Beyoncé tops the weekly Hot Tours ranking with $66.4 million in ticket sales from the Mrs. Carter Show world tour that kicked off in mid-April and wrapped for the year in December.
This week’s reported totals include most of the performances from the first leg of the tour that covered 15 European countries from the April 15 launch through the beginning of June. Some of the fall dates in South America and Australia are also included in this tally, along with the 15-city North American trek that wrapped right before Christmas.
The final performance before the tour’s winter break came in New York on Dec. 22, the last of two concerts booked at Brooklyn’s Barclays Center. Combining the totals from both shows (Dec. 19 and 22), the engagement drew almost 28,000 fans. Ticket sales topped $3.6 million from sellouts on both nights at the 15-month old arena.
Adding this week’s box office totals to those that were reported earlier in the year, the Mrs. Carter tour’s overall gross now totals $178 million from more than 1.5 million tickets at 103 performances. Included in those counts are headlining performances at BET Experience in Los Angeles and the Essence Music Festival in New Orleans last summer. After the current winter break, the Mrs. Carter Show tour is set to resume on Feb. 20 in Glasgow, the first night of its final leg. A 10-city swing through Europe will close at the end of March.
Prince places second on this week’s ranking of top-grossing tours with revenue reported from his three-night stand at Mohegan Sun Arena in Uncasville, Conn., during the week after Christmas. The Purple One performed for more than 20,000 fans during the year-end run (Dec. 27-29), topping $3.6 million in sold tickets. Fellow Rock and Roll Hall of Famer Billy Joel also performed to an arena crowd to close out 2013, earning the No. 4 slot on Hot Tours with a $2.7 million gross. His sold out New Year’s Eve performance featured Ben Folds Five as show opener at Barclays Center with almost 17,000 in attendance.
Jerry Seinfeld and the Avett Brothers also land among the week’s top 10 with year-end performances. Seinfeld returned to Las Vegas to play a multiple-show run at the Colosseum at Caesars Palace for the 27th time since the venue opened in 2003. His most recent engagement earns him this week’s No. 7 ranking with more than 6,200 fans on hand for concerts on Dec. 26 and 27. The Avett Brothers follow in the No. 8 slot with a New Year’s Eve concert at the Time Warner Cable Arena in Charlotte, N.C. A packed house with 12,566 fans rang in 2014 with the native North Carolinians and opening act Shovels & Rope.
