring earnings can be explained by increased attendance.
The Take Back Your Life Tour averaged 11,573 tickets per show, up from 6,901 in 2019 and 4,404 in 2016. Over the last two album cycles, Disturbed has multiplied its ticket-buying fanbase by more than two and a half. Sorted by attendance, the band’s 10 biggest concerts ever all happened this summer, led by the Sept. 2 show at Ruoff Home Mortgage Music Center in Noblesville, Ind., marking its first headline show with more than 20,000 fans.
This year’s tour was in key Live Nation amphitheaters, after mostly playing in scaled down arenas. Located just outside of primary touring markets, these outdoor venues have the space to accommodate thousands of fans, often more than the indoor arenas situated in the center of major cities.
Not only did Disturbed have the literal space to sell more tickets, taking advantage of the venues’ large lawns (all dates had a baseline price of $29.50), but the infrastructure around amphitheaters also allows for modest pricing, even up to the first row. Parking, merchandise and concessions are major parts of the experience, especially with bulked-up lineups on long summer days. Breaking Benjamin and Jinjer supported Disturbed on the road this summer.
The decision to level up to amphitheaters did a lot of the heavy lifting for Disturbed’s new career peak, but the release of last year’s Divisive certainly helped as well. Before the tour began, the album had already made “Hey You” the band’s 11th No. 1 on Billboard’s Mainstream Rock Airplay chart, with “Bad Man” reaching No. 2 in March. Throughout the tour, “Unstoppable” climbed the ranks, ultimately becoming the band’s 12th chart-topper in mid-August. “Don’t Tell Me” featuring Ann Wilson is next, set for release in November.
Dating back to the band’s first show in the reported archives, when Disturbed earned $10,000 and sold 682 tickets at Saratoga Winners in upstate New York on Sept. 26, 2000, the metal superstars have grossed $71.2 million and sold 1.8 million tickets across 365 shows.
He’s country, he’s rock, he’s a superstar. Zach Bryan wrapped the Burn Burn Burn Tour at the end of August after touring the continent all summer. According to figures reported to Billboard Boxscore, the trek grossed $43.9 million and sold 475,000 tickets across 32 dates.
The Burn Burn Burn Tour took Bryan around the U.S. and Canada in a mix of amphitheaters and arenas, promoted by AEG Presents. The routing mixed primary markets such as New York and Los Angeles with secondary markets including Wilkes-Barre, Penn., and Grand Rapids, Mich., just as his music fuses genres and eschews traditional demographic lines.
With that, the biggest shows on the tour were not major pop stops such as Chicago or San Francisco, nor country hot spots Nashville or Dallas (he didn’t play anywhere in Tennessee). Instead, with roots in each city, double-headers at Philadelphia’s Wells Fargo Center (May 30-31) and Tulsa’s BOK Center (Aug. 10-11) shone the brightest, with earnings of $3.7 million and $3.2 million, respectively.
The Burn Burn Burn Tour was Bryan’s second live outing in two years. Just last year, he mounted the American Run Tour. Each tour was almost identical in length (32 shows in 2023 vs. 31 in 2022) but the results were dramatically different. The average attendance scaled from 5,735 tickets on last year’s run to 14,841 this summer, jumping by 158%. While his reach grew, so did demand. All while endeavoring to control a ballooning ticketing market, the average price jumped from $51 in 2022 to $92.52 in 2023.
Those are stellar improvements for any artist, but even more stark considering the six-month break between tours. And while the Burn Burn Burn Tour ended last month, Bryan has already plotted his next live venture. The Quittin’ Time Tour kicks off in Chicago on March 6, scheduled to run through mid-December with two final hometown shows at the BOK Center.
Even at his current pace, Bryan is already situated to do bigger business in 2024 than 2023. The initial Quittin’ Time announcement included 53 shows, more ambitious than this year’s 32. Just by adding 20-plus dates, next year’s run is on track to land in the $70 million to $75 million range. But he’s unlikely to top out there, as his ’24 routing is bulked up not just in length, but in size.
