Justin Timberlake Crosses $150 Million Mark With Man of the Woods Tour

Plus: J Balvin expands North American reach to more than 150,000 fans.

Sitting atop the Hot Tours recap dated Jan. 19 (see below) is Justin Timberlake with the first 2019 reports from the Man of the Woods Tour. After taking the late months of 2018 off due to bruised vocal cords, he returned to the stage with a vengeance, grossing $7.4 million from three mid-Atlantic shows from Jan. 4-8 in Washington, D.C., and Raleigh and Charlotte, N.C.

After being named the No. 6 tour of 2018 on Billboard’s Year-End Boxscore rankings, the Man of the Woods Tour crosses the $150 million threshold with a total of $155.5 million and more than 1.2 million tickets sold. Now out of recovery, Timberlake will play a stretch of rescheduled dates before wrapping the tour at Uncasville, Conn.’s Mohegan Sun Arena on April 13.

Meanwhile, the final North American reports are in for Latin superstar J Balvin’s 2018 Vibras tour. After supporting Enrique Iglesias and Pitbull’s massive 2014-15 run and limited headline touring in major markets, Balvin went wide, hitting familiar bases in New York and California, as well as new terrain in Texas, the Southeast and the Midwest. According to figures reported to Billboard Boxscore, he grossed $11.5 million and sold 152,247 tickets from 26 shows.

Balvin has shown tremendous growth in a few repeat markets. After scaling from New York’s Best Buy Theater in 2015 ($73,342 from 2,150 tickets sold) to his 2017 gig at the Theater at Madison Square Garden ($385,456; 5,276 tickets), he sold out Brooklyn’s Barclays Center on Oct. 20, 2018, eclipsing $1 million grossed from 12,154 tickets sold. Similarly, Balvin scaled from Boston’s House of Blues in 2015 ($97,667; 2,450 tickets) to the Boch Center in 2017 ($213,168; 3,011 tickets), and most recently to the Agganis Arena, grossing $350,223 from 4,761 tickets sold.

The highest-grossing engagement on his new North American tour was Inglewood, Calif.’s The Forum, where Balvin grossed $1.8 million and sold 23,728 tickets on Sept. 22-23, 2018. The Los Angeles-area arena was the only occasion on the trek where he played multiple nights in one market. In addition to his million-dollar plays in Inglewood and Brooklyn, Balvin crossed the $500,000 mark at the Oracle Arena (Oakland, Calif.), Allstate Arena (Rosemont, Ill.), and American Airlines Arena (Miami).

While J Balvin conquers North America, Sting and Shaggy take the 44/876 Tour to Eastern Europe, adding $4 million to their global haul. The $2.4 million from four Russian dates spanning Nov. 5-11 make the pair the country’s highest-grossing act of 2018, eclipsing Depeche Mode’s $1.9 million. This success isn’t as surprising as it seems when considering that Sting is the sixth-highest-grossing act in Russia in the history of Billboard Boxscore. Since beginning the 44/876 Tour in Bulgaria on June 19, the genre-defying duo has grossed $21 million with total attendance of 264,383.

Rounding out this week’s recap, French pop auteur Christine and the Queens makes her Hot Tours debut with $1.3 million grossed from two shows on each side of the pond. Her two sold-out shows at Brooklyn Steel grossed $145,960, becoming her highest-grossing engagement in North America. Across the Atlantic, her two-night stint at Paris’ AccorHotels Arena grossed $1.1 million, enough to become the highest-grossing engagement of her career so far.

See below for the full top 10, including Ms. Lauryn Hill, Pepe Aguilar, and Ennio Morricone.