Touring
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The 2023 year-end Boxscore charts go live on Thursday (Nov. 30), but before reviewing the ranked lists of the biggest tours, venues and promoters in the world, Billboard is taking a zoomed-in look at the U.S., highlighting the highest-grossing concert engagements in each state.
The figures displayed here are based on figures officially reported to Billboard Boxscore, covering a tracking period of Nov. 1, 2022 – Sept. 30, 2023. That means that Taylor Swift’s The Eras Tour is not included, as representatives for her tour did not report. Click to read more about Billboard’s Swiftian projections.
Beyoncé dominates the map, leading in 11 states. Major-market stadium shows on the Renaissance World Tour took top honors in California, Georgia, Illinois and New Jersey, while hometown shows in Houston add another ring for Texas.
Morgan Wallen follows, winning eight states. Also in stadiums, he takes the gold in country-minded Midwest and southern states like Mississippi, Missouri and Ohio. His March release One Thing at a Time finished at No. 1 on the year-end Billboard 200 albums chart, while its second track, “Last Night,” is No. 1 on the year-end Billboard Hot 100 songs ranking.
P!nk and Post Malone are two peas in a pod, both with three regions to their name. The former wins in the District of Columbia, Nebraska and North Dakota, while the latter is tops in Connecticut, New Mexico and Utah.
P!nk’s win in Washington D.C. comes from a Aug. 7 show at Nationals Stadium, with $7.2 million in the bank. Just five miles east, Beyoncé’s concert at FedEx Field in Landover, Md. cleared the path for P!nk to take D.C., though Beyoncé’s Maryland show generally served the same touring market.
Seven other artists doubled up, from Zach Bryan in Kansas and Oklahoma to Karol G in Florida and Puerto Rico. Another 12 acts appear on the map, ranging from comedians like Kevin Hart and Sebastian Maniscalco to rock veterans like Journey and Phish, and relative newcomers like Jelly Roll and Noah Kahan.
Taylor Swift’s The Eras Tour is poised to become the highest-grossing global tour of all time, according to Billboard’s estimates.
While no official numbers have been reported yet, Swift’s tour should pass current record-holder Elton John’s Farewell Yellow Brick Road Tour with more than $900 million in ticket sales so far.
On Sunday (Nov. 26), Swift played her last scheduled show of the year, wrapping an intense run of 66 concerts in the United States, Mexico and South America. Representatives for The Eras Tour have not yet reported official revenue or attendance figures to Billboard Boxscore or any other trade journal or news entity, but the enormity of The Eras Tour is impossible to ignore, with a total that amounts to a staggering average of nearly $14 million per show.
Dating back almost 40 years, all Boxscore rankings 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 has always been voluntary, and some artists, venues and promoters opt to withhold data from representation on our charts. It is not uncommon for artists to not report — or to wait until the end of a tour, which is still more than a year away in Swift’s case — though it’s rare that such a well-documented blockbuster tour, in contention for top year-end honors, is not submitted. Swift’s abstention disqualifies her from appearing on year-end Boxscore charts.
Swift kicked off The Eras Tour in Glendale, Ariz., on March 17, playing 53 domestic shows before wrapping at SoFi Stadium in Inglewood, Calif., outside Los Angeles, on Aug. 9. She hit a total of 20 U.S. cities, and 11 of those venues have provided attendance figures to Billboard. Based on those numbers, as well as estimates based on aggressive scaling at the other nine stadiums, Swift likely sold 3.3 million tickets over 53 shows in the United States, or an average of 63,000 tickets per show.
Sources close to the tour point to an average domestic ticket price of around $252. This is in line with the prices for the summer’s other major concert event, Beyoncé’s Renaissance World Tour, which maintained a $135 ticket in Europe and a $253 ticket in North America. While ticket prices might dip in certain markets and bloom in others, using that number as an average puts the U.S. leg of The Eras Tour at $838.3 million. That total gross spreads out to $15.8 million per show, a staggering figure that exceeds recent tours by Bad Bunny, Beyoncé, and The Rolling Stones, each of which had giant totals of their own.
Taylor Swift performs onstage during Taylor Swift | The Eras Tour at Levi’s Stadium on July 28, 2023, in Santa Clara, Calif.
