How Bad Bunny’s ‘El Último Tour’ Topped Pollstar’s Mid-Year Charts

It’s the time of the Bunny, and we’re all just living in it. Another monumental feat for the books goes to Bad Bunny as he leaps to the No. 1 slot on both the Mid-Year Top 100 Worldwide and North America Tour Charts for his “El Último Tour del Mundo” (aka “The Last Tour of the World”), which kicked off at Coliseo de Puerto Rico on Dec. 10, 2021. The singer/rapper grossed a staggering $120.1 million in box office revenue for 663,868 tickets sold for the trek, which ended at Miami’s FTX Arena on April 3. This marks another milestone for Latin music’s exponential rise across the globe, as Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio is the first Latin artist to ever hold that place. No other Spanish-singing star has come close. 

The last Latin musician since 2010 to rank in the Top 20 mid-year chart was Aventura in 2020 at No. 13 with a gross revenue of $24.1 million. Before that was Luis Miguel in 2018 at No. 17 with a gross revenue of $44.2 million and Shakira in 2011 at No. 11, who earned $39.9 million. 

“I think the right word is freedom,” Bad Bunny’s manager Noah Assad told Pollstar for its April Bad Bunny cover story. “With freedom we can pivot easily, and we trust Benito’s vision to the fullest.”

The first comprehensive Worldwide Top Tours chart was published in 2010, with Aventura ranking at No. 36 that year, earning $18.2 million in gross revenue. Since Bad Bunny began performing stateside five years ago, he has sold a reported 1,584,904 concert tickets, earning an average gross of $1,436,608 to date.

“This is something of a phenomenon […] The way he’s on stage is unmatched, and the fan engagement,” Alex Cárdenas, director of touring at Cárdenas Management Network (CMN), told Pollstar in April. He has promoted Bad Bunny since 2017 and now works alongside Live Nation. “We knew the shows were going to do well, and we would do multiple dates in various cities where he’s done well in the past. But were we expecting to sell out in a couple of minutes and see Platinum [seats] get to that average? No. I think it took everybody, even the management, by surprise. It’s something we’re probably not going to see [again] in our lifetime.”

As the COVID-19 global pandemic forced the world to quarantine, a slew of musicians began making and releasing music during that time. And despite El Último Tour del Mundo dropping back in November, 2020 – he released three albums that year – El Conejo’s fervent fan base diligently waited to see the Puerto Rican global superstar perform in one of the most anticipated tours of the year. 

“[When] we announced [El Último…] tour in April of 2021, it had such unprecedented success in terms of being one of the fastest and highest selling tours of all time, breaking records left and right,” confirmed Jbeau Lewis, Bad Bunny’s music agent at United Talent Agency (UTA), in April. “There were situations where we would sell out one of the arenas, and we would know that there were 200,000 or 300,000 people still waiting in the online queue to try and buy tickets. We were able to extrapolate that data to know how many more tickets we could have sold had they simply been available.”

Bad Bunny takes an unconventional and highly innovative approach to the art of performing. Featured in the El Último… album cover, the “Dákiti” singer brought his fire-blazing, 53-foot semi-truck inside venues. Performing on top of the big rig, he covered more ground than the average stage setup, making it easier to engage with audiences while providing a unique concert experience to fans. 

“Expect the unexpected. He’s obviously no stranger to pushing the envelope, breaking the rules, and doing things the way he wants to do it,” said Lewis. “The privilege of working with an artist like this is that we get to represent people who move culture. There is no better example right now than watching someone like Benito. Whether it’s what he sees, what he wears, when he writes, you can literally see the impact right before your eyes of fans following and supporting him.”

Bad Bunny continues his streak of breaking records left and right. His 2022 summer album Un Verano Sin Ti topped the Billboard 200 on two separate occasions since its May 6 release. He also became Spotify’s most streamed artist in a single day.

In 2022, Bad Bunny skyrocketed from an arena act to a stadium superstar. He is poised to kick off his “World’s Hottest Tour” on Aug. 9, making stops in historic spaces like New York’s Yankee Stadium; Lima, Peru’s Estadio Nacional; and Mexico City’s Estadio Azteca. This is his year.