It’s a pop queen’s world and we’re just living in it: Industry observers are speculating whether Tay or Bey could post the first billion-dollar tour, as witness the explosion of 2023 shows. Is.
Taylor Swift and Beyonce are among dozens of stars to hit the road and fuel a booming arena market, as demand for live entertainment increases after years of cancellations and postponements caused by the pandemic.
From punk to Coldplay, Bruce Springsteen to Drake, and SZA to The Weeknd, stadiums across the United States and beyond are setting the stage for what’s set to be the biggest year for live music on record. is ready.
“I’ve never seen so many artists out in one place at the same time,” American University professor Stacey Merida told JEE News.
Madonna – who pioneered the contemporary tour as we know it in the early 1990s, with elaborate sets and costumes – was set to embark on a career-spanning tour in mid-July, but illness forced her to Postponed.
The 64-year-old is scheduled to begin his European shows in October, with North American concerts rescheduled for later dates.
So it’s Swift, 33, who is now within striking distance of the billion-dollar mark, with 106 current dates on her “Era” tour.
The odds are also in Beyonce’s favor as she embarks on the North American leg of her “Renaissance” tour.
If either crosses the history-making line, they’ll surpass Elton John.
His recently concluded “Farewell Yellow Brick Road” tour, which began in 2018, had grossed more than $910 million as of June 18, according to Billboard Box Score.
John surpassed the previous record holder, Ed Sheeran’s 2017-2019 “Split” tour, which grossed $776 million.
Part of the current boom comes from skyrocketing ticket prices: Sheeran charges just under $100 for a “split,” according to Tracker Pollstar, but has played well over 200 shows.
Tickets for Bey and Tay average more than double the price of prime seats.
Live Nation, which merged with Ticketmaster in 2010, says it has already sold 100 million tickets for its 2023 concerts – more than it sold in all of 2019.
The company posted $4.4 billion in revenue during the second quarter of this year, playing about 12,500 concerts to 33.5 million fans.
“With much of the world fully reopening, it’s clear that concerts remain a top priority for fans,” Live Nation said in its most recent earnings report.
Ticketing grumbles
But while demand has grown, it’s not without much grumbling over Live Nation and Ticketmaster’s privileged position.
For years, concertgoers have complained about hidden fees, inflated costs, rampant scalpers and limited tickets due to presales.
The issue resurfaced earlier this year after Swift’s tour sales tanked, prompting congressional hearings on anti-competitive practices and impassioned calls for the company to break up.
That prospect doesn’t appear to be on the horizon, and ticket prices keep climbing in the meantime – and fans keep paying.
“Vertically integrated monopolies really have a lot of price implications,” said Andrew Leaf, a music industry veteran and attorney who teaches at the University of Southern California.
“If you’re a ticketmaster and you can charge whatever you want and you have no competition, and the demand for Taylor Swift or Beyonce comes up, it’s simple supply and demand,” he told JEE News. Demand is economics,” he told JEE News.
“They can charge whatever they want — which they do.”
‘Beyonce blip’
And according to Leaf, the concert boom isn’t necessarily seeing its benefits trickle down to smaller acts.
“There are really two music industries,” he said. “There’s a music industry for the one percent and a music industry for the 99 percent.”
“Unless you’re playing in front of 500 or more people every night, you’re probably not even breaking even.”
It’s an all-too-familiar story: Touring doesn’t come cheap, and it’s a lifeline for artists whose streaming royalties make them notoriously small.
But with everyone on the road trying to make up for years of lost income from the pandemic, everything from venues to tour buses is competing.
Last fall, indie artist Santigold was among the first to speak out about the challenges facing artists like himself — and canceled his own tour, saying he “just couldn’t make it work,” not least because of inflation. And due to competition in a saturated market.
Meanwhile, recent data from research company QuestionPro suggests that Swift’s visit could generate $4.6 billion in consumer spending in the United States alone, adding dollars to local economies including hotels and restaurants.
And Queen B’s “Renaissance” tour caused a “Beyoncé blip” when she performed in Stockholm in May, pushing up Sweden’s inflation by about 0.2 percentage points.
“Beyoncé’s world tour kick-off in Sweden has colored May’s inflation,” said Michael Grahn, then chief economist for Sweden at Danske Bank.