Jeff Kravitz/TAS23/Getty Images for TAS Rights Management
That projected $838 million haul is more than enough to make Eras the highest-grossing U.S. and North American tour ever. John’s Farewell Yellow Brick Road tour holds the official Boxscore title, with $567.7 million in the United States and Canada. That total reflects 135 shows over a span of four years, compared to Swift’s 53 shows in less than six months.
Moreover, The Eras Tour’s U.S. gross would situate it as the second-highest grossing tour of all time based on global figures, before even crossing the border. John’s farewell tour remains the official record-holder with $939.1 million.
Since wrapping the Eras Tour’s U.S. leg, Swift played four shows at Mexico City’s Foro Sol (Aug. 24-27) and, more recently, nine South American shows, spread between Buenos Aires in Argentina and Brazil’s Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo. Those dates bring her much closer to John’s global record, even based on relatively conservative projections. But as we’ve seen with virtually every worldwide stadium tour in the last two years, the post-pandemic surge in ticket prices hasn’t been as severe outside the United States.
Further, these are Swift’s first shows in these Latin American markets. That means pent-up demand likely drove huge sales, though her base isn’t quite as explosive there as it is in the States.
Based on estimates considering the high end of grosses and ticket prices for each Latin American venue’s post-pandemic history, The Eras Tour likely earned another $60 million to $75 million and more than 750,000 tickets from those 13 shows.
In all, Billboard estimates that Swift has generated $906.1 million and sold 4.1 million tickets in 2023 across all shows in the United States, Mexico and South America. That would unofficially make The Eras Tour the biggest tour of 2023. And when considering Swift’s total revenue from the tour, it doesn’t even account for merchandise sales, sponsorships, music streaming and sales boosts, or her self-produced and released Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour concert film.
Swift is scheduled to resume The Eras Tour on Feb. 7 with four shows at the Tokyo Dome in Japan. Then, she’ll play seven shows in Australia and six in Singapore. In May, she kicks off a 50-date run in Europe before returning to North America for 18 shows in new markets, including the tour’s first entry into Canada. In all, that’s 85 shows to go, with the possibility of more to come, considering her recent concert additions to runs in London and Vancouver.
These upcoming international legs are already more ambitious than any previous Swift tour. While this year’s 53 U.S. shows are in line with what she did on 2018’s Reputation Stadium Tour and 2015’s The 1989 World Tour, those treks included just six and seven shows in Europe, respectively — a fraction of next year’s slate of 50.
If we use the comparison between Beyoncé’s recent European and North American grosses as a north star, in Europe, Swift could be looking at $8.5 million per show, or about $420 million over the entire leg. And even if next year’s North American shows dip from 2023’s record-breakers, the U.S. and Canada shows could add another $240 million to 260 million. Including the 17 shows in Asia and Australia, The Eras Tour is likely headed toward a total gross of $1.6 billion to $1.7 billion by the end of 2024. It will be the first in history to earn more than $1 billion in ticket sales and will set Swift far apart from her competitors. If figures skew toward the higher end of what’s possible, she could double John’s current record gross.
Representatives for Swift did not respond to a request for comment on Billboard‘s estimates at press time.
U2 wrapped the first leg of the U2:UV Achtung Baby Live at Sphere residency on Nov. 4 with unprecedented box-office results. According to figures reported to Billboard Boxscore, U2’s 17 Sphere shows in Las Vegas grossed $109.8 million and sold 281,000 tickets. Opening night at Sphere was Sept. 29. U2 played another show the next […]
Day After Day Productions founder & CEO Seth Shomes has announced a number of new hires and promotions at his rapidly growing agency, including the appointment of Christianne Weiss, former APA agent and vp and head of its adult contemporary music division, to serve as svp and head of touring at DADP. She brings to DADP artists including the Pointer Sisters, El Debarge and Starship, among others expected to make the move in the future. Weiss is a graduate of Columbia College.
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Weiss will serve as the company’s “boots on the ground,” running the LA office and overseeing its staff, she explained.
“Seth has just done an amazing job with training the young agents that he recruits. It’s a well-oiled machine and I’m here to help expand upon that and help to hire some support staff that I think is some of the best talent that I’ve seen in a long time,” she tells Billboard.
