Billboard Boxscore
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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.
The first month of Beyoncé’s Renaissance World Tour situated her atop Billboard’s Top Tours chart in May. With reports for June, the entire European leg of the tour blew past the $150 million mark, making it the biggest non-U.S. leg of any Beyoncé tour. Now, with data for the trek’s first batch of North American shows, the bigger picture is coming more clearly into focus.
According to figures reported to Billboard Boxscore, Beyoncé earned $141.4 million on the first 12 Renaissance shows in U.S. and Canada, selling 553,000 tickets. That puts the tour’s overall figures at $295.8 million and 1.6 million tickets, current through her Aug. 1 concert at Gillette Stadium in Foxborough, Mass.
Approaching the $300 million mark, the Renaissance World Tour is now Beyoncé’s highest grossing tour yet, passing 2016’s The Formation World Tour ($256.1 million) and 2018’s On the Run II Tour alongside Jay-Z ($253.5 million).
In exceeding the gross of her own two previous tours, the Renaissance World Tour resets the record for the highest grossing tour by an R&B artist, or any Black artist in Boxscore history. Beyoncé previously held the title with the Formation World Tour and before that, with The Mrs. Carter Show World Tour in 2013-14 ($211.9 million).
Beyoncé hasn’t yet eclipsed those runs in terms of tickets sold, though it’s only a matter of time. The Formation World Tour still holds strong with 2.2 million tickets, 600,000 ahead of her 2023 stint. With 23 shows left to report in North America, expect Queen Bey to add close to 1 million more for a total of 2.6 million.
Though it has the earnings record in the bag, the Renaissance World Tour still has room to grow. Its $295.8 million is already in the region of Billboard’s initial projections of $275 million to $300 million plus, based on expected per-show revenues of $6.8 million to $7.5 million. With extra shows added due to high demand, the tour’s routing shot to more than 50 shows, with the low end of our projection ballooning to $380 million.
But Beyoncé hasn’t been earning $7 million per show. The 12 reported North American dates paced $11.8 million and 46,100 tickets each night. Grosses have swung as high as $33.1 million over two shows in East Rutherford, N.J., and as low as $6.5 million in Louisville, Ky.
If the 23 remaining shows can maintain that average or simply stay above the eight-figure mark, the Renaissance World Tour will set a whole new standard for Beyoncé.
To reach $500 million, the Renaissance World Tour will have to gross $8.9 million per show. But that’d represent a 24% drop from the first batch of U.S. & Canada dates, and there’s no reason to expect such a decline considering the remaining dates include highly anticipated shows in Atlanta, Los Angeles and Beyoncé’s hometown of Houston.
At $10 million per show, Beyoncé will hit $525 million, which would inch her past Coldplay’s A Head Full of Dreams Tour ($523.3 million). That’d be enough to make the Renaissance World Tour one of Billboard Boxscore’s 10 highest grossing tours ever.
Here’s a graph to show you where the Renaissance World Tour could end up, depending on how the 23 remaining shows perform.
At the current breakneck speed of $11.8 million per show, Beyoncé would be looking at $560 million. On the all-time leaderboard, she’s targeting classic rock heavyweights such as Guns N’ Roses, The Rolling Stones and Roger Waters as peers on the stadium stage.
Even before she gets there, Beyoncé has already broken through some hallowed territory in the Boxscore archives. Across her career as a soloist (including her co-headline tours with Jay-Z, and with Alicia Keys and Missy Elliott), Beyoncé has become the 15th artist – and third woman after Celine Dion and Madonna – to gross more than $1 billion. Further, she’s just the second female act (after Madonna) to sell more than 10 million tickets. Over 408 reported shows, she has earned $1.063 billion and sold 10.473 million tickets. By the Oct. 1 close of the Renaissance World Tour, that gross will be about $250 million higher.
Harry Styles kicked off Love On Tour in September 2021, emerging as one of the first arena headliners of the immediate post-pandemic era. Two years and five continents later, the trek played the last of its 169 shows on July 22 in Reggio Emilia, Italy, closing as one of the highest grossing and best-selling tours of all time.
According to figures reported to Billboard Boxscore, Love On Tour grossed $617.3 million and sold more than 5 million tickets. Among all tours in Boxscore’s 30-plus-year history, the world tour is the fourth-highest grossing and eighth-most attended trek ever. Only Elton John’s Farewell Yellow Brick Road Tour ($939.1 million), Ed Sheeran’s The Divide Tour ($776.4 million) and U2’s 360 Tour ($736.4 million) have earned more.
