Concert Pulse: Bad Bunny Continues North American Domination, Why Don’t We Grows On The Road

The singer, real name Benito Antonio Martinez Ocasio and a former supermarket bagger, is selling around 17,000 tickets in multiple arenas including SAP Center in San Jose, Calif., April 20, which grossed $1.64 million, and Madison Square Garden in New York April 27, which moved 18,656 tickets and grossed $2.11 million. Other big shows reported include American Airlines Center in Dallas April 4, (15,516, $1.46 million) Allstate Arena in Rosemont, Ill., (16,853, $1.72 million), and two nights at AmericanAirlines Arena in Miami, Fla., with March 14 selling 13,897 tickets and grossed $1.17 million and March 16 selling 18,315 and grossing $1.9 million.

“Bad Bunny is becoming an institution on or around 4/20 here at SAP Center,” Steve Kirsner, SAP Center’s VP of booking and events, told Pollstar. “This year’s show was in the round and sold 16,590 tickets. He is a solid entertainer and his fans love him. We love him too, our concession numbers were very high. I also credit CMN as a fantastic partner to the artist and to us. They know how to promote Latin artists better than anyone!”

CMN being tour promoter Cardenas Marketing Network, which specializes in Latin music concert tours such as its longstanding client Marc Anthony. Company head Henry Cardenas was named one of Pollstar’s Impact 50 honorees. He told Pollstar the North American market has changed for Latin music, with changing demographics a major part.

“The market has changed drastically in the last two years,” Cárdenas said. “We used to do tours with Vicente Fernandez, Juan Gabriel, all these icons, who would play a maximum 25 shows on one tour. Right now, we are doing 45 shows with Bad Bunny. Why is that? We are visiting markets that we’ve never been to: Seattle, Kentucky, Omaha, North Carolina. None of these big stars would play these markets before. Why is that? Because of the development of the Latino market.

“Ten, 15 years ago there were maybe 20,000 Latinos, mainly Mexicans, blue-collar workers [in these markets]. Since then, those 20,000 raised a family, had kids, so now there’s 60,000. And these Latinos are bilingual, and they love guys like Bad Bunny, so we can take him there… that’s why we can do 45,000 with Bad Bunny and Maluma.” 

After festival gigs including Lollapalooza in Chicago, Bad Bunny has a full slate of dates coming up on both coasts, with arenas including the Forum near Los Angeles, Prudential Center in New Jersey, State Farm Arena in Atlanta, and wrapping at Amalie Arena in Tampa, Fla., Dec. 8. Last year Bad Bunny was No. 61 on Pollstar’s Top 200 North American tours with $20.5 million grossed. 

Another to hit the Concert Pulse chart is boy band Why Don’t We, showing a clear jump from its last tour, at No. 51 on the chart with an average gross of $223,890 on 4,744 tickets sold on eight shows reported. Those boxoffice submissions include April 14 at the Roy Wilkins Auditorium in Saint Paul, Minn., which sold out at 4,173 tickets and grossed $216,755, Rosemont Theatre in Illinois (4,254, $205,825) and Agganis Arena in Boston, which sold just under 6,000 tickets and grossed $276,353.

It’s a clear jump up from the band’s 2018 spring tour, which had many sellouts in the 2,000-3,000-ticket range on its first major headline tour. 

The five members of WDW – Jonah Marais, Corbyn Besson, Daniel Seavey, Jack Avery and Zach Herron – all had individually been “internet famous” to some degree through homemade videos posted to YouTube, Vine, Instagram and other social media platforms. Seavey was a Top 7 finalist on “American Idol” during 2015’s season 14 but, otherwise, none rose through the usual ranks of late-night TV or other pipelines for emerging talent. 

Randy Phillips, another Impact 50 honoree, is part of the management team for the band and saw the potential early. However, that left the guys to do the bulk of the work.

 “The group never took the easy way out,” he told Pollstar for a cover story on the group last year. “They worked their asses off. Doing covers would have been the easy way out but they did these mashups, their songs with other stars’ songs, and became well-known with other artists on the internet … that really helped fuel the ride.”

Other reports from the band’s recent touring include April 2 at Fox Theatre in Atlanta (4,386, $202,840), Eaglebank Arena in Fairfax, Va., April 4 (5,068, $244,180) and 5,684 tickets sold at Smart Financial Centre in Sugar Land, Texas, which grossed $268,926.

WDW’s current touring picks up again in July and continues into the fall in amphitheatres and some arenas.