Based in the company’s Los Angeles office, Weiss will be instrumental in servicing DADP’s diverse artist roster including 2023 Rock Hall of Fame Inductees Missy Elliott and The Spinners; as well as Ludacris, Flo Rida, Brian Wilson and many more.
Shomes also announced the promotion of Alan Rogozin as DADP general manager; promoted Aidan Flynn, Jordan Dempsey, and Marcus Greenstein to agents; and upped Erin Patterson to director of marketing.
“We’re continuing to have an upward trajectory where we’re servicing the clients in the best way possible,” says Shomes, who founded DADP in 1996, worked the Agency Group and later UTA from 2014 until 2021, leaving UTA to relaunch DADP. Shome’s equity partner in DADP is Ron Burkle’s Yucaipa Companies.
“Our clients are excited what we’re doing for them. We’re honored to be representing them and I love that we’re starting our new people at a assistant level and getting them quickly up to an agent level when they show the aptitude. So it shows a real opportunity for growth within Day after Day.”
Rogozin joined DADP at the start of 2023 and previously served as the company’s head of contracts and data and has worked at The Agency Group (TAG) and at United Talent Agency (UTA) after TAG’s acquisition. Rogozin holds an MBA in Music Management from William Paterson University and will continue to be based in New Jersey.
Flynn, Dempsey and Greenstein will be based in Los Angeles. Patterson will be based in Nashville and was most recently a marketing coordinator at the company. Finally, the company continues to expand with the hiring of five new coordinators, including Olivia Bentley, Marisa Flores, Jordan Golenberg, Andrea Parrish and Justin Scott-Young.
Prior to the most recent promotions and new hires, Michelle Scarbrough joined DADP as a Senior Agent after working at ICM for more than two decades.
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Busta Rhymes is coming to a city near you next year. On Tuesday (Nov. 28), the rapper announced his Blockbusta North American Tour, which will see him making stops across the United States and Canada starting in March. Explore Explore See latest videos, charts and news See latest videos, charts and news The trek — […]
Live Nation will pay its 5,000 employees and service crew working at its club venues a minimum of $20 per hour, company officials announced earlier today.
“Shows wouldn’t happen without the unsung heroes who work in the background to help support artists and fans,” Live Nation CEO Michael Rapino explained, announcing that the wage hike was an extension of Live Nation’s On the Road Again program, first rolled out in September with the endorsement of touring legend Willie Nelson.
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“In addition to developing artists, clubs also help industry professionals learn the ropes, and many of our promoters and venue managers worked their way up from smaller venues,” Rapino continued. “The live music industry is on track for years of growth and offers a great career path, and by increasing minimum wages we’re helping staff get an even stronger start as they begin their journey in live.”
The $20 per hour base pay is significantly higher than federal minimum wage, which currently sits at $7.50 an hour and serves as the defacto minimum wage in 30 states. Washington has the highest minimum wage in the U.S., starting at $15.74 per hour, followed by California at $15.50, Connecticut and Massachusetts at $15 and New York at $14.20.
“Moving forward, base pay for hourly club staff will start at $20/hour, while supervisor roles will start at $25/hour with opportunity for advancement in the company,” a press release announcing the wage rate explains. The increases will impact more than 5,000 crew members who serve as box office attendants, production crew, artist hospitality, guest services, ushers, parking attendants, cleaning crews, sustainability coordinators, and more.”
“Live Nation prides itself on providing advancement opportunities and developing leaders from within,” according to a release announcing the new minimum wage. “And at venues participating in the On The Road Again, nearly half of all crew members were elevated from part-time into full-time roles over the past two years.”
Company officials added that two other initiatives announced by Live Nation — a commitment that all headline and support acts playing Live Nation clubs would receive $1,500 in travel bonuses on top of nightly compensation and zero fees on band merch sold at participating LN venues, would be extended through 2024.
The September announcement did draw criticism from the National Independent Venue Association, which criticized the program saying “Temporary measures may appear to help artists in the short run but actually can squeeze out independent venues which provide the lifeblood of many artists on thin margins.”
One NIVA member however, Thomas Cussins with Ineffable Music Group, which oversees 10 venues across California, said he welcomed the change, noting his company eliminated merch fees at the beginning of the year, noting it is an overall healthier ecosystem and you will actually do better in business because you are doing something that makes the process easier.”
