Beyoncé Shines With Record-Setting ‘Renaissance’ Trek (Year End 2023 Special)

In a year that saw the all-time gross record for a concert tour broken twice, first by Elton John’s “Farewell Yellow Brick Road” tour early in the year and again by Taylor Swift’s top-ranked “Eras Tour,” it’s important to also shine the light on 2023’s other record-smashing concert trek, the “Renaissance Tour” starring the inimitable Queen Bey herself, Beyoncé.

The 32-time Grammy Award winner accomplished what no other female concert headliner has been able to do until this year. With grosses from her “Renaissance” concerts, she surpassed Madonna’s “Sticky & Sweet Tour” that reigned for 14 years as the highest-grossing concert tour ever by a female artist.

The “Renaissance Tour” racked up a prodigious $579.8 million in grosses to score the second highest ranking on the 2023 Top 100 Worldwide Tours chart. Her overall number of sold tickets reached 2,776,854 by the end of the trek that included 56 headlining performances.

With its completion at the beginning of October, Beyoncé’s 2023 tour is now eighth among the 10 highest-grossing tours of all time. She is also the top-ranked Black concert headliner in history with grosses earned from a single tour.

She also tops last year’s highest-grossing touring artist, Bad Bunny, who ended the year with $393.4 million in grosses from 73 shows on an arena jaunt and a separate stadium tour. In fact, the “Renaissance Tour” gross is higher than any tour ever that ranked No. 1 in Pollstar’s year-end issue. The closest is Ed Sheeran’s top-ranked “Divide Tour” that grossed $432.4 million in 2018, the middle year of his record-setting tour’s three-year run.

With stadium dates booked in 20 countries in Europe and North America during a 21-week span, the tour launched in May in support of her chart-topping seventh studio album Renaissance, released in July 2022 by Parkwood Entertainment and Columbia Records.

The tour kicked off with a two-night engagement at Stockholm’s Friends Arena that recorded a sold-ticket total numbering 90,169 for both performances on May 10 and 11. The opening shows grossed just over $9.8 million from sellout crowds on both nights.
Later in May, on the 29th, she began a five-show run at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium in London that would rank as her top-grossing venue in Europe during the tour. The stadium grossed $38.9 million from her stretch of shows that ended June 4. The ticket count in London reached 240,330 which ultimately ranked as her top attendance recorded at a single venue worldwide in 2023.

Stateside, both SoFi Stadium in Inglewood, California and Atlanta’s Mercedes-Benz Stadium produced the best results at the box office, both with three-show engagements. The Los Angeles-area venue ranked first in gross and second in tickets sold, while the Atlanta stadium had the best ticket count and finished second in revenue.

SoFi Stadium’s three shows at the beginning of September brought in a mammoth $45.5 million gross from 155,567 sold tickets with ticket prices ranging from $55 to $750. Then in Atlanta, Beyoncé’s stadium-sized, three-show ticket count hit 156,317 for a gross totaling $39.8 million. The ticket scale there spanned from a low of $50.50 to $585.

Three other stadiums in the U.S. also topped the $30 million threshold in grosses from a “Renaissance Tour” engagement. MetLife Stadium in the New York City market grossed $33.1 million from 106,056 tickets, July 29-30, while fans in Beyoncé’s hometown of Houston packed NRG Stadium on Sept. 23-24 with 123,308 tickets sold for a two-night gross of $31.3 million. Soldier Field in Chicago hosted the tour on July 22-23, grossing $30.1 million from 97,686 sold seats.

Prior to 2023, Beyoncé last toured with Jay-Z on 2018’s “On the Run II” trek that grossed $254 million, and her most recent solo tour was “Formation” in 2016 with a $256 million gross. s