Touring
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On April 26, Argentine trap star and master freestyler Duki will kick off his first major U.S. tour, playing 11 dates (including Puerto Rico) in theaters and arenas. Explore Explore See latest videos, charts and news See latest videos, charts and news Duki, who made history as the first urban artist to sell out the […]
Sorry, Arianators. Despite rumors to the contrary, Ariana Grande does not have a tour in the works for 2025, something her label confirmed on X Sunday (Dec. 15). Replying to a fan account speculating that the pop star was gearing up to announce a run of concert dates, Republic Records cut to the chase by […]
At the start of 2024, Chappell Roan was a rising pop singer-songwriter with a core but mighty following. She had released her debut solo album, The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess, in September 2023 to critical appreciation but not much commercial fanfare. By February, she kicked off Olivia Rodrigo’s North American arena tour as its opening act and soon after booked a few appearances at the biggest U.S. music festivals including Bonnaroo and Lollapalooza, mostly on afternoon side stages.
Yet the April release of her stand-alone single, “Good Luck, Babe!,” coincided with Roan’s album flying into the top 10 of the Billboard 200 as her back catalog quickly populated the Billboard Hot 100. By the time of her previously booked festival gigs, her name had become synonymous with pop stardom — and she used each set to prove why, showcasing her undeniable stage presence and audacious wardrobe at every stop.
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Apparently, behind the scenes, Roan was just as astonished. “In the moment, it was all so fast that we didn’t even get a chance to talk about what the f–k was going on,” says Roan’s stylist, Genesis Webb, with a laugh. “We were so focused on moving to the next thing that we didn’t have a moment to process.”
Chappell Roan’s “Eat Me” outfit at Coachella in April.
Dania Maxwell/Los Angeles Times/Getty Images
By July, when the organizers for Chicago’s Lollapalooza witnessed her outsize crowds at festivals like Governors Ball and Boston Calling, they met to hastily figure out how to accommodate the throng of fans Roan would inevitably assemble at their own event. “It became a safety concern more than anything else,” says Huston Powell, a promoter at C3 Presents, the company responsible for booking the iconic Chicago festival. “There’s an egress-ingress point to the left of the stage that she was going to be playing, and we knew that the number of people wanting to see her could cause a massive traffic jam on that hill. On the main stages, we had a layout that could handle more people with more barricading, so we decided to move her set.”
Ultimately, Roan’s Lollapalooza performance broke an attendance record for the largest day crowd ever seen in the event’s 30-plus-year history — without a headline billing. And while Powell can’t offer a specific number of people in the audience for the star’s headline-making set, he can confirm what he saw with his own eyes. “There were at least three or four other acts playing at the same time, and the crowd is usually somewhat evenly split between the stages. But just by the sheer appearance, looking around at the number of people in the park and the people you could eyeball at other stages, the vast majority were watching Chappell’s set. We anticipated it would be big, but this completely exceeded expectations.”
Dan Nigro, Roan’s producer-collaborator, explained to Billboard in June that her path to the center of the cultural zeitgeist proved that nothing is more powerful in the industry than good buzz.
“The fact that she’s so phenomenal live means people are finally able to see in real time how good she is. That then becomes this word-of-mouth thing, and it’s wonderful to see her have such old-school success,” he said. “She’s so good at what she does that the system is working again. It really is that simple.”
Her wrestling outfit at Lollapalooza.
Erika Goldring/WireImage
Roan herself told Billboard in 2022 that her career lives and dies by the success of her live performances. “If I’ve learned anything, it’s that the live show is where the heartbeat of the project is,” she said. “Luckily, it’s my favorite part of what I do.”
Part of her runaway success on the festival circuit came largely thanks to Roan’s maximalist costuming, a running feature along her path to pop stardom. When she started headlining her own tours in 2023 — following the release of her now-Grammy-nominated debut album — Roan decided to create themes for every show, encouraging fans to dress up along with her. Webb says they kept that trend going for Roan’s festival performances, commissioning eye-catching, distinct costumes for every gig. “I think we did 16 different looks all told for these festivals,” she says.
Whether Roan was dressed as a giant pink butterfly at Coachella (in a loving tribute to Deee-Lite’s Lady Miss Kier), the Statue of Liberty at Governors Ball or a professional wrestler at Lollapalooza, she thrived when embracing the outsize nature of her job, creating headlines around her phenomenal costuming and anticipation for what would come next. Webb points out that it’s a tried-and-true method for pop stars, with artists like Lady Gaga and Katy Perry building their own fame with dazzling outfits at the outset of their careers.