P!nk played 10 shows, split between two separate tours, in October. In all, those dates grossed $51.2 million and sold 271,000 tickets, according to figures reported to Billboard Boxscore. That’s enough to rule Billboard’s monthly Top Tours chart, marking her third month at No. 1 since the charts launched in February 2019.
P!nk began the month in San Diego, playing an Oct. 3 show at Snapdragon Stadium. After three more stadium shows on the Summer Carnival tour, she transitioned to the arena-focused Trustfall Tour, playing dates in California, Denver, and Kansas City. She’s the first artist to lead the Top Tours list via multiple tours. It’s rare enough for an artist to play two tours within a year of one another, but it does happen, per recent treks by Bad Bunny and Post Malone, among others. Both tours’ setlist, personnel and staging are relatively similar, though the Trustfall Tour puts an extra accent on its namesake album.
The October Summer Carnival shows earned $30.9 million and sold 190,000 tickets, while the six Trustfall shows brought in $20.2 million and 81,100 tickets. That means that on average, P!nk’s stadium dates averaged more than twice as much revenue as her arena concerts, at $7.7 million and $3.4 million, respectively.
The transition from stadiums to arenas, particularly in North America, makes sense as the weather shifts and outdoor concerts become less viable. Still, with active stadium tours in Oceania and South America, P!nk’s monthly gold medal in (primarily) arenas is significant.
In fact, P!nk is the first artist to crown the Top Tours chart while touring arenas in 2023 – though she did so with the help of four stadium performances. Trans-Siberian Orchestra staged the last arena win in December of last year. Before that, Bad Bunny was tops in February and March of 2022, before ruling the chart in stadiums later that year.
P!nk was No. 2 in August, when she and Beyoncé became the first women to ever rank Nos. 1-2 together. She previously topped the chart in March and July of 2019, while barreling toward the end of the Beautiful Trauma World Tour. That trek grossed $397.3 million and sold 3.1 million tickets, standing tall as the third highest-grossing tour by a woman in the Boxscore archives, behind Beyoncé’s Renaissance World Tour ($579.8 million in 2023) and Madonna’s Sticky & Sweet Tour ($407.7 million in 2008-09).
P!nk is one of just three woman-identifying acts to lead the Top Tours chart. She follows Beyoncé, who ran the ranking in four of the previous five months. Plus, the Spice Girls were No. 1 in June 2019. Both in terms of unique artists, and in total months, women have been No. 1 for less than 20% of the time since the monthly chart premiered.
Including the Summer Carnival Tour from earlier this year, and current through the Nov. 14 Trustfall show in Miami, P!nk has grossed $309.4 million and sold just over 2 million tickets in 2023.
Eight of P!nk’s October dates appear on the Top Boxscores chart, at No. 7 with $9 million from Las Vegas’ Allegiant Stadium on Oct. 7, and at No. 10 with $8.1 million from the SoFi Stadium in Inglewood, Calif. on Oct. 5. Unsurprisingly, the stadium shows come up first, even above double-header arena engagements in San Francisco and Kansas City.
Top Boxscores is led by RBD. The Latin pop group grossed $19.5 million over four nights at Los Angeles’ BMO Stadium (Oct. 18-20, 22). Without any other reported shows in October, it’s enough to make the venue No. 1 on Top Stadiums.
Those dates power RBD’s No. 2 finish on Top Tours with $39.4 million overall, scoring a second consecutive month in the runner-up position. Through Nov. 19, the Soy Rebelde Tour has grossed $182.6 million and sold 1.1 million. It’ll likely cross $200 million before the end of the year, becoming the second tour by a Latin act to ever do so. Bad Bunny’s World’s Hottest Tour grossed $314.1 million last year.
Last month, RBD joined Beyoncé, Coldplay, Drake and Morgan Wallen in the top five, making the most genre-diverse top five ever. October’s ranking isn’t quite as spread-out – SZA and The Weeknd double up for R&B, and Luis Miguel adds more Latin star-power – but it does block rock, the most traditionally steady genre on the touring circuit, from the upper echelon altogether.
