Bad Bunny's 2022 tour sold out. Does this mean concerts are back?

Bad Bunny.
(Image credit: Kevin Winter/Getty Images for The Recording Academy)

Bad Bunny is stepping out of the ring and onto the stage in 2022, and he's already breaking records.

Pre-sale tickets for the Grammy winner's 2022 tour, El Último Tour del Mundo, went live on April 15, and set the record for the fastest-selling tour on Ticketmaster since 2018's Beyoncé and Jay-Z On the Run II.

Eager fans bought more than 600,000 tickets in a week, and the scalping market is booming, with tickets selling for an average of $2,400 — that's 10 times their original price, Billboard reports. Fans joked it was more difficult to get Bad Bunny tickets than a COVID-19 vaccine appointment, citing long queues and a Ticketmaster crash.

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After a year without concerts, live music is inching closer. A March stadium concert in Barcelona was safely attended by 5,000 people, and Ticketmaster has reportedly been working on a way to vet vaccination status and COVID test results for concertgoers.

But a full-scale return of concerts depends on vaccination levels and COVID-19 variants, experts told Rolling Stone. While outdoor concerts may work this summer, industry insiders aren't expecting a full-scale return until early 2022, which is when Bad Bunny's 35-city North American tour kicks off. Billboard reports the tour is projected to make between $63 million and $84 million, and the scalping market could make double that.

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Taylor Watson

Taylor Watson is audience engagement editor for TheWeek.com and a former editorial assistant. She graduated from Syracuse University, with a major in magazine journalism and minors in food studies and nutrition. Taylor has previously written for Runner's World, Vice, and more.