Box Office Insider: Young Latin Stars On The Rise In 2023

In the highly diverse world of Latin music, 2023 has seen significant achievement on the concert stage by NextGen artists making their mark as live entertainers early in their careers. And some of them have seen their success represented on the Pollstar charts.

Among them is Peso Pluma, who debuts on LIVE75 at No. 21 this week based on ticket sales at four recent concerts. He has also consistently made a top 20 appearance on the Artist Power Index — including three weeks in the top 10 — since debuting on the weekly chart in the June 19 issue.

Multiple ticket sales figures have been reported this year for the 24-year-old Guadalajara, Mexico native who kicked off his “Doble P” tour through North America on April 8. His first stop, a performance at Toyota Arena in Ontario, California, drew a sellout crowd of 8,333, and his most recently reported event was a two-show engagement at Denver’s Bellco Theatre. There he sold 4,757 tickets on Aug. 5 and another 4,542 the following night.

In July he performed at Dickies Arena in Fort Worth, Texas, for 12,875 fans. Only Puerto Rican Reggaeton artist Rauw Alejandro has sold more tickets for a concert at the venue this year, moving just 193 more for his April 20 show. Also last month, Pluma sold out at the MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas, drawing 13,032 fans on the 21st. His attendance is the highest for a single concert at the arena since the beginning of the year, based on reported box-office results.

Although he is also 24 years old, Christian Nodal is hardly a newcomer, having signed a deal with Universal Music Latin in 2016 when he was 17. Not to mention, the singer-songwriter from Sonora, Mexico, already has five Latin Grammy Awards, including Best Ranchero/Mariachi Album for his 2022 EP Forajido. He launched his fourth concert tour last September to support that album and grossed more than $14 million from 141,743 sold tickets at 21 reported concerts through mid-November.

This year, he has appeared at Auditorio Telmex in Zapopan, Mexico, selling out three concerts in March with attendance totaling 24,543 for a $2 million gross. He has two previous concerts on record at the Guadalajara-area venue: one in July 2018 and another the following May, bringing his ticket count from all five to 34,315.

For Mexican singer-songwriter Kenia Os, also 24 years old, her career began much more recently than Nodal’s, with her first concert reported to Pollstar occurring in March of last year. She sold 5,966 tickets at Teatro Metropolitan in Mexico City then appeared in other Mexican venues with tickets ranging from 3,082 at Foro GNP in Merida to 7,949 at Auditorio Telmex. This year her first reported show — a sellout at Mexico City’s Auditorio Nacional in February — saw a jump in attendance to 9,387. Then one week later, she returned to Auditorio Telmex and sold 514 more tickets than in 2022.

Rapper Santa Fe Klan is currently on the road in the U.S. with his “Todo Y Nada” tour that began in June and is set to wrap later this month. With sales figures from nine concerts reported this summer, the 23-year-old currently has a sold-ticket count of 50,368 from the tour with a gross of $4.1 million. Among his nine shows, the top attendance recorded was a June 23 performance at Allstate Arena in the Chicago suburb of Rosemont. The sold-out concert drew 10,284 fans and grossed over $1.01 million.

Last year, he played 31 shows in North America that included a spring run through U.S. cities and later a summer trek dubbed “Mar Y Tierra” in July and August. Along with a string of dates in Mexican venues, his overall number of sold tickets in 2022 was 124,077 for a $6.2 million gross.

Other NextGen artists with 2023 box-office totals include Colombian singer Manuel Turizo with 61,488 tickets sold at nine shows in Latin America, along with Los Angeles-born Ángela Aguilar, who sold 2,442 tickets at L.A.’s YouTube Theater and 1,521 at Hard Rock Live Sacramento in Wheatland, California, in June. Then, Mexican artist Kevin Kaarl has six 2023 shows in the archives with a ticket count of 8,873.