Paul McCartney, the Eagles, John Mayer and Depeche Mode follow at Nos. 6-9, giving rock its due in the top 10. Still, October marks only the third month since the charts’ 2019 beginning without a rock act in the top five. Previously, KISS was held off at No. 6 in April 2019, and Elton John in the same spot in October ’19.
The Top Tours chart is spiked with four co-headline billings. Enrique Iglesias, Pitbull & Ricky Martin kicked off The Trilogy Tour on Oct. 14, earning $20.9 million from the first eight shows. Iglesias had previously toured with Pitbull and Martin, though these are the first concerts for the trio as a group. Elsewhere, Billy Joel and Stevie Nicks grossed $10.5 million from one date at Baltimore’s M&T Bank Stadium, at No. 3 on Top Boxscores.
The other two co-headline pairs are blink-and-you’ll-miss-it team-ups. Ben Gibbard pulls double duty as the lead of Death Cab for Cutie and The Postal Service, each celebrating a 20th anniversary of landmark 2003 albums. Their collaborative – or split-personality – tour brought in $11.5 million in October, finishing with a total of $22.1 million since its September kick-off.
Finally, Ms. Lauryn Hill & The Fugees are No. 30 with $7.8 million and 61,500 tickets from five shows, showcasing Hill’s run of ‘90s R&B and hip-hop, alongside Wyclef Jean and Pras. While we noted that P!nk and Beyoncé achieved a first-time top-two finish for women only a couple months ago, Hill is part of an even-more-sparse Boxscore history: She is just the second female rap artist to ever appear on the chart, following Cardi B via her co-headline appearance with Bruno Mars on the inaugural February 2019 list.
Jason Aldean has extended his headlining Highway Desperado Tour into 2024, adding 24 cities to the trek, beginning May 18 at WinStar World Casino and Resort in Thackerville, Okla. The tour will also make stops in Philadelphia, Savannah and more, before wrapping with a show in Aldean’s original hometown of Macon, Ga., at the Macon […]
Live Nation officials are at an impasse with a powerful Senate subcommittee over demands that the concert promoter hand over confidential emails, contracts and memos detailing sensitive information about artist compensation.
Attorneys for Live Nation say they have already turned over more than 10,000 documents to investigators working for Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) and the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, or PSI, which Blumenthal chairs. Live Nation in-house counsel Dan Wall wrote on Live Nation’s corporate blog on Tuesday (Nov. 21) that the company is willing to hand over more sensitive documents if the PSI agrees to confidentiality protections to ensure the information is kept out of the public domain.
So far, Blumenthal has refused to agree to any restrictions requested by Live Nation and issued a subpoena for the confidential documents on Nov. 16. Live Nation officials plan to challenge the subpoena in court and are preparing for a lengthy legal battle to protect the confidentiality of its artist contracts if the two sides can’t reach an agreement.
“It is only in a subpoena enforcement action [before a federal judge] that Live Nation can assert its rights to protect the confidentiality of this information,” Wall wrote in the blog post.
Live Nation’s insistence on “confidentiality protections” is fairly routine, most legal experts agree, especially when it comes to court proceedings or investigations by government agencies. It’s also common practice for congressional investigators to agree to confidentiality rules while collecting evidence for congressional inquiries, but there’s no legal recourse if a member of Congress or staff discloses confidential information to the public.
News on Monday (Nov. 20) that Live Nation was being investigated by the powerful Department of Homeland Security and PSI surprised many music industry insiders. Created by President Harry Truman in 1941 to investigate wasteful defense spending after World War II, the PSI’s focus for much of its existence has been on matters of national security, including Korean War atrocities, the American Mafia’s influence on major labor unions and the government’s response to Hurricane Katrina.
Under Blumenthal’s leadership, the PSI has shifted its focus to consumer-oriented investigations, like the proposed merger of the PGA and the Saudi-backed LIV Golf league, equity within Medicare Advantage and sexual abuse in federal women’s prisons.
Blumenthal has also long been a critic of Live Nation and its 2010 merger with Ticketmaster, calling for the two companies to be split apart during a high-profile Senate hearing in January. According to a Nov. 16 letter from Blumenthal to Live Nation CEO Michael Rapino, the PSI officially began investigating Live Nation in March, in part for what Blumenthal calls “failure to combat artificially inflated demand fueled by bots in multiple, high-profile incidents, which resulted in consumers being charged exorbitant ticket prices.”