The tour began on Sept. 4, 2021, with 42 shows in the U.S. Those dates had already been postponed twice due to COVID-19, supporting Styles’ second solo studio set Fine Line, already two years old by opening night. It was one of the biggest tours of the season, at No. 3 on the abridged 2021 year-end Top Tours ranking, with repeat appearances at No. 2 on the monthly chart.
Still, by the time Styles returned in support of 2022’s Harry’s House, the chart-topping album and its enduring lead single “As It Was” helped him further ascend into a new domain of superstardom. Styles held steady in North American arenas, but went from one or two shows per market to extended mini residencies in five cities. Venue capacity and attendance were essentially unchanged, but the destination-event factor made demand soar.
Average ticket prices leapt from $131.69 in 2021 to $204.78 in 2022, culminating in a $157.3 million gross over 44 shows. The 15-date run at New York’s Madison Square Garden grossed $63.1 million alone, making it the highest grossing report ever. The 15 dates at the Kia Forum in Inglewood, Calif., earned $47.8 million, coming in fifth place on the all-time leaderboard.
Harry’s House caused a similar bump in Europe, leveling from arenas in 2022 to stadiums in 2023. The first European leg earned $56 million and sold 639,000 tickets. Already among the top-earning acts in Europe over that summer, Styles’ grosses tripled just a year later, with $199.3 million over 31 shows from May 13-July 22.
Love On Tour also included 14 shows in Latin America, seven in Oceania and six in Asia. Styles had last hit these international markets in 2018 as part of Harry Styles: Live in Concert, essentially skipping the Fine Line portion of the tour due to delayed openings after the pandemic. The difference was most dramatic in Australia, where his per-show attendance quintupled from 10,407 to 53,295 and his average gross multiplied by seven, from $971,000 to $6.8 million.
Over the five years that separated Styles’ two solo outings, he amassed a trio of No. 1s on the Billboard Hot 100 songs chart, won multiple Grammy Awards (including album of the year for Harry’s House), and graduated from a reliable arena headliner to an artist who sells out blockbuster stadium shows. His first tour earned $63.7 million, almost one tenth of Love On Tour’s final figures. Not only is Love On Tour easily Styles’ highest grossing solo tour yet, it eclipses the entire career gross One Direction, the pop group in which he shot to stardom, which earned $583.4 million over four tours from 2012 to 2015.
Altogether, Styles has grossed $681 million and sold 5.8 million tickets.
Harry Styles is No. 1 on Billboard’s Top Tours chart for June. It’s the first time that Styles has claimed a monthly victory, and it comes just in the nick of time, as Love On Tour came to a close on Sunday (July 22) after launching as one of the first major post-pandemic tours in September 2021.
According to figures reported to Billboard Boxscore, its last full month of shows earned $105.4 million and sold 967,000 tickets.
That makes Styles only the second act to earn a nine-figure monthly gross, after Bad Bunny raked in $123.7 million in September 2022 on World’s Hottest Tour. Further, the pop star nabs the highest monthly attendance total since the charts launched in February 2019, soaring above Ed Sheeran’s 750,000 in June 2022 and Coldplay’s 736,000 in March of this year.
These shows are part of a late-in-the-game advance to stadiums in Europe, after primarily playing arenas for most of the two-year tour. Typically, stadium acts play fewer shows due to complex production logistics and high nightly attendance.
Styles packed 15 stadium concerts into June, pushing him to the top in a competitive month. Other acts in the top 30 with high show counts — The Cure (20), Matchbox Twenty (16), Shania Twain (16) and Dead & Company (15) — mixed arenas and amphitheaters, while Styles’ stadium peers such as Beyoncé and Coldplay, at Nos. 2-3, played 12 and 11 shows, respectively.
The combination of a packed schedule and larger-than-ever crowd counts fueled Styles’ record-breaking month. His four concerts at London’s Wembley Stadium grossed $36.4 million and sold 335,000 tickets on June 13-14 and 16-17. Those figures secure him the No. 1 spot on Top Boxscores as well, once again fending off Coldplay and Beyoncé at Nos. 2-3.
Multi-night engagements in Amsterdam and Paris earned $16.5 million and $14.2 million, respectively, with two dates at Principality Stadium in Cardiff, Wales, grossing $12.2 million. Those reports follow on Top Boxscores at Nos. 8, 12 and 15, respectively.
Though it’s Styles’ first month at No. 1, he’s been a consistent player on Top Tours over the last two years. June is his 12th month in the top five, including three appearances at No. 2 and another five at No. 3. Previously, he had peaked in attendance with 419,000 tickets this month last year, and in gross with $54.4 million in September 2022.
These June concerts push Love On Tour’s total gross to $566.2 million, plus a few July shows nudging it to $590.3 million. With four shows left to report, Styles has the fourth highest grossing tour in Boxscore history, likely to become the fourth $600 million tour.