Bryan will return to some of the arenas from this summer’s tour, coming back to Las Vegas’ T-Mobile Arena and the Desert Diamond Casino in Glendale, Ariz., playing two shows at each venue rather than one. In other markets, there are clever extensions, like playing two shows at the Prudential Center, N.J., and two at Brooklyn’s Barclays Center, compared to this year’s double header at Forest Hills Stadium in New York City’s Queens. Despite its name, the latter venue functions more like a scaled amphitheater, smaller than either of next year’s New York-area arenas.
Elsewhere, it’ll be a whole different ball game. Two 2023 arena dates in Philadelphia will translate to a night at the city’s football stadium (Lincoln Financial Field) in 2024. More stadiums fill out his routing in Atlanta; Foxborough, Mass.; Minneapolis; and Tampa, some of which will be new concert markets for Bryan altogether.
It’s easy to plot Bryan’s transformation from theaters to arenas to stadiums over such a short window. This year’s Burn Burn Burn Tour was plotted, announced and went on-sale amidst the lingering success of American Heartbreak, which debuted and peaked at No. 5 on the Billboard 200 and then stayed in the top 20 for all but one of the 70 weeks since.
Next year’s Quittin’ Time Tour was announced at the tail end of this year’s run, upon the release of his self-titled album. That one debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 and spawned a No. 1 arrival on the Billboard Hot 100 songs chart with “I Remember Everything,” featuring Kacey Musgraves. Just last week, he followed it with Boys of Faith, an EP that is currently posting major streaming numbers that are atypical for a seemingly casual release.
Following post-pandemic stadium transformations for Luke Combs and Morgan Wallen, Bryan will likely mount one of the biggest country tours in Boxscore history. The expanded and fortified routing could lead the Quittin’ Time Tour toward $100 million and one million tickets in 2024.
In July, Beyoncé set the record for the highest one-month gross in the history of Billboard Boxscore (dating back to 1985) with $127.6 million. That haul narrowly edged out Bad Bunny’s $123.7 million from September of last year. But immediately after breaking ground, Queen Bey re-asserts herself, and the Renaissance World Tour, as an all-time dominant Boxscore force. According to figures reported to Billboard Boxscore, Beyoncé’s 14 shows in August earned $179.3 million.
Improving upon her existing record by 40%, Beyoncé distances herself from the pack, notching two of just four $100 million months since the charts launched in February 2019. Bad Bunny and Harry Styles achieved the other two.
After leading Top Tours in May and July, Beyoncé scores a third month at No. 1. That puts her in four-way tie with Ed Sheeran, the Rolling Stones and Trans-Siberian Orchestra. Bad Bunny spent four months at No. 1, and Elton John leads with seven.
With her freshly extended earnings record, Beyoncé claims the month’s highest attendance total for the first time, after falling short of Coldplay in May and The Weeknd in July. Her 14 shows sold 697,000 tickets.
After crowning Top Boxscores in July with two shows at New Jersey’s MetLife Stadium, Beyoncé ups the ante with three shows at Atlanta’s Mercedes-Benz Stadium. The triple-header grossed $39.8 million and sold 156,000 tickets on Aug. 11-12 and 14. That puts it among the top 10 grossing headline engagements ever, and the third highest in North America. The only two bigger reports are courtesy of Harry Styles, with 15-show runs at Madison Square Garden and the Kia Forum, making for an apples-to-oranges comparison to Beyoncé’s three-night stadium sweep.
Elsewhere, Beyoncé brought in $29.4 million on Aug. 6-7 at FedEx Field in Landover, Md. (Washington, D.C. area) and $25.8 million on Aug. 26-27 at Las Vegas’ Allegiant Stadium. Those three engagements alone would be enough for No. 1 on Top Tours, before adding the other seven shows she played between Gillette Stadium in Foxborough, Mass. (Boston area) on Aug. 1 and Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara, Calif. (San Francisco area) on Aug. 30.
This gigantic monthly haul adds to an already record-breaking summer for Beyoncé. Previously, Billboard reported that the Renaissance World Tour is the highest-grossing tour of all time by an R&B artist, replacing her own Formation World Tour from 2016. Now, at $461.3 million, it passes Madonna’s Sticky & Sweet Tour (2008-09) to become the highest-grossing tour by a woman in the Boxscore archives.
