Euro Vision: Europe’s Top Touring Stars By The Numbers

At the end of 2024, the collective gross for the top 100 touring artists reached a record-setting $9.5 billion from ticket sales at shows performed all over the world. Europe was a prime destination for many as accumulated grosses at European venues totaled just under $3 billion for the top 100 artists who performed on the continent. Clearly, the European touring market is highly developed and, for many artists, highly lucrative market.

Among those headliners, five who ranked in the top 10 on the Top 200 Worldwide Touring Artists for 2024 also land among the top 10 artists for the 2025 Magna Charta spotlight (page 39). Taylor Swift and Coldplay, who ranked Nos. 1 and 2 respectively in the year-end issue, held on to those same results. Her estimated gross in Europe represents nearly two-thirds of her billion-plus 2024 total haul at $663.5 million from 3.7 million tickets, while Coldplay’s European gross totaled $248.1 million — nearly 60% of its 2024 gross — with attendance at 1.9 million.

Swift’s “Eras Tour” included 48 performances at 17 stadiums in European cities in 2024. Of those concerts, eight were at London’s Wembley Stadium where she tied the record for most shows during a single tour, joining Take That (No. 5 on Magna Charta) who sold out eight nights at the stadium in 2011 during the band’s “Progress Live” tour.

Her tour featured at least two shows at each of the 17 venues on the trek, except one: Principality Stadium in Cardiff, Wales, with a single concert in June. In seven of the cities on the “Eras Tour” – Liverpool and Edinburgh in the U.K., Dublin, Stockholm, Amsterdam, Warsaw and Gelsenkirchen, Germany, – she performed for three nights. Her only four-night engagement was the European opener, May 9-12, at Paris La Défense Arena in Nanterre, France.

Coldplay’s presence in Europe in 2024 included 32 performances of the band’s “Music of the Spheres World Tour.” Four stadiums on the itinerary hosted four concerts each, while four more had three shows booked. Then, two of the stadiums welcomed the tour for two nights. All 10 stadiums moved over 100,000 tickets each and grossed more than $11 million.

The stadium with the highest 2024 gross on the Coldplay tour was Croke Park in Dublin. The venue racked up a whopping $49.5 million from 329,200 tickets at four concerts from Aug. 29 through Sep. 2. It currently ranks as the second-highest gross for a single engagement since the tour began in 2022. The band’s largest gross of $49.7 million came from 10 performances in Buenos Aires at Estadio Monumental late in 2022.

Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band is third among the top-grossing artists featured in the Magna Charta spotlight, based on $158.5 million in revenue from 1.2 million tickets sold at 22 stadium shows in Europe in 2024. Wembley Stadium had the largest gross among the rock legend’s European concerts with a $25.2 million box-office take from 153,904 sold tickets at two sellouts last July. His largest ticket count, though, was 161,379 from three performances in Madrid, Spain, at Estadio Cívitas Metropolitano in June. The gross there totaled just under $17 million.

Springsteen also played North American venues last year with close to the same number of shows as he performed in Europe – only three more in the U.S. and Canada, but the North American dates were primarily set in arenas rather than stadiums. Thus, the tour’s 2024 gross total in North America was almost $57 million less than across the pond.

With a $367.3 million worldwide gross in 2024, P!NK was third overall in the year-end recap, but in Europe, she earns the fourth position with a $106.9 million gross from 17 of her 67 performances. The European numbers come from an all-stadium run of her “Summer Carnival Tour” during June and July. She sold a total of 822,333 tickets at 12 venues, five of which booked two concerts. Among them was London’s Tottenham Hotspur Stadium where she recorded her top venue gross of $14.6 million from 102,031 tickets, June 15-16. Also in the U.K., Glasgow’s Hampden Park logged her only other gross in the $14 million range, based on sales at two concerts.

At No. 5, Take That is the highest ranked headliner who did not land in the top 10 in the year-end review. The pop group took the 34th ranking in December from a 55-show gross, but 53 of those shows occurred in Europe during 2024 when the band was on the road from mid-April through mid-October in support of their ninth studio album, This Life. The tour’s highest-grossing engagement was a six-show run in April and May at The O2 Arena in London. With 90,438 tickets sold during the six-day span, the gross reached $11.3 million.

Take That’s combined gross from venues in Europe totaled $83.5 million in 2024, which is only $1.4 million less than their overall worldwide gross figure last year. The difference was $1.07 million from arena events in two Australian cities on the tour’s trek though Oceania and Asia.

Metallica is the fifth headliner to land in the top 10 in both the year-end ranking and this week’s chart. The band ranks No. 6 with $76.8 million from 624,817 tickets sold at five stadiums in Europe, each with two-show engagements. Two concerts at PGE Narodowy in Warsaw produced the top gross of $25.1 million in July, while a two-show run at Munich’s Olympic Stadium in May had the band’s top attendance on record with 155,791 tickets sold. The European events were part of the heavy metal group’s ongoing “M72 World Tour” that began in April 2023 and is booked through Nov. 19 of this year.

Ranked No. 7, André Rieu is one of four headliners in the top 10 to hail from a European country. The Dutch orchestra conductor and violinist grossed over $20 million of his overall $77 million boxoffice total in 2024 at two venues in his hometown of Maastricht, Netherlands. During July he sold 103,606 tickets at 12 outdoor performances in Het Vrijthof, the city’s large urban square. Then in December, he played six indoor shows at the MECC convention center, attended by 70,289 fans.

AC/DC follows at No. 8 based on summer stadium performances during the opening leg of the band’s “Power Up Tour” that kicked off in Europe last May. From seven reported shows at venues in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, France and Ireland, a total of 463,218 tickets were sold at five venues for a $69.3 million gross. The open-air venue, Rinne in Dresden, Germany, made the largest impact at the box office with a gross of $17.7 million from 131,431 sold tickets at two June concerts.
For Houston rapper Travis Scott, his No. 9 Magna Charta ranking comes from a $60.5 million gross earned at 19 performances of his “Circus Maximus” tour’s European leg. With shows booked from June 28 through Aug. 4, ticket sales from 15 venues, both stadiums and arenas, totaled 517,978. Among the stadiums, GelreDome in Arnhem, Netherlands, and Deutsche Bank Park in Frankfurt, Germany, both hosted two concerts, while Madrid’s WiZink Center had the tour for two nights and MEO Arena in Lisbon, Portugal, booked three performances.

Then, Ed Sheeran moved 663,702 tickets at 15 concerts in 13 venues for a box-office gross of $57.4 million to score the tenth ranking. The English singer’s summer shows were all held in stadiums or large outdoor concert sites during the 2024 European leg of his ongoing “Mathematics” tour. His best ticket total was 104,804 in Gdańsk, Poland.