RBD Kicks Off ‘Soy Rebelde Tour’ With Sold-Out Texas Shows

It was a long road to get there, but RBD, a prominent Mexican pop group born out of a massively popular telenovela called “Rebelde,” finally made its triumphant return to the stage after 15 years with two sold-out stadium shows in Texas last weekend in front of 80,000-plus rabid fans, solidifying the group as one of the biggest Latin acts in live entertainment.

See Cover Story: How RBD Went From Telenovela Stars To Conquering Stadiums

RBD kicked off their highly anticipated reunion tour “Soy Rebelde,” produced by Live Nation and T6H, at Sun Bowl Stadium in El Paso, Texas, on Aug. 25, a venue not far from the border separating the United States and Mexico. The starting point was intentional as the band wanted to symbolically have the two cultures united in one place to enjoy a heavy dose of nostalgia. More than 40,000 fans showed up at the stadium, some making the short trek from Ciudad Juárez, a Mexican city in the state of Chihuahua near the border.

The quintet, comprised of Anahí, Dulce María, Maite Perroni, Christopher von Uckermann and Christian Chávez, followed up their successful opening show with a stop at Houston’s Minute Maid Park, where more than 40,000 attendees of all ages, from Gen X to Gen Z, watched the group perform more than 20 songs over two hours.

Chávez also took the time to call for unity and action in a state with laws targeting the LGBTQ+ community, which he is a part of. He recently told Pollstar that he hoped to use his platform to support a community that is “suffering.”

“I’m going to be honest: [my bandmates and I] are totally different,” he says. “We have different personalities and stand for different things, politics and beliefs but, at the end, we love and respect each other. That’s what we want to put out there because the world is so divided. … For me, as a member of the LGBTQ+ community, it’s about supporting the trans community and trans kids. That community is suffering a lot right now, and we have to put all of our attention on them and help them because they’re our brothers and sisters. We have to stick together for a better future.”

See RBD Crash Course: How A Telenovela Became A Global Fenomeno

The three women in the group also shared a message reaffirming their bond established when filming the telenovela, which ran from 2004-2006, a symbolic gesture for female unity.

The group closed the show in their iconic prep school attire from the series, performing their debut single and signature song, “Soy Rebelde.”

“I can’t really think of anything that has had that mass success in any other language,” Hans Schafer, Live Nation senior vice president of Latin touring, said. “Whether the influence was musically or culturally, that’s their legacy, and it points to how diverse we are in terms of taste musically. … This is a tour for many fans that never got to see the group for the first time. It’s reliving that nostalgia, reliving those memories that defined so many of our memories with rushing home from school to catch [“Rebelde”] live because it was going to be on at a certain time, and you have to be home to see it.”

The “Soy Rebelde Tour” will make its way to Madison Square Garden in New York City this Friday and includes stops at Chicago’s Guaranteed Rate Field, Miami-Dade Arena, Austin’s Moody Center and BMO Stadium in Los Angeles before wrapping up at Foro Sol in Mexico City, where they will perform a record six shows.

“It’s not just a show. It’s a living movement,” RBD Manager Guillermo Rosas told Pollstar. “ … The people are going to experience something that is only going to be happening that night, and it’s going to be evolving weekend by weekend. … We don’t have any limits. It’s something that we love, that tells our story and gets our point across.”

The tour has sold more than 2 million tickets and is sure to become one of the highest grossers of the year, surpassing everyone’s expectations, including the CAA agents working with RBD.

In July, Darryl Eaton, Creative Artists Agency’s co-head of North America contemporary music, said of RBD’s ticket sales: “I have never seen a tour come out of the gate with so much speed and fervor where literally there are so many markets left untouched and untapped that we hope to get to. We’re sitting on 1.4 million tickets right now, close to a $200 million gross, and there’s no sign of demand going down,”