“I think it’s the zeitgeist of it all — it’s knowing that this is supposed to be fun,” she says. “It felt like there hadn’t been a pop star in a really long time to have people wanting to see a live-performance look as much as they do with her.”
Her Statue of Liberty costume at Governors Ball in June.
Astrida Valigorsky/Getty Images
With that anticipation came unprecedented crowds. Powell saw the numbers Roan drew at Boston Calling and Coachella, which helped his team plan ahead. When an act dropped out the weekend before Austin City Limits in September, C3 Presents promoter Amy Corbin says the festival seized the opportunity to place Roan’s performance on its main stage as well. “When it happens, we look at ways to adjust programming to ensure we are delivering the best fan and artist experience,” Corbin tells Billboard. For the second time this year, Roan’s set drew “the largest crowds in the sunset slot in ACL Fest history,” she says.
Roan’s festival season has since ignited conversations in the live industry about how to recapture the energy that she — and her fans — brought. “We’re all trying to find the next Chappell Roan,” Powell says. “I think sometimes bands worry about what time of day they play and where they play — but if anything, this showed that if you’re hot enough, audiences will come no matter what.”
This story appears in the Dec. 14, 2024, issue of Billboard.
Coldplay crowns Billboard’s year-end Top Tours chart. Not far removed, Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band, The Rolling Stones, U2 and Metallica follow in the top 10. Half of the ranking’s upper tier is made up of rock acts, allowing the long-dominant genre to have the biggest piece of the Boxscore pie. Among all dollars earned by 2024’s top 100 touring acts, rock is responsible for 36%, more than any other genre.
Rock’s rule is easily explained by its five acts in the top 10. But among artists between Nos. 11-20 on Top Tours, there is just one more name to add: Eagles at No. 19. Dominated by classic rock acts with chart-topping albums from the 1960s and ‘70s, the genre’s towering lead on stage has shrunk considerably over the course of the 21st century.
For every year but one between 2000-2010, rock acts represented more than 50% of Top Tours revenue, peaking at 68% in 2003. It’s only managed that once in the years since, when U2, Guns N’ Roses and Coldplay lined up at Nos. 1, 2, and 3, respectively, in 2017. Throughout the 2010s and into the 2020s, rock’s share bumped up and down year-to-year, but generally shifted from the majority to the mid-40% range, and now to the mid-30% range.
Watch the clip below to see how the genre makeup of Billboard’s top 100 tours has evolved over the course of the 21st century.
Rock’s share of the top 100 tours is actually up from last year, bumping from 32.4% to 36%. Still, it’s been below 40% for four of the last five years (excluding 2020 and 2021 because of venue closures due to COVID-19), off from an average of 57% throughout the 2000s decade. The genre’s reliance on legendary bands has left a gap as younger acts from other styles elevate to stadium status.
Pop is next in line, with 16.4% of 2024’s top 100 grosses. P!nk, Madonna and Olivia Rodrigo lead the charge, ticking up from last year’s 15.8%. One major caveat is the absence of Taylor Swift and the gargantuan grosses of The Eras Tour. While overall tour figures were published by The New York Times, data was not submitted to Billboard Boxscore for chart eligibility, which means that its earnings are excluded from this equation. It’s estimated that if this year’s grosses were reported, pop would reign supreme with 27-28%, sending rock into the 20%s in both 2023 and 2024.
Pop and rock have been the top two touring genres for every year this century, with the lone exception of 2003, when country music narrowly out-paced pop, 13% to 12.2%. But while they remain on top, the spread has become significantly more even in the post-pandemic years.
Latin music and rap both posted record highs this year, up to 15.8% and 5.7%, respectively. The former hit a new peak in 2022, when Bad Bunny had the year’s biggest tour, becoming the first artist who doesn’t primarily perform in English to earn top year-end honors. While no Latin act has reached those heights since, his stadium success is no longer an anomaly. Luis Miguel grossed $290.4 million this year, and four other Spanish-speaking artists crossed the $100 million threshold. At 5.3% in 2019, Latin artists returned from the pandemic at 12.1% in 2022, then 11.5% in 2023, and now approaching 16% in 2024.