Styles was No. 3 on May’s Top Tours tally. His rise to the top pushes that month’s top two acts — Beyoncé and Coldplay — down a peg to Nos. 2 and 3, despite both artists’ significant gains in June. Beyoncé earned $86.9 million (up 29% from last month) while Coldplay grossed $71.5 million (up 30%).
Styles, Beyoncé and Coldplay register three of the seven biggest monthly grosses in the chart’s history, all above $70 million. Another three of those $70 million grosses – Bad Bunny, Def Leppard & Motley Crue and The Weeknd – occurred in August 2022, with Bad Bunny’s September ’22 gross at the top of the heap.
The June Top Tours ranking is record-breaking beyond Styles’ attendance and the top three’s gargantuan grosses. There are 27 tours with a gross of $10 million or more, surpassing the previous record of 24 from just last month. There are almost more $20 million tours than ever before, with 14. Further, June either sets a new record or ties an old one for tours above thresholds of $30-, $40-, $50-, $60-, $70- and $80 million.
Some of those $10 million earners represent genres outside of Boxscore’s typical pop, rock and Latin headliners. Hans Zimmer is No. 32 with $12.3 million and 116,000 tickets sold, acting as one of three non-vocalists on the chart. He tours with a large symphony orchestra, re-creating some of his most iconic scores, from The Lion King to Inception to The Dark Knight.
At No. 26, Illenium is the only dance/electronic artist on the list, bringing in $10.1 million and 132,000 tickets sold from 15 shows. His June routing began in San Francisco on June 1and traveled through the West Coast, Midwest and down to Texas for a show at Austin’s Moody Center on June 30.
And rounding out the tally at No. 30, violinist and composer Andre Rieu grossed $8.7 million and sold 90,000 tickets. Quietly one of the most consistent headliners, this marks Rieu’s 21st month on the chart, having reached as high as No. 5 in January 2020.
Since forming in 2015, Dead & Company has been one of the most consistent touring entities, mounting 10 separate tours in less than eight years. The last of those, its 2023 summer outing, wrapped on Sunday (July 16) and set an entirely new standard for the band, just as it is hanging up the mantle. According to figures reported to Billboard Boxscore, the Dead & Company Summer Tour 2023 grossed a new high of $114.7 million and sold 845,000 tickets across 28 shows.
The supergroup’s previous best was $53.7 million, earned during its Fall Tour 2021.
Dead & Company established a relatively unfussy format to its tours, much like its approach to setlists and song structure. The band sticks to the U.S. and Canada and plays in brief sprints of anywhere from 10 to 30 shows at a time. Even the name of each tour is plainly stated – Dead & Company 2015 Tour, Dead & Company Summer Tour 2017, Dead & Company Summer Tour 2018 and so on.
Dead & Company is comprised of former Grateful Dead members Bob Weir, Mickey Hart and Bill Kreutzmann, plus John Mayer, Oteil Burbridge and Jeff Chimenti.
Carrying on the legacy of the Grateful Dead, revenue and attendance have been steady as well. Average grosses have mostly stuck between $1 million to $2 million per show, and nightly attendance between 10,000 and 20,000. Routings have seamlessly woven arenas and amphitheaters, with a sprinkling of stadiums in select markets.
That all changed with Dead & Co.’s most recent dates. The announcement of the band’s final tour gave some extra momentum, as farewells are known to do. More than half of this year’s shows were played in stadiums, leveling up in Philadelphia, San Francisco and more.
Dead & Company’s final three shows at San Francisco’s Oracle Park (July 14-16) grossed $24.4 million, becoming the highest grossing engagement of the band’s tenure. A three-show stint at Boulder’s Folsom Field (July 1-3) sold 131,000 tickets, marking its best-selling report ever. Eight-figure grosses continue with double-header stadium stops in Chicago ($11.7 million), Boston ($11.6 million) and New York ($11.1 million).
Across all 28 shows, Dead & Company averaged $4.1 million and 30,200 tickets. Those figures are up by 69% and 46%, respectively, from last summer’s tour, easily setting new peaks for the band. Billboard has reported on many post-pandemic tours that have set new personal highs for a variety of artists. But even amidst the excitement of a farewell, there’s an extra level of skill in doing so after touring every single year (with the obvious exception of 2020) since 2015.
