Masters Of Rock: Metallica Lands At No. 9

2024 Top 10 Worldwide Tours
No. 9 Metallica
Gross: $179,373,637.40
Average Ticket Price: $119.64
Average Tickets Sold Per Show: 62,512
Total Tickets: 1,500,311
Average Gross: $7,479,043

Landing at No. 9 on Pollstar’s Top 100 Tours Worldwide chart for 2024, Metallica proves rock and roll is far from dead. In fact, fans are just as hungry as ever. The metal pioneers grossed $179.4 million over six months of touring in 2024, which included stops in North America and Europe.The “M72 World Tour” kicked off on April 27, 2023, in Amsterdam in support of Metallica’s 11th studio album, 72 Seasons. The tour is set to continue into next year, concluding on Nov. 19, 2025, in Auckland, New Zealand, with 80 shows total. 

Metallica is represented by Independent Artist Group’s Adam Kornfeld and Dennis Arfa, and is managed by Q Prime’s Cliff Burnstein and Peter Mensch. The band has become a steady touring machine, with a manageable yearly load that consistently puts up big numbers on the charts.

“We go out every year and we generally play around 25 shows a year worldwide, and it’s not tied to a new album or anything else, so we’re consistent in that regard,” Burnstein, who’s been Metallica’s manager since 1984, tells Pollstar. “In any one year, somebody is going out on a new album and starting their cycle, and will always rank higher than we do, because we don’t play as many shows. And that’s by design. We decided collectively for the mental and physical health of the band that this is the best way to tour.” 

Metallica won Rock Tour Of The Year at the 2024 Pollstar Awards, with the band up for the honor once again in 2025. The band’s Lars Ulrich was in attendance at the awards ceremony at The Wiltern theater in Los Angeles to accept the award, saying, “Forty-two years ago, we started not too far from here. Our little rock and roll band started over in Downey. And we were outsiders, misfits, disenfranchised, trying to figure what the fuck was up, down and sideways. I was 17, James [Hetfield] was 18. And the idea that we could win awards like this 42 years later would at that time seem so fucking preposterous and just, like, a total mindfuck. To be in the same category as artists like Bruce Springsteen and The Grateful Dead and to go on a tour like we’ve been on this year where we’ve played a couple nights over at SoFi Stadium, which is literally, literally down the street from where we started is totally fucking crazy. So, the fact that we’re still around and functioning, or somewhat functioning, I’m very grateful for. But the fact that hard music, heavy music is still such a force to be reckoned with, and that the fans and even the mainstream audience has embraced it over the last three or four decades is totally, totally crazy cool. So thank you to all the fans and the industry for that.” 

Highlights from the band’s 2024 tour dates include a total $24.7 million gross from four dates in Mexico City Sept. 22-29. The four shows took place at Estadio GNP Seguros (the year’s No. 1 grossing stadium), with a total of 253,370 tickets sold. 

“It’s really difficult to get a four-piece band sounding like Metallica with such density from sound,” Burnstein says. “It’s really hard to mix that and have it sound good in a stadium, and we’ve just perfected that whole process with our mixing, our speaker placement, all of that. But, Mexico, for me, just seemed to hit a peak. I was with a number of people who have said that they cannot believe how good the sound was there. They’d never heard a better stadium sound.” 

Metallica’s July 5 and 7 shows at PGE Naradowy in Warsaw, Poland, also pulled a large crowd, with a total of 154,258 ticket holders grossing $25 million. Burnstein also notes the shows at Gillette Stadium in Foxborough, Massachusetts, as a major highlight for the band.

The tour’s setlist includes now-classics like “For Whom the Bell Tolls,” “Nothing Else Matters,” “Seek & Destroy,” “Master Of Puppets” and “Enter Sandman,” as well as newer music. 

Next year, they’ll hit the road again in April with stops across North America including Toronto, Nashville, Atlanta, Denver and more before wrapping up the seven-leg “M72 Tour” Down Under.