Madonna’s ‘Celebration Tour’ Tops 2024 Mid-Year Worldwide Tours

One would be hard pressed to write a better, more dramatic narrative than that of Madonna’s “Celebration Tour,” which topped Pollstar’s 2024 Mid-Year Worldwide chart, The trek was initially postponed just weeks out from its original July start date after the iconic global superstar suffered a near death experience having contracted a bacterial infection that exactly one year ago (June 24) landed her in the ICU. The tour was pushed back to October with mindless detractors erroneously claiming it was because of poor ticket sales.

What a difference a year makes.

Not only was the “Celebration Tour” not a disaster, but the universally acclaimed trek topped Pollstar’s Top 100 Mid-Year Worldwide Chart with a massive, $178.8 million gross and 856,247 tickets sold over the course of 65 shows with an average gross of $2.8 million, according to Pollstar Boxoffice reports. But that’s just a segment of the tour,
which ran from Oct. 14, 2023, to May 4, 2024, and included 80 shows with a total gross of
$227 million selling 1.13 million tickets. None of that includes her grandest of grand finales at Copacabana Beach in Rio de Janeiro where she performed for free before a record-setting 1.6 million fans.

“The tour is called the ‘Celebration Tour,’” her longtime manager Guy Oseary told Pollstar in early May. “So we’re celebrating her career, but we’re also celebrating her life. Everything was already a blessing, but it’s an even more meaningful blessing after whatshe endured and came back from.”

The show was a phantasmagorical journey through Madge’s stunning 40-year career with some 30 songs over the course of a two-and- a-half-hour house party with 20 dancers, five choreographers, a Macy’s store worth of costuming, high-tech production, special guests, her children, a “Vogue” dance-off and more. It’s divided into five chapters – Uptown, Downtown, Midtown, East and West – corresponding to periods in Madonna’s career. This includes her NYC club era with references to the city’s famed Paradise Garage and Danceteria; her 1984 MTV performance of “Like a Virgin,” a touching tribute to those lost during the AIDS epidemic; and so much else.

“The show is awe-inspiring,” said her longtime promoter, Live Nation’s legendary Arthur Fogel, who’s worked with Madonna for more than 20 years. “With this tour and this show, you realize her catalog of hits, apart from everything else Madonna’s done, but the actual hit after hit after hit, she has been such a strong musical force in the world for so long. It’s awe-inspiring, really.”

“Madonna is unbelievable, no one could have done what she’s done,” says Sara Zambreno, her co-manager a few days after her record-setting Rio show. “Madonna leads the charge. She picks the creatives that she wants to get togethe with and gets them all in a room and everyone starts creating together. ‘I like this, I don’t like that. More of this, less of that.’ It’s her leading it all, which is why it works. There’s a strong voice that’s giving a very strong opinion. It’s a great process and she’s involved in every part of that process.”

Zambreno credits her collaborators, including Eyob Yohannes, who did costuming; Jamie King, the tour director, who she says “speaks the same vocabulary” as Madonna; Lewis James who came in as creative director; Ric Lipson, the stage architect; Rob Sinclair, the lighting designer, and Sasha Kasiuha, the content director, who made the incredible content for the “Live to Tell” AIDS memorial.

“It’s quite an amazing, amazing team that Jamie oversees,” Zambreno says, “but it’s people who really have their own spaces and work directly with Madonna to bring it to life.”

Madonna is one of the greatest touring artists of all time and her “The Celebration Tour” is only her latest accomplishment. She’s mounted 12 major tours and grossed a jaw-dropping $1.61 billion selling more than 12.6 million tickets over 650 shows, according to Pollstar Boxoffice reports, with six tours grossing over $100 million. Her 2008-9 “Sticky
and Sweet Tour” was the all-time highest grossing tour by a woman until just last
year. The run grossed $419 million and when adjusted for inflation, it’s still the second-highest earning tour by a woman ever, coming in at $592.7 million. Adding to that tally is 2012’s “MDNA Tour,” which grossed $301 million; 2006’s “Confessions Tour,” which cleared $194 million, and 2015-16’s “Rebel Heart Tour” which earned $169.8 million. Her “Re-Invention Tour” grossed $125.3 million.

That’s a lot to celebrate.