Swift and Beyoncé vie for the first billion-dollar tour

The Future. Thanks to pent-up demand, sky-high ticket prices, and an almost-insatiable desire for live experiences, Taylor Swift or Beyoncé may put on the first-ever tour to gross a billion dollars. And it’s a tide that lifts all boats, with concertgoing all around bringing in record sales. After COVID, communal events may be undergoing a renaissance.

Concert queen
It’s a toss-up for which superstar will bring live music into the ten-figure club.

• Taylor Swift makes around $10 million a night on her Eras tour, which Bloomberg says will net her around $600 million with her current schedule… but she hasn’t booked any overseas dates yet.
• Beyoncé is raking in about $7.5 million per show on her Renaissance tour, and demand is so high (she hasn’t toured since 2016) that she can keep adding tours to rack up revenue.

Depending on how you look at it, Elton John currently has the highest-grossing tour with the nine-leg long Yellow Brick Road tour (over $800 million and counting) or it’s Ed Sheeran with his single-leg Divide tour ($776 million… which he accomplished by playing 255 nights and only charging $88 per ticket).

Sellouts
Not even counting Swift and Beyoncé, it’s shaping up to be a great year for live music.

• Several artists are selling out stadiums and arenas worldwide, including Madonna, The Weeknd, Coldplay, Depeche Mode, and Bruce Springsteen.
• And like it or not, many acts are doing so by selling tickets at sky-high prices — the thinking being that charging more will ward off opportunistic scalpers.

Oh, and just to give you a sense of the scope of a stadium sellout: they can hold anywhere from 40,000 to 100,000 people. Imagine doing that for 50 nights.