This may feel familiar for Grateful Dead members Weir, Hart and Kreutzmann. The band was one of the biggest touring acts of all time, also a group of habit in terms of routing and revenues. While its touring career launched in 1965 — decades before the advent of Billboard Boxscore — its early ‘90s tours delivered remarkably consistent results, routinely selling between 20,000-25,000 tickets per show. For every year between 1991 and 1995, the Grateful Dead was among the top 10 on Boxscore’s year-end Top Tours ranking, coming in at No. 1 on the inaugural ‘91 list and again in ‘93.
But upon its return in June 2015 (four months before Dead & Company’s first tour), Fare Thee Well: Celebrating 50 Years of the Grateful Dead sold more than 360,000 tickets in just five shows, experiencing the full glory of a comeback and a goodbye, all at once.
Now, the Grateful Dead’s latest era ends, as its John Mayer-fronted lineup played its final shows to similarly spectacular results. After 10 tours, plus three editions of the destination event Playing in the Sand, Dead & Company has earned $455.9 million and sold 4.1 million tickets from 212 concerts.
Blink-182 is back together and bigger than ever. The band’s iconic lineup of Travis Barker, Tom DeLonge and Mark Hoppus reunited for their first shows in nine years, yielding the biggest results of their three-decade career. According to figures reported to Billboard Boxscore, the North American leg of the group’s World Tour 2023/2024 grossed $85.3 million and sold 564,000 tickets.
This isn’t Blink’s first reunion tour. The trio went on hiatus in 2005, returning in 2009 with the similarly simply titled blink-182 in Concert tour. At the time, that tour became the band’s biggest on every measurable metric. It was the highest-grossing ($22.5 million) and best-selling (660,000 tickets) tour of its career and set new highs on a per-show level, with $522,000 and 15,345 tickets on average.
Fourteen years later, Blink is pacing $2.4 million each night, multiplying its one-time-peak comeback numbers by four and a half.
These North American shows also set a new high for Blink in terms of attendance, but just barely. The tour averaged 15,664 per show, up 2% from the 2009-10 mark. The band found space to maximize its earnings by playing with pricing. Between 2009 and now, Blink’s ticket prices have exploded, from $34.03 to $151.33.
That quadrupled-and-then-some price is due to several factors. For one, touring simply costs more in 2023 than it did in 2009. The price of concert tickets has also exploded due to resale, dynamic pricing and increasingly creative platinum and VIP models.
Aside from environmental causes, Blink is in a unique position. The band’s 2009 comeback was highly anticipated, but it was still catering to a relatively young audience who had limits to their disposable income. And while that four-year break created heightened demand, 2009 was past the peak of the mid-’00s emo/pop-punk boom that Blink helped inspire. As bands like Fall Out Boy, Paramore and My Chemical Romance geared up for their own extended hiatuses, the new era of Blink’s career flirted with passé, even as the initial comeback was an unqualified success.
Blink’s touring in the 2010s was frequent but littered with asterisks. The 10th Annual Honda Civic Tour paired the band with pop-punk successors My Chemical Romance. Blink’s 20th Anniversary Tour stretched from 2012 to 2014 but stuck to small clubs and theaters in North America. Shows continued in 2016 and 2017, but without DeLonge, the band’s defining guitarist. In 2019, there was another co-headline tour, this time with Lil Wayne. Ticket prices pushed closer to $60 on that run, but attendance dipped below the 15,000-plus high, closer to 10,000 tickets per show on average.
That makes Blink’s recent North American leg the first proper-proper tour for the main lineup since that original 2009 reunion. Not only is its target demo older (and hopefully wiser and richer), but the band is returning in a more welcoming environment. The group’s 2022 single, “Edging,” was its biggest hit on the Billboard Hot 100 since 2004’s “I Miss You.” Further, on the Alternative Airplay chart, the track spent 13 weeks at No. 1, becoming Blink’s longest-running chart-topper ever on the tally, surpassing the eight-week reign of 1999’s “All The Small Things.”
On the live front, My Chemical Romance and Paramore have staged the biggest tours of their own careers by far — 10-plus years removed from their self-imposed breaks around Blink’s first return shows. With its biggest radio success ever on the Alternative Airplay chart, the strength of the current pop-punk nostalgia boom and the added infrastructure of the industry’s bulked-up pricing, Blink was perfectly situated to double, triple and quadruple its previous bests on the road.
After 36 shows in the United States and Canada, Blink-182’s World Tour is halfway done. The band will play 24 dates in Europe this fall before heading to Australia for 17 dates, plus a sea of shows in Latin America (a mix of festival engagements and five headline shows). Those concerts mark the band’s first hard-ticket headlines in Oceania since 2004, and its first major Latin American run ever. While there is no direct precedent for Blink’s international success, its North American total suggests a big nine months ahead. With another 36 shows before wrapping in April, earnings will quickly hit nine figures, ultimately heading toward $150 million.