Ed Sheeran Breaks Records

Ed Sheeran’s Divide tour grossed just over $432.4 million dollars in a calendar year, with sales of 4,860,482 tickets across 53 cities and 94 shows. That’s the highest tour gross and most tickets sold in any year in Pollstar’s 30 year history.

Ed’s tour isn’t the highest grossing tour in history – that would be U2’s 360 tour, which took in $736 million and 7.36 million tickets. But U2’s tour took over two years to reach that amount, 2009 through its 2011 end.

Not only is Ed’s tour impressive for the money it earned, but it’s even more impressive that his top ticket price was about $89. The average ticket price for 2018 for a top 10 tour was over $126. Not only that, but Ed also didn’t sell any VIP tickets for the tour, which other artists make big bucks on.

Stuart Camp, Ed’s manager, tells Pollstar, “Our adage has always been to be as democratic and fair as possible. We do meet and greets, but they’re for disadvantaged kids or contest winners; we don’t sell them, and similarly with VIP ticketing… Some kid who’s there and hasn’t got a job should have the same chances and the same access as anyone else.”

The Divide tour resumes in February and wraps up in August. By the end of 2019, Ed may have broken U2’s record.

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According to Pollstar, 2018 saw the Top 10 of the Worldwide Tours chart surpass $2 billion in grosses for the first time, up from 2017’s $1.8 million, as the whole concert industry saw a record-setting amount of $10.4 billion.