Rap artists have yet to scale their touring business to the extent of their streaming prowess, but this year made quite a dent. The genre’s top-100 share shot from 2.7% to 5.7%, more than doubling its representation and eclipsing its prior peak from 2019. Four women helped push hip-hop’s boundaries, with Doja Cat, Missy Elliott, Megan Thee Stallion and Nicki Minaj outnumbering male rappers on the Top Tours chart for the first time. Plus, Travis Scott scores the genre’s biggest year-end gross ever, at $168 million.
The oscillations of each genre’s performance from one year to the next often comes down to scheduling. Beyoncé’s Renaissance World Tour was impactful enough to shift R&B artists from 5.3% in 2022 to 15.2% in 2023 and back to 5.9% in 2024. But the progression from pop and rock owning a combined 78.5% in 2000 to 52% in 2024 is indicative of gradual growth from a wide variety of diverse artists harnessing the power of their global audiences.
For the first time in Boxscore history, four female rappers land among the year’s top 100 touring artists. Further, women rappers outnumber male rappers for the first time on the all-genre list. Nicki Minaj (No. 30), Doja Cat (No. 61), Missy Elliott (No. 70), and Megan Thee Stallion (No. 76) finish on the year-end Top Tours chart, while closing at Nos. 2, 5, 6, and 7, respectively, on Top Rap Tours.
This year marks the first year with more than one female rapper among the top 100, let alone four. In fact, there had only been four instances of women in hip-hop ever making the all-genre list, dating back to the first year-end roundup in 1991.
Salt-N-Pepa did it first, at No. 53 in 1994 with a gross of $3.9 million, according to figures reported to Billboard Boxscore.
Five years later, fresh off five Grammy wins for her R&B-rap-hybrid The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill, the titular rapper was No. 43 with $7.1 million.
Then, two of this year’s group made their debuts: Missy Elliott in 2004, as a co-headliner alongside Beyoncé and Alicia Keys on the Verizon Ladies First Tour ($21.8 million), and Nicki Minaj in 2015 on The Pinkprint Tour ($15.5 million).
That means that representation for female rappers across 34 year-end editions has doubled with just this year’s tally. This count excludes year-end appearances by pop and R&B acts who occasionally rap, such as Beyoncé, Lizzo or SZA.
2024 goes down as a banner year for the touring industry overall, with record grosses surpassing $9 billion among the top 100 artists. And amid that enormous success, rap makes up a bigger piece of the pie than ever before, responsible for 5.7% of those dollars, up from 2.7% last year. The genre’s seven tours in the top 100 matches 2019’s high and improves upon last year’s count of three. Nicki, Doja, Missy and Megan made that possible, not only disrupting hip-hop’s gender monopoly — it’s been nine years since a woman was among rap’s top-100 finalists — but taking over and pushing hip-hop over the edge, outnumbering male rappers for the first time on the all-genre list. Travis Scott (No. 15), $uicideboy$ (No. 48) and 50 Cent (No. 49) round out rap’s representation on the chart.
Minaj is No. 30 on Top Tours with $99.8 million and 712,000 tickets, marking all-time highs for year-end rank, gross and attendance among female rappers, barely outdoing the No. 31 finish for Elliott’s Verizon co-headline 20 years ago. Notably, the Pink Friday 2 World Tour continued beyond the confines of the 2024 tracking period (Oct. 1, 2023 – Sept. 30, 2024), finishing in mid-October with a final gross of $108.9 million from 788,000 tickets, making it the first tour by a female rapper to cross the nine-figure milestone.
Doja Cat and Megan Thee Stallion each made their mark on their debut arena tours. Both acts experienced major breakthroughs in 2020 while concert venues were closed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. They scored their first No. 1s on the Billboard Hot 100 just two weeks apart, as “Say So,” hot off a remix with fellow arena titan Nicki Minaj, topped the chart dated May 16, 2020, and “Savage,” boosted by a re-up with rare rap verses by Beyoncé, hit the summit on May 30.
Doja and Megan’s tours reported earnings of $46 million and $40.2 million, respectively, both primarily in the U.S. and Canada, with a sprinkle of European headline shows.
This year also marked the first solo headline tour for Missy Elliott, though it comes nearly 30 years after her debut studio album. Though she wasn’t a road warrior, she amassed major chart success, with six top 20 albums on the Billboard 200 and 10 top 10s on the Hot 100 from 1997-2005.