That description is the only public hint of what PSI is focusing on in its Live Nation investigation and doesn’t seem particularly damning of the concert promotion company. While bots, often operated by scalpers, do inflate demand for tickets — especially during high-profile onsales — and can lead to exorbitant ticket prices, it’s almost always Ticketmaster’s competitors in the secondary market who stand the most to gain.
Before Live Nation hands over any documents that contain “highly sensitive client information about artists, venues and others with whom we deal,” Wall wrote in the blog post, the company wants “binding confidentiality protections to prevent its misuse.”
Live Nation’s request might prove more difficult than the company’s leadership realizes, says Andrew Olmem, attorney and partner at Mayer Brown, which specializes in defending clients targeted by major investigations and congressional inquiries.
“Any documents provided to Congress are always vulnerable to public disclosure,” Olmem explains, noting that Congressional members and their staffers enjoy broad protections against criminal and civil liability under the U.S. Constitution’s speech and debate clause.
It is common for attorneys of clients targeted by Congressional inquiries to negotiate terms of documents’ use with investigators requesting the information, Olmem says. Many investigators, he adds, care deeply about reputational trust, knowing that violating confidentiality agreements with targets could make future targets less willing to voluntarily cooperate with document requests and significantly slow down investigations.
“But even if you secure such an agreement, members of Congress and their staffs can’t be liable for releasing confidential documents as part of their official legislative duties, such as submitting (the documents) into the congressional record or reading them on the House or Senate floors for the purpose of informing a legislative debate,” Olmem continues. “There are many circumstances in which members and their staff are incentivized to leak and do leak information for political purposes without consequences.”
London Mayor Sadiq Khan has rejected Madison Square Garden’s long-standing proposal to build a Sphere arena in London, less than two months after the company debuted its first Sphere project to critical acclaim in Las Vegas.
News of the rejection came by way of a letter from Khan to Anthony Hollingsworth, director of the London Legacy Development Corporation (LLDC), which oversees London’s Olympic Park properties. On Nov. 6, Hollingsworth had written to Khan to inform him that “the local planning authority is minded to grant planning permission” for the Sphere project. In the letter dated Monday (Nov. 20), Khan explained to Hollingworth that after considering a 111-page report commissioned by the Greater London Authority (GLA) advising the mayor to reject the plan, he was now ordering the LLDC to “refuse planning permission” for the venue.
A statement from Madison Square Garden Entertainment officials said they were “disappointed in London’s decision” but added, “There are many forward-thinking cities that are eager to bring this technology to their communities. We will concentrate on those.”
A proposal for the venue was submitted in 2018, and Sphere London initially survived key votes by the city’s local planning authority. But with his letter, Khan has seemingly doomed the project.
The mayor said his main reason for rejecting the proposal was the impact he believed the venue would have on the surrounding area, writing that Sphere would “cause significant light intrusion resulting in significant harm to the outlook of neighbouring properties.”
He also said the size of the venue — 300 feet high and 400 feet wide — “would result in a bulky, unduly dominant” facility” that failed “to respect the character and appearance of this part of the town centre and the site’s wider setting.” Lastly, he criticized the venue’s high “energy intensive use,” which he says “does not achieve a high sustainability standard, and does not constitute good and sustainable design.”
“GLA officers have concluded that to grant permission would be contrary to the Development Plan,” adds Khan in the letter, citing a document that lays out the spatial development strategy in London for the next 20 to 25 years. “[It] would prejudice the implementation of the policies within the Development Plan relating to residential amenity, good design, and the conservation and enhancement of London’s heritage.”
The Sphere project had previously faced pushback from some local residents as well as AEG, which operates London’s O2 Arena, located just four miles from the proposed site of the venue. In January, after the London Legacy Development Corporation’s Planning Decisions Committee greenlit MSG Entertainment to initiate work on the project, AEG called on Khan to reject the project in a statement that read in part: “The advertising façade is at a wholly unprecedented scale for London and totally out of keeping with the surrounding area. The design was conceived for the heart of Las Vegas and has been transposed onto this east London site: it’s the wrong design, in the wrong location.”