The Renaissance World Tour will come to a close on Sunday (Oct. 1). With 10 shows left to be reported, its global haul will blow past the $500 million mark, likely closer to $560 million. That will be enough to situate it among Boxscore’s 10 highest grossing tours ever. As of now, it’d make her the only woman, only Black artist, and only American solo act on the all-time leaderboard.
These records, and all Boxscore data, are based on figures reported to Billboard by various industry sources, such as venues, concert promoters and artist management.
In terms of attendance, the Renaissance World Tour is up to 2.247 million tickets, narrowly eclipsing the Formation World Tour’s 2.242 million to become her best-selling tour yet.
When Beyoncé crowned the May report, she became the first woman in almost four years to lead the list, since P!nk was No. 1 in July 2019. Three months later, with Beyoncé still at No. 1, the stars align with P!nk at No. 2. That marks the first time since the charts premiered four years ago that two women top the chart side-by-side.
P!nk claims the runner-up spot by a razor thin margin. Her 10 shows in August earned $68.59 million, just 0.025% ahead of Metallica’s $68.57 million, themselves barely separated from Morgan Wallen’s $68.36 million.
All three acts launched nine-figure tours earlier this year. P!nk began the Summer Canival Tour in Europe in June before traveling stateside. Metallica hit the road on the M72 World Tour in April with a brief European leg. Now 10 shows deep in North America, the tour has grossed $123.7 million and sold 1.2 million tickets worldwide, becoming the band’s sixth million-ticket tour.
For Wallen, the One Night at a Time Tour started in March, days after the release of its namesake One Thing at a Time album. The LP has gone on to top the Billboard 200 for 15 non-consecutive weeks, never leaving the top five in its 29-weeks-and-counting run on the chart. Between Australia and North America, the tour has earned $218 million so far, becoming the highest grossing tour by a country artist ever. Good year for Morgan Wallen!
While Beyoncé posted all-time high numbers for North American stadiums, her three Atlanta shows are No. 2 on Top Boxscores. She’s blocked by Another Planet’s Outside Lands Music and Arts Festival. The annual San Francisco event grossed $40.1 million and sold out all three days at 225,000 tickets. That’s the festival’s biggest gross and attendance ever, surpassing last year’s $33.9 million by 18%.
It’s the fourth time that Outside Lands has been No. 1 on Top Boxscores, following its triumphs in August 2022, October 2021 and August 2019. Across 13 reports (2008; 2011-19; 2021-23), the festival has welcomed just under 2.5 million customers (2,497,832 to be exact), amounting to $318.6 million in ticket sales.
The August Boxscore report is home to a particularly diverse set of artists. The artists among the month’s top 10 tours have charted on key Billboard charts across country, dance/electronic, Latin, pop, R&B, rap and rock, just in the last year.
Billboard Boxscore has been tracking touring data and ranking the top live acts around the world across various musical genres since the mid-1980s. Classic rock bands, country troubadours and pop icons have long dominated these lists, but in recent years, Latin artists have increasingly become contenders. Just last year, Billboard celebrated the year in Bad […]
Beyoncé crowned May’s Top Tours chart before sliding back to No. 2 in June. Back with a vengeance, she’s at No. 1 for July with record-breaking revenue. According to figures reported to Billboard Boxscore, The Renaissance World Tour earned $127.6 million over 11 shows between July 8-30, claiming the largest one-month sum for any artist since the Boxscore archives began in the mid-1980s.
It’s not Beyoncé’s first time setting Boxscore records with the Renaissance World Tour. When her five-show run at London’s Tottenham Hotspur Stadium grossed $42.2 million, it was noted that it was the highest grossing engagement ever by a woman, a Black artist, or any American artist.
This time around, her enormous earnings require no such qualifications, breaking ground without regard to race, gender, genre or geography. Beyoncé’s $127.6 million passes Bad Bunny’s $123.6 million from last September, claiming the biggest one-month gross since the charts launched in February 2019 – and beyond. Before the monthly charts premiered, no artist had reported earnings of $100 million in a single calendar month.