Beyond hip-hop’s year-end elite, a small handful of female rappers provide promise for the years to come. Ice Spice sold thousands of tickets in Boston, Oakland, and Washington, D.C., while Sexyy Red graduated from clubs last fall (972 tickets in Boston; 1,580 in Richmond, Va.) to arenas, approaching 10,000 tickets in Fort Worth, Texas (9,703 at Dickies Arena on Aug. 30), and Brooklyn (9,631 at Barclays Center on Sept. 17). GloRilla, with eight Hot 100 hits this year, spent hot girl summer as direct support on Megan Thee Stallion’s sold-out trek.
Nicki Minaj, Doja Cat, Missy Elliott and Megan Thee Stallion grossed a combined $227.8 million from 1.7 million tickets across 148 shows in the 2024 tracking window.
After announcing that he’ll be back on the road after seven years with his Importante Tour 2025-2026, Miguel Bosé is preparing to return to the United States next fall, with seven dates in as many cities.
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Ahead of his U.S. dates, Bosé will launch the trek in February in Mexico and will travel across Spain in the summer.
The U.S. leg of the tour, produced by Live Nation, is set to launch on Oct. 2 in New York City at The Theater at Madison Square Garden, according to a press release sent in advance to Billboard. The Spanish pop icon will also make stops in Rosemont, Ill.; Irving and Houston, Texas; and San Diego and Inglewood, Calif., where the trek will conclude on Nov. 8 at the YouTube Theater.
A presale for Citi card members starts Tuesday (Dec. 17) at 10 a.m. ET and ends Thursday (Dec. 19) at 10 p.m. ET through the program Citi Entertainment, with general tickets going on sale Friday (Dec. 20) at 10 a.m. local time at miguelbose.com. There will also be VIP packages available for purchase here.
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After dealing with voice issues that kept him away from the stage for several years, Bosé announced his Importante Tour 2025-2026 on Nov. 18 through a series of posts on social media.
“It’s the reborn BOSÉ. It’s the fully matured BOSÉ. It’s the warrior of the NEW ERA, the family man, the CONSCIOUS, the CONNECTED, the SPIRITUAL. It’s the IMPORTANT one,” he wrote.
A month earlier, on Oct. 18, Bosé hinted that something big was coming by posting a video on Instagram featuring his perennial song “Bandido” as the soundtrack.
“Fantastic. We are all happy, and it will be an honor,” he said at the end of the clip, which included a collage of images of him smiling, posing in a photo shoot, and singing live at past massive shows.
With more than 30 million albums sold throughout a five decades career, Bosé is one of the most recognized Latin pop artists globally. On the Billboard charts, he has placed hits like “Nena,” “Morena Mía,” and “Como un Lobo” on Hot Latin Songs and Latin Airplay, and multiple albums in the top 10 of the Top Latin Albums ranking, including Papito, Cardio, and Papitwo.
Bosé’s influence extends beyond music. Awarded with accolades such as the Latin Recording Academy 2013 Person of the Year, the Global Gift Humanitarian Award and Telemundo’s El Poder en Ti, as a philanthropist, Bosé is deeply involved in causes such as Patrimonio Indígena Mex, Fundación Lucha Contra el Sida, and National Geographic’s Pristine Seas.
Check out the dates and venues announced in the U.S. for Bosé’s Importante Tour 2025-2026:
Oct. 2: The Theater at Madison Square Garden (New York City)Oct. 4: Kaseya Center (Miami)Oct. 11: Rosemont Theatre (Rosemont, Ill.)Oct. 24: The Pavilion at Toyota Music Factory (Irving, Texas)Oct. 25: Smart Financial Centre at Sugar Land (Houston)Nov. 7: Cal Coast Credit Union Open Air Theatre (San Diego)Nov. 8: YouTube Theater (Inglewood, Calif.)
Sphere rules Billboard’s Top Venues (15,001+ capacity) chart for 2024, with a monstrous gross of $420.5 million from 1.3 million tickets sold. Not only does that secure the top spot among venues in its capacity range, but it’s also the highest gross for any venue of any size this year. Beyond the scope of the year-end charts, it’s the biggest annual gross for any venue in Boxscore history.
