Mid-Year Top Tours: No. 5 Ed Sheeran’s ‘ +–=÷× Tour’ 

Mid-Year Top 100 Worldwide Tours
No. 5 Ed Sheeran
Gross: $105,309,873
Average Ticket Price: $104.20
Average Tickets Sold Per Show: 40,424
Total Tickets: 1,010,616
Average Gross: $4,212,394

Ed Sheeran ranks fifth in terms of gross revenues reported to the Pollstar Boxoffice in the last six months, or $105,309,873 if you do the “Mathematics,” as his current stadium tour is titled. Since May, Sheeran has also been performing intimate theater shows in between the big gigs. “Ed adores it,” manager Stuart Camp told Pollstar. “We’ve always tried to do smaller shows amongst the stadium runs, but never this often and especially not run as two tours concurrently. It’s something we’ll definitely be looking at doing on future legs too now.”

If his underplay theater shows were subtracted from his totals, Sheeran’s average gross would increase to $5.48 million and his average tickets sold to 52,602. His total ticket count is still third highest.

Pollstar has been following Sheeran’s master class in live performing forever, culminating in his touring record set in 2019 – only surpassed by Sir Elton John himself this year, and only in terms of gross. But “Mathematics” may well take back the crown. Said Camp, “We never take anything for granted. We are delighted the audience is there with us, and” he added with a smile, “look forward to going up those rankings.”

The confidence is warranted, seeing that “Mathematics” hasn’t even touched down in South America, Asia or East Europe yet. “We are going to keep at it. Our dates for ’24 will be announced in September,” Camp revealed.

It’s worth pointing out that Sheeran’s team has managed to keep ticket prices reasonable, starting at $49 at most of his recent U.S. stadium gigs, and averaging out at $104, which is the lowest among the top six artists on Pollstar’s mid-year count. It is a team that also includes Marty Diamond at Wasserman Music, Jon Ollier at One Fiinix Live, Simon Jones at AEG Presents, Folkert Koopmans at FKP Scorpio, Stuart Galbraith and Steve Tilley at Kilimanjaro Live, Daniel Ealam at DHP Family, Louis Messina’s Touring Group, as well as the late Michael Gudinski’s Frontier Touring, to whom Sheeran dedicated his 2021 album “=”. There’s no doubt that this team could take back the title of the biggest touring artists, and retain it for many years to come.

The annual POLLSTAR ranking of the concert industry’s top performing artists is tabulated for all Worldwide shows played between 11/17/22 to 5/17/23. All ticket sales figures are calculated in U.S. dollars and are based on reported information and extensive research by POLLSTAR.