Travis Scott’s Circus Maximum Sets New Record for Highest Selling Tour by a Solo Rapper

Travis Scott closed out the Circus Maximus Tour on Halloween after more than a year of cross-continental shows. According to figures reported to Billboard Boxscore, the trek grossed $209.3 million and sold 1.7 million tickets over 76 dates.

Those numbers are massive without qualification, but they are monumental in hip-hop. No solo rapper has ever sold that many tickets on one tour. Previously, Jay-Z cracked two million while co-headlining the On the Run II Tour with Beyoncé in 2018. The only other unaccompanied rapper to report more than a million tickets on a single tour is 50 Cent on last year’s The Final Lap Tour (1.1 million), celebrating the 20-year anniversary of Get Rich or Die Tryin.’

Though the Circus Maximus Tour began in arenas, Scott interspersed stadium dates as 2023 rolled into 2024. First, amid 43 arena shows in the U.S. and Canada, he sold out SoFi Stadium in Inglewood, Calif. (12 miles from downtown Los Angeles). And while his European leg began indoors, he broke stadiums in London, Koln, and Milan, selling more than 71,000 tickets in the lattermost city.

Stadiums followed in Sao Paulo, Mexico City, New York and across Oceania. The last nine shows of the tour in September and October moved 415,000 tickets, or 24% of the tour’s total attendance, despite accounting for just 12% of the trek’s shows.

Melbourne, Australia, was the biggest stop of Scott’s tour. Two shows on Oct. 22-23 grossed $12.6 million and sold 115,000 tickets.

The scale of the Circus Maximus Tour – stadiums on four continents – is unprecedented in hip-hop. 50 Cent and Nicki Minaj, each of whom cracked $100 million on tours of their own over the last two years, played in North America and Europe. Drake, who has crossed the nine-figure mark multiple times, only played in the U.S. and Canada on It’s All a Blur. The language barrier for a particularly wordy genre could mean that extensive touring in Europe and Latin America is difficult, but Scott’s global hits and onstage spectacle helped translate his show to international audiences.

Even stateside, Scott’s 2023-24 stadium shows are groundbreaking for rappers. Eminem and Jay-Z have played similar venues, but the former toured alongside Rihanna and the latter has done it next to Beyonce and Justin Timberlake. Eminem and Jay-Z did play stadiums together in 2010 during a commercial boom for both, but just two in Detroit and two in New York on The Home & Home Tour.

As a soloist, Eminem played two shows at Detroit’s Ford Field in 2003, plus a show in Hawaii in 2019. He’s also a proven stadium sellout in Australia and New Zealand. 50 Cent has one reported solo stadium show in Sao Paulo.

Scott’s world tour improved upon his previous outing in every conceivable way. Scott sold 53% more tickets per show on The Circus Maximus Tour than on Astroworld: Wish You Were Here in 2018-19 (22,494 vs. 14,692), he played more than 20 more shows (76 vs. 55) and commanded 65% more per ticket ($122.46 vs. $74.43).

In total, the Circus Maximus Tour sold more than twice the tickets of its predecessor (1.7 million vs. 808,000) and grossed more than three times as much ($209.3 million vs. $60.1 million).

The Circus Maximus Tour was in support of Utopia, Scott’s fourth studio album. The set debuted atop the Billboard 200 and stayed there for four weeks, and sent three songs – “Meltdown,” featuring Drake; “FEIN!,” featuring Playboi Carti; and “K-Pop” featuring Bad Bunny and The Weeknd – to the top 10 of the Billboard Hot 100.

Dating back to a sold-out show at Los Angeles’ The Fonda Theatre ($42,000; 1,200 tickets), Scott has grossed $275.3 million and sold 2.6 million tickets.