Sphere is the first venue to register a year-end gross of more than $300 million and $400 million. Only four artists ever grossed more than Sphere’s total in one year-end period: The Rolling Stones in 2006, Ed Sheeran in 2018, Beyonce in 2023, and, based on overall finals for The Eras Tour, Taylor Swift in 2023 and 2024.
The Las Vegas room attracts residency acts just like The Colosseum at Caesars Palace or Dolby Live, pushing high ticket prices for stadium artists in a more intimate setting. But unlike those theaters’ four-digit capacity, which ultimately keeps total grosses within the stratosphere, Sphere is a full-sized arena, selling 15,000-17,000 tickets per show. With a floor-to-ceiling wrapround LED screen, 4D physical effects and immersive audio, it’s a high-ticket attraction for once-in-a-career productions.
U2 launched Sphere’s calendar in September 2023, kicking off with a 17-show run that brought in $109.8 million from 281,000 tickets sold. Two more legs followed on U2: UV Achtung Baby Live at Sphere, ultimately closing in March with $244.5 million and 663,000 tickets. That makes it the fourth highest-grossing residency in Boxscore history, despite running for just six months with 40 shows. Billy Joel’s Madison Square Garden tenure, above it at No. 3 on the all-time tally, played for 10 years with 104 shows.
Phish followed with a long weekend of shows from April 18-21, bringing in $13.4 million and selling 66,700 tickets.
Dead & Company was next, with a seasonal residency, playing 30 shows between May 16 and Aug. 10. Ultimately, it earned a spot in the top 10 of the all-time residency list, with $131.8 million and 477,000 tickets. That’s a bigger gross than any of Dead & Co.’s annual tours, dating back to its 2015 inception.
Sphere’s current residents are the Eagles, in the middle of an ongoing stint that is scheduled well into 2025. The band’s first eight shows scored $42.2 million and sold 131,000 tickets.
The Top Venues chart is not the only place where Sphere shines on Billboard’s year-end report. U2 lands at No. 7 on the Top Tours list, exclusively from its Vegas shows. Bono’s boys are joined by Dead & Company on Top Rock Tours, with both acts in the top 10 — U2 at No. 4 and Dead & Company at No. 8. On Top Boxscores, which measures individual shows, or a run of shows at the same venue, U2 blocks out the top three with its Sphere legs.
In all, including shows by U2 and the Eagles that fit into the 2023 and 2025 Boxscore tracking periods, and an additional non-music event, Sphere’s 83 reported shows have brought in $452.3 million and played to 1.4 million fans.
Coldplay has broken world records on the Music of the Spheres World Tour, even with almost 50 more shows still scheduled for next year. According to figures reported to Billboard Boxscore, the global trek has sold more tickets than any tour in history since its launch in March 2022, at 10.3 million — so far.
The Music of the Spheres World Tour has been a global event, selling out stadiums on five continents. Half of the tour’s 175 concerts have been in Europe, where it sold 5.2 million tickets over 87 shows. It has added 1.8 million in South America, 1.6 million in North America, 884,000 in Asia and 848,000 in Australia.
Not only has Coldplay performed around the world, but demand has also been neatly spread. Among the tour’s top 10 marks, all five continents are represented, from São Paulo, Brazil, to Gothenburg, Sweden, to Singapore.
The tour’s biggest report so far was a run of 10 shows from Oct. 25 – Nov. 8, 2022, at Buenos Aires’ Estadio Unico Ciudad de la Plata. Those dates sold 627,000 tickets, marking the best-selling engagement in Boxscore history.
In more than half of the stops on the Music of the Spheres World Tour — 39 of 64 — Coldplay has sold over 100,000 tickets. In 51 of those cities, the band played multiple shows. Notably, 10 of the 13 cities where it played just one night are in the United States, while just eight of its top 10 markets are primarily non-English-speaking locations.
Watch the clip below to see Coldplay traverse the globe on its way to record-setting ticket sales.
The Music of the Spheres World Tour has sold more than 3 million tickets and grossed more than $300 million in each of the three years since it kicked off. In the 2024 chart year, marked by shows from Oct. 1, 2023, to Sept. 30, 2024, Coldplay brought in $400.9 million and sold 3.02 million tickets, earning the top spot on Billboard’s year-end Top Tours (ranked by gross) and Top Ticket Sales (ranked by attendance) charts. It’s the band’s second straight year at No. 1 on the latter tally.
