Bad Bunny has become the first Latin artist to earn $1 billion in ticket sales from touring without singing in English, the music industry magazine Billboard reported Thursday.
According to data compiled by Billboard Boxscore, based on his performances between 2017 and 2019, the 2022 “El Último Tour del Mundo” tour and the current “Debí Tirar Más Fotos” tour, Bad Bunny has earned $1.08 billion and sold 6.4 million tickets across 260 reported concerts.
According to Billboard, fewer than 25 artists have surpassed $1 billion in Boxscore’s 40-year history, including Bad Bunny, who is the first Latin artist to earn that amount in box office revenue.
In addition, he is the first artist to do so without performing music in English.
And as of now, according to figures reported to Billboard Boxscore, the “Debí Tirar Más Fotos” tour has grossed $360 million and sold 2.4 million tickets during its first 41 shows, including the ten performances held at the Riyadh Air Metropolitano in Madrid from May 30 to June 15.
Bad Bunny’s 10 concerts in Madrid sold 623,000 tickets, putting his tour at the top with 2.36 million tickets sold, compared to the 1.81 million sold during the 2011 “Progress Live” tour by the British group Take That.
Before arriving in the Spanish capital, Bad Bunny took his tour to Colombia, Chile, Argentina, Brazil, Japan, Australia, and Portugal, among other countries—excluding the United States.
For its part, the Rolling Stones’ “14 On Fire” tour in 2014 grossed $165.2 million and sold 863,000 tickets in Asia, Europe, and Oceania, according to Billboard.
Meanwhile, with Bad Bunny’s first set of European shows now reported, the “Debí Tirar Más Fotos” tour is already his biggest to date, both in terms of revenue and attendance, surpassing the 2022 “World’s Hottest Tour,” which generated $314.1 million and sold 1.9 million tickets.
With 15 more dates yet to be reported before the tour wraps up on July 22 in Brussels, the entire world tour is expected to gross $450 million or more.
This isn’t the first time Bad Bunny has broken down barriers among Latin and non-English-speaking artists.
In 2020, “El Último Tour del Mundo” became the first album recorded entirely in Spanish to top the Billboard 200 chart, while in 2022, he became the first non-English-speaking artist to top Billboard’s year-end Top Artists chart.
Similarly, this year he became the first artist to win a Grammy for Album of the Year for an album recorded entirely in Spanish, for *Debí Tirar Más Fotos*, according to Agencia EFE.