Beyoncé and Bad Bunny, as well as other stadium headliners such as Harry Styles and The Weeknd, continue to show how contemporary acts have invaded a space once thought to be reserved for classic rock bands. Notably, Taylor Swift has yet to report sales figures for The Eras Tour. The last time she was on the road, she joined Beyoncé with Jay-Z, and Ed Sheeran at the top of the pack of 2018’s year-end rankings.
Beyoncé and Bad Bunny’s $120 million-plus months played out in strikingly similar fashion. Both played five one-night engagements, plus doubleheaders in three cities for a total of 11 shows. Both narrowly sold more than half a million tickets – 503,000 for Beyoncé and 501,000 for Bad Bunny. And both relied on a couple major markets to push them over the edge (and then some). Bad Bunny benefited from shows in Inglewood (the greater Los Angeles area) and Las Vegas, while Beyoncé played high-yield concerts in East Rutherford, N.J. (the greater New York area), and Chicago.
Beyoncé’s two nights at New Jersey’s MetLife Stadium (July 29-30) brought in $33.1 million and sold 106,000 tickets, enough to reign over Top Boxscores. That makes her the first woman to simultaneously top both lists in exactly four years, dating back to when P!nk led in July 2019.
Queen Bey follows with two dates at Chicago’s Soldier Field, at No. 3 on Top Boxscores with a gross of $30.1 million. Next, she’s at No. 7 with two shows at Toronto’s Roger’s Centre ($18.3 million). There are four more Beyoncé appearances on the chart (Nos. 20, 24, 27, and 30), more than anyone else.
With two months of shows left to report, the Renaissance World Tour is flying at breakneck speed. After conquering Europe with a $150-million run, Beyoncé has made almost as much ($141.4 million) in North America with far fewer shows. Her 12 North American dates (including an Aug. 1 concert in Foxborough, Mass.) have averaged $11.8 million, which is more than double the business that Beyoncé was doing in the U.S. and Canada on 2016’s The Formation World Tour and 2018’s On the Run II Tour with Jay-Z.
Up 60% from the European leg and 112% from her previous peak, Beyoncé’s July Renaissance shows establish a new standard for herself as an artist, and with its monthly record, for everyone on tour.
Through Aug. 1, The Renaissance World Tour has grossed $295.8 million, already Beyoncé’s highest grossing tour yet, passing The Formation World Tour’s $256.1 million. With two months of shows yet to be reported, Billboard expects that total to soar past the half-billion mark.
Beyoncé’s two shows in Chicago pair with an Ed Sheeran date (July 29) to make Soldier Field the top-grossing venue of the month, at No. 1 on Top Stadiums. That chart mirrors the top of Top Boxscores, with Beyoncé and Coldplay fueling the top four spots.
And while Sheeran’s contribution pushes MetLife Stadium to No. 2, the New York market dominates the arena rankings, with Manhattan’s Madison Square Garden and Brooklyn’s Barclays Center at Nos. 1-2 on Top Venues, 15,001+ capacity.
Among venues with a capacity of 5,001-10,000, Red Rocks Amphitheatre earned $16.5 million. Located in Morrison, Colo. (15 miles west of Denver), The Avett Brothers spotlight the iconic amphitheater’s month with three shows, July 7-9, that grossed $2.3 million and sold 28,050 tickets. Tedeschi Trucks Band, Caamp, Zeds Dead and String Cheese Incident each played multiple shows with million-dollar earnings.
The Weeknd follows Beyoncé on Top Tours with a $85.7 million gross, while mounting the highest attendance total of July with 891,000 tickets sold across 15 stadium shows in Europe. Since the monthly charts began in 2019, that total only trails Harry Styles’ 967,000 tickets in June.
Both acts — and Ed Sheeran in third with 749,000 tickets (June 2022) — nabbed their sales highs with extensive runs of European stadium shows, averaging 60,000 or more seats per night. With slightly smaller venues and higher ticket prices, Beyoncé and Bad Bunny’s massive grosses stem from North American legs.
In total, July’s top 30 tours grossed a combined $861.5 million and sold 7.3 million tickets, up .4% and 2%, respectively, from last month’s record-setting figures. While July sported fewer tours with reports above the $10 million and $20 million thresholds, Beyoncé’s monster earnings helped push the total take into uncharted territory.