Dating back almost 40 years, all Boxscore charts are based on figures reported to Billboard. Data is reported from a variety of official industry sources, from artist managers and agents to promoters and venue executives. Reporting is voluntary, and some artists, venues, and promoters opt to withhold data from representation on the charts. Though overall two-year totals for Taylor Swift’s The Eras Tour were published by The New York Times — $2.08 billion, making it the highest-grossing tour in history, and nearly 10.2 million tickets — they were not submitted to Billboard Boxscore for chart eligibility, excluding the tour from 2024 year-end charts.
Since its launch, the Music of the Spheres World Tour has grossed $1.14 billion. That separates it by more than $900 million from The Eras Tour, despite Coldplay outselling Swift’s run by more than 150,000 tickets. Both treks have played a similar number of shows (149 for Swift; 175 for Coldplay, so far) and charted familiar routes around five continents.
Evenly distributed across its three-year run, The Music of the Spheres World Tour has averaged a $110.46 ticket price. The tipping point was in Asia, where 16 shows averaged $146.43, while the other end of the spectrum is the tour’s first leg of 11 shows in central America ($77.74).
Coldplay’s 2025 calendar has 48 scheduled concerts, ranging from Toronto to Hong Kong, and Navi Mumbai to London, where the tour will presumably wrap with 10 shows at Wembley Stadium. Already the best-selling tour in history, The Music of the Spheres World Tour will undoubtably extend its lead next year, approaching a total count of 13 million tickets.
Dating back to Coldplay’s first Boxscore report at Commodore Ballroom in Vancouver on Feb. 8, 2001 ($11,000; 900 tickets), the band has earned more than $2 billion and sold 21.1 million tickets.
The Rolling Stones haven’t had a hit on the Billboard Hot 100 for two decades, but they continue to perform well on Billboard’s Top Tours chart. This year, the band, led by 80-year-old Mick Jagger, came in at No. 6 on the list of tours reported to Billboard Boxscore from Oct. 1, 2023, to Sept. 30, 2024, with $235 million in ticket sales. Perhaps more impressive, the group brought in that much money for playing just 18 concerts, less than any other act in the top 10. Its secret? Charging a lot for tickets.
By comparison, Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band, which edged out the Stones to come in at No. 5, grossed $235.5 million from 39 shows with an average ticket price of $147.25. Coldplay, which came in at No. 1 with $400.9 million, played 51 shows. Luis Miguel played 128 shows — the most of anyone in the top 10 — and grossed $290.4 million to come in at No. 4. With an average ticket price of $277.16, the Stones made an average of $13.1 million a show. Miguel played to more people — 2 million instead of 848,000 — but his tickets sold for an average of just over $143.37 and he made $2.3 million a show.
Since top acts typically sell out most dates, three major factors influence tour grosses: number of performances, size of venues and ticket prices. And 2024 was the year that price mattered more than ever. This year’s top 100 tours took in $9.1 billion, a 21.6% increase in revenue over the previous year. But those shows were seen by an audience of 69.8 million, an increase of 10.7% — only half as much. At a time when many promoters use dynamic pricing to maximize revenue without leaving seats empty, more pricing power meant more money.
Some of these increases come from changes in the way the chart is calculated. Last year, Billboard shortened its Boxscore reporting period from 12 months to 11 in order to make some one-time changes to eligibility for the Billboard Music Awards. This 2024 chart is once again based on a 12-month reporting period, so apples-to-apples comparisons are difficult. But the change is still easy to see. If one annualizes last year’s 11-month reporting period, attendance for the top 100 tours would be up about 4% and revenue would be up nearly 14%.
One more caveat: For the second year in a row, the Top Tours chart does not include figures for Taylor Swift’s The Eras Tour. Final figures were published by The New York Times on Dec. 9, but a show-by-show breakdown has yet to be submitted to Billboard Boxscore for chart eligibility. Given the tour’s two-year $2 billion gross, its 2024 sum would have pushed ticket sales totals for the year’s top 100 tours over $10 billion for the first time.
ROAD WARRIORS
A look at the top 10 tours shows the power of pricing. Overall the average ticket price for the top 100 tours was $132.30, up from $119.64 last year. The top touring act of the year, Coldplay, brought in $400 million from stadium shows in the United States, Europe, Australia and New Zealand. (Coldplay, promoted by Live Nation, was No. 2 last year with $342 million from 37 shows.) And it did so with an average ticket price of $132.79, the second-lowest among the top 10 acts.
