Ed Sheeran has scored the highest-grossing live music tour of 2018, with revenues of $432m (£342m) from 4.86m tickets sold, according to industry analyst Pollstar.
It is the highest-grossing tour in a calendar year since Pollstar began its rankings 30 years ago – the previous record was set by U2 for their Joshua Tree tour in 2017, with $316m (the band’s 360 tour, which took place from 2009-2011, remains the highest-grossing ever with $736m).
Records were also broken for overall grosses – the Top 10 worldwide tours generated a combined $2bn for the first time, up from $1.8bn in 2017.
Taylor Swift was in second place, with $345m from 2.88m tickets sold on her Reputation tour – she and Sheeran alone accounted for 14% of revenues from the Top 100 tours. They were followed by Jay-Z and Beyoncé’s collaborative On the Run II tour, which generated $254m from 2.16m tickets. Pink, Bruno Mars, the Eagles, Justin Timberlake, Roger Waters, U2 and the Rolling Stones rounded out the Top 10.
Sheeran’s tour, off the back of his album ÷ which was 2017’s biggest in both the UK and US, began in March 2017, and is set to run until August 2019 when he will play four homecoming dates in Ipswich’s Chantry Park.
