The Rolling Stones’ lucky number must be 14. For the third summer in six years, the British rock legends have embarked on a 14-show tour throughout Europe, topping the $100 million mark yet again.
In celebration of the band’s sprawling six-decade career, their new tour — titled SIXTY — doubled its namesake, grossing $120.8 million from 712,000 tickets, according to figures reported to Billboard Boxscore.
For more coincidental numerology, The Stones’ two-night stay at London’s Hyde Park became its sixth engagement ever to gross more than $20 million ($22.4 million) – one for each decade of its career. Further, those shows mark the band’s sixth engagement in London to top the 100,000-ticket threshold, with attendance of 130,000.
SIXTY played from June 1 at Wanda Metropolitano in Madrid ($9.5 million; 53,000 tickets) through Aug. 3 at Waldbuhne in Berlin ($5.7 million; 22,000). The London play was the run’s only double-header and obvious highlight in terms of total gross and attendance, but Munich’s Olympiastadion show on June 5 also broke $10 million.
Overall, the brief tour averaged $8.6 million and 51,000 tickets per show. That makes it The Stones’ most fruitful European tour ever, clipping the 2017 and 2018 legs of the No Filter Tour, which averaged $8.6 million ($8.568 million, to be exact) and $8.4 million, respectively. In total grosses, it lags behind the 2003 European leg of the Licks Tour, which earned $129.7 million in a far more expansive run of 46 dates.
It’s not the first time The Stones have toured around a career milestone: 50 & Counting played 21 shows in North American arenas (plus two in London), averaging $5.5 million and 14,217 tickets per show. That gives the ’22 European stadium tour a 57% jump in nightly earnings and a 258% blast in per-show attendance. Overall, SIXTY sold more than twice the tickets of the band’s 50th-anniversary trek.
Dating back to reports from the Steel Wheels/Urban Jungle Tour in 1989, SIXTY pushes The Stones’ total European gross to $904.2 million and 10.1 million tickets, and their global Boxscore total to $2.6 billion and 28 million tickets.