P!nk, whose shows were promoted by Live Nation and the independent Marshall Arts, is No. 2, taking in $387 million from 73 concerts with an average ticket price of $139.47; she played more shows but to fewer people in total. (Last year, P!nk was No. 6 with $226 million from 37 shows.) Zach Bryan is No. 3 with $321.3 million from a 64-show tour promoted by AEG Presents. Bryan charged an average of $196.38.
The top ticket price in the top 10 was $367.13, for U2’s 38 shows at Sphere in Las Vegas, which took in $231.1 million, good for No. 7. Madonna came in at No. 8 with $225.4 million. Bad Bunny is No. 9 with $211.4 million and the second-highest average ticket price: $280.67. Metallica rounds out the top 10 with $175.2 million and a fan-friendly average price of $116.80.
One question the touring business has to deal with is, how high is too high? The $132.30 average ticket price for the top 100 tours is up 9.1% from 2023, when it had risen 10.5% from 2022. That’s an increase of 20.6% in two years. For most of the decade before the pandemic, ticket prices rose about 2% or 3% a year, close to the pace of inflation.
What happened? Over the past five years, the concert business has completely changed its view on pricing. Until around 2000, most promoters seemed to price tickets by calculating the cost of a show, adding a reasonable profit margin and then charging enough to reach that number. That changed over the following decade with the rise of resale sites like StubHub — and the accompanying realization that fans were willing to pay far more for tickets than promoters thought, especially for the best seats. To raise revenue, promoters and ticketing companies started using the same kinds of variable pricing and dynamic pricing strategies as hotels and airlines — in some cases opaquely. The idea, as in those businesses, is to maximize overall revenue without leaving empty seats. Over the past few years, companies like Live Nation’s Ticketmaster and AEG’s AXS have invested millions in software to price seats dynamically, in real time, according to demand.
A common reaction is that this puts concert tickets out of reach for many consumers. But a substantial part of the increase in average prices comes from the skyrocketing price of the best tickets. Also, dynamic pricing should adjust downward the price of unsold tickets to ensure that they, too, get sold.
It’s also worth noting that concertgoers have had sticker shock for decades. In 1969, according to an article in Rolling Stone, Jagger was asked at a press conference at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel if the Stones were gouging their fans by charging up to $8.50 a ticket at the Los Angeles Forum. “Is that a lot?” Jagger replied. “You’ll have to tell me.”
Adjusted for inflation, that $8.50 would have buying power of $67.34 today, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics — and the price of Stones tickets is up more than four times that. Then again, the average Stones fan has much more money, as well as a sense that the band can’t keep touring forever.
FESTIVAL FUNK
As ticket prices increase, business is becoming harder for festival organizers, who have to pay more for compelling headliners. Festivals that used to make competitive offers for top-tier talent have seen their buying power diminished as more artists realize they have the pricing power to earn more revenue from traditional shows.
Only a few festivals report ticket sales revenue to Billboard Boxscore. But most promoters or festival ticketing experts agree that festival ticket sales declined in 2023 and 2024 for both flagships like Coachella and Bonnaroo, as well as smaller and independent events.
Artists that play festivals generally agree to increasingly rigid radius clauses that restrict how close to the event they can perform and when they can promote their nearby shows. They agreed to those deals because festivals could pay headliners $3 million to $5 million for a 90-minute set — more than the $1.5 million to $2.5 million most could make for an arena show. That was before average ticket prices rose so much.
This does not bode well for the long-term future of festivals, at least the way they currently operate. But festivals only represent a fraction of the business of Live Nation and AEG, the global concert promotion giants. Live Nation promotes Coldplay, Miguel and Madonna, among others. AEG handles Swift, Bryan and George Strait, the No. 24 touring act. On June 15, Strait performed the stadium concert with the highest attendance in Billboard Boxscore history at Texas A&M University’s Kyle Field in College Station, Texas, in front of 110,000 fans.
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Music Business Year In Review
Mariah Carey is still out of commission as she battles a tough case of the flu, with the superstar announcing Friday (Dec. 13) that she needs to cancel two more shows on her holiday tour as she recovers. In a message posted to X and Instagram Stories the morning of her slotted performance in New […]