Bad Bunny, the most streamed artist on Spotify and Apple Music’s ‘Artist of the Year’, in 2022, has clinched another win this year after grossing US $435.38 million in 2022 alone from touring.
That figure was a record high in a single calendar year, surpassing the previous record set by Ed Sheeran for his Divide tour, which amassed $432.3 million in 2018.
Bad Bunny capped off his World’s Hottest Tour this year at Mexico City’s Azteca Stadium on Saturday and Sunday (December 9 and 10), where he raked in more than $10.5 million, according to Pollstar, citing box office reports.
Pollstar says that Bad Bunny had 81 shows this year across two tours: his stadium tour, “El Último Tour Del Mundo” run, which ran from February to April (grossing $113 million) and then his stadium shows on the “World’s Hottest Tour”.
Pollstar also reported that 2022 set a new record for global tours across the industry, with concerts across the globe generating $6.28 billion in sales, up 13.2% from pre-pandemic levels in 2019.
The Puerto Rican rapper and singer’s World’s Hottest Tour, which kicked off on August 5 at Orlando’s Camping World Stadium, was his fourth concert tour.
It included 43 concert dates in a span of four months across the US and Latin America. The concert was promoted by Live Nation and the Cardenas Marketing Network.
“I think we all feel very proud of what he’s accomplished. It’s a feat that is remarkable. It is huge for Latin music and unprecedented and a remarkable accomplishment on its own.”
Hans Schafer, Live Nation
Hans Schafer, SVP of Global Touring at Live Nation, told Pollstar: “I think we all feel very proud of what he’s accomplished. It’s a feat that is remarkable. It is huge for Latin music and unprecedented and a remarkable accomplishment on its own, regardless of genre to see an artist of his age reaching those heights is just something that makes it very promising for us, of what the future holds.”
Jbeau Lewis, Bad Bunny’s agent and a partner at United Talent Agency, told Pollstar that after seeing strong demand for Bad Bunny’s El Último Tour del Mundo that started in February, his team made the leap from arenas to stadiums.
“When you look at a ticketing queue for a show that can hold 17,000 and there’s 300,000 in the queue, it certainly suggests there’s a lot more meat on the bone to be had,” Lewis was quoted by the newswire as saying.
“The plan to go on the arena tour, release the album a month after that tour ended and have a stadium tour that would start a couple of months after that was hatched 18 months ago at this point. We’ve just been working toward the execution of it,” Lewis added.
Bad Bunny, a.k.a. Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio, has also witnessed massive success on digital platforms, becoming Spotify’s most-streamed artist globally for the third year in a row after amassing more than 18.5 billion streams on the platform. Apple Music has also named him as ‘Artist of the Year’. His fourth studio album Un Verano Sin Ti, released on May 6, broke the record for the highest first-week streams worldwide for a Latin album in Apple Music history.
Bad Bunny topped Pollstar’s ranking of worldwide active tours by the average tickets sold in the 30 days to Monday (December 12), with Daddy Yankee, Harry Styles, Lizzo, Dua Lipa, Grupo Firme, Backstreet Boys, Luke Combs, ATEEZ and The 1975 ranking far behind.
But the final leg of the artist’s tour this year ended with a ticket controversy, with many fans denied entry to the Estadio Azteca in Mexico, Billboard reports.
Ticketmaster Mexico issued a statement on Twitter, confirming that an unprecedented number of fake tickets were purchased outside its official channels and were presented at the entrances to the venue. The incident caused disruptions in ticket reading, although Ticketmaster says there was no overcrowding or overselling of tickets.
The demand for Bad Bunny’s concert was the highest in Mexico’s history, attracting more than 4.5 million fans, but with only 120,000 seats available at the Estadio Azteca, the event promoter added.
The success of Bad Bunny’s concert tour comes amid pent-up demand for concert going following the easing of COVID-19 restrictions globally.
Live Nation, his concert promoter, last month said it delivered the “biggest summer concert season in history” after generating $6.15 billion in the third quarter, up 63% year over year. Concerts promoted by Live Nation attracted more than 44 million fans across nearly 50 countries in Q3, its highest quarterly attendance to date.
“2022 has been an incredible year of returning to live events, and we expect it to finish strong,” Live Nation President and CEO Michael Rapino said at the time.
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