A $10 Million Start for the Madame X Tour

Billboard Boxscore started counting the figures for the 16 Madame X theatre shows at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, with a combined gross of $9.6 million and 31,401 tickets – each night was sold out.

Here is an excerpt of the article from billboard.com:

Madonna Gets $10 Million Start on Madame X Tour With Brooklyn Theater Shows

After touring arenas and stadiums for much of the last four decades, Madonna is experimenting with a new format for her live shows, playing mini-residencies in theaters around the world.

The Madame X Tour kicked off with a sold-out 16-show run at Brooklyn’s Howard Gilman Opera House (the theater is one of many facilities at BAM, the Brooklyn Academy of Music). Averaging less than 2,000 seats per night, Madonna played to intimate audiences over the span of a month. According to figures reported to Billboard Boxscore, the shows combined to gross $9.6 million and sold 31,401 tickets.

Broken out by month, Madonna’s nine shows in September grossed $5.5 million (17,708 tickets), followed by seven shows from October 1-12 that earned $4.1 million (13,693 tickets). That averages out to $601,985 and 1,963 tickets per show.

Playing such intimate shows means that the extended stay at each venue is necessary in order to capture the wide-ranging audience that Madonna has previously been able to reach in just one or two shows per city. Tickets for the new tour ranged from $757 on the high end to $50. Based on the New York stint’s final figures, the average ticket sold for $306.73 – a sharp increase from her career average of $115.81.

For a more comparative look, excluding the 1980s and ’90s before ticketing exploded in the new millennium, Madonna averaged $125.46 in the 2000s and $147.33 in the current decade. Averaging as many as 41,000 fans per night on the 2008-09 Sticky & Sweet Tour, Madonna had the flexibility of charging a more reasonable ticket. But with fewer than 2,000 tickets to sell each night in 2019, she’s experimenting with higher prices.

Read the full article on billboard.com.