Manner earlier than he grew to become a boy band impresario, Lou Pearlman leased airplanes, blimps, and helicopters. However, as the primary cousin of Art Garfunkel, he was all the time fascinated by the music enterprise.
Within the late Nineteen Seventies, Lou launched a profitable helicopter taxi service that transported folks to and from New York Metropolis. Whereas this enterprise boomed, he launched a publicly traded firm that chartered blimps and personal planes to companies and rich people. The blimps have been primarily rented to firms like Met Life and McDonald’s for use as big floating billboards, not for transportation. The personal planes have been principally rented out to rich businessmen touring forwards and backwards to conferences.
Most shoppers have been boring businessmen, however one fateful day within the Nineteen Eighties, Lou’s life was modified eternally when the boy band New Children On The Block chartered one in every of his most costly planes for his or her North American tour. Pearlman was shocked to find {that a} boy band was capable of afford such an expensive personal jet for a tour everywhere in the nation. When he did the maths, all of it added as much as one conclusion: Lou Pearlman was going to kind a boy band.
He spent $3 million holding nationwide auditions, recruiting skilled songwriters, and in 1993 lastly hand-picked 5 younger singers:
- AJ McLean
- Howie Dorough
- Nick Carter
- Kevin Richardson
- Brian Littrell
Collectively, they grew to become the Backstreet Boys.
A number of years later, Lou pulled the entire thing off once more when he shaped N’SYNC. And a couple of decade after that, he was convicted of conducting a massive Ponzi scheme and, in 2016, died in jail whereas serving a 25-year sentence. However that is a narrative for an additional day. Right this moment I wish to discuss concerning the earnings and losses artists earn from a serious musical tour.
Traditionally, when a serious musical group just like the Backstreet Boys or Pearlman’s different boy band, N’SYNC, embarks on a world tour, the earnings that ultimately hit the financial institution accounts of the particular artists aren’t significantly thrilling.
A tour would possibly gross tons of of thousands and thousands of {dollars}, however that gross income is rapidly whittled down by countless excessive prices. Think about all of the gear, lighting rigs, LED screens, props, pyrotechnics, audio system, levels, and devices that have to be transported from metropolis to metropolis. Add in dozens of semi-trucks to haul the gear, full crews to load and unload at each cease, countless resort payments, backstage catering for tons of of individuals, safety, insurance coverage, gasoline, freight, and storage between exhibits. To make all of it work on tight schedules, the performers themselves usually must journey by personal jet, or in some instances, lease a whole transformed Boeing 747, simply to maintain tempo with the logistics.
And all of that is assuming the group sells sufficient tickets to interrupt even within the first place! If we had the precise numbers, I wager we would be shocked to see how little cash artists make from a large tour. I would not be stunned to study that some artists truly LOSE cash from a serious tour.
However let’s assume an artist is promoting out each stadium. Even on this best-case state of affairs, the artist could solely earn 15-25% of the gross income earned from a tour. Let’s assume 20%.
With that in thoughts, take Beyoncé’s just lately accomplished “Cowboy Carter” tour, which wrapped final month. After 32 stadium exhibits, the tour grossed $400 million in income, setting the file for the highest-grossing nation tour of all time. However as soon as bills and promoter cuts are taken out, if Beyoncé nets 20%, that equates to round $80 million. Clearly, that is an unbelievable payday. Nevertheless it got here at the price of performing practically nonstop from April to July, zig-zagging throughout the USA in entrance of two.5 million ticket consumers.
Or take Taylor Swift’s “Eras” tour. The Eras tour grossed $2.1 billion, which obliterated the file for the highest-grossing tour of all time. The Eras tour was energetic just about nonstop for 20 months between March 2023 and December 2024. Taylor carried out for roughly 10 million attendees at 149 occasions. It was additionally BY FAR the most costly tour ever carried out, however let’s assume Taylor managed to keep up a 20% margin. That equates to a $400 million pre-tax web windfall for Taylor, aka Beyoncé’s complete gross income. Additionally, remember that Taylor and Beyoncé are solo acts, so they do not should share the earnings with a bunch of bandmates.
And whereas these numbers are jaw-dropping, additionally they spotlight how a lot time, effort, and expense are required to earn them. Which brings us again to the Backstreet Boys. As an alternative of dragging a world tour throughout continents, these 5 nearly-50-year-old geniuses have discovered a approach to generate stadium-level cash all from a single location…
(Photograph by Kevin Carter/Getty Pictures)
Sphere Cash Machine
In line with well-placed sources who spoke to TMZ, the Backstreet Boys are grossing $4 million an evening at Las Vegas’s futuristic Sphere. And whereas that quantity could not sound spectacular at first look, think about the next:
In line with the sources who spoke with TMZ, the group’s greatest expense for placing on a Sphere live performance was a “one-time price of about $7 to $8 million for all of the graphics they use of their exhibits,” a price which they recouped after 2-3 exhibits.
Past that, many of the ordinary complications of touring do not exist. The Sphere handles safety, ticketing, and concessions. There isn’t any caravan of vans or hundreds of crew to fly around the globe. The Backstreet Boys simply present up and carry out.
Nick Carter lives in Las Vegas. He actually might Uber to the exhibits, however I am positive he has a automotive service. Kevin Richardson and AJ McLean seemingly hop semi-private out of Burbank on JSX for just a few hundred bucks. Brian Littrell and Howie Dorough’s Florida flights may be the priciest a part of the operation.
The outcome? Every evening’s $4 million gross is translating into an astonishingly excessive web payday. My hunch is that they’re working near an 80% margin, however let’s be conservative and name it 70%. Which raises the final word query: How a lot will every Backstreet Boy truly take dwelling by the point this run is over?
By our calculations (math under), every Backstreet Boy is making $560,000 PER SHOW, and by the point their preliminary run is over, they’ll have every netted $18 million. That is $18 million off 35 exhibits with out having to shlep internationally. The Sphere has a capability of 17,000, so after 35 exhibits (assuming all of them promote out), that is $18 million earned to carry out for 595,000 folks. And that is $18 million per Backstreet Boy. In the event that they have been a solo act, the mixed complete web is $90 million – $10 million greater than Beyoncé made off Cowboy Carter.
Per-Member Earnings (with first 3 exhibits netting $0)
- Gross per present: $4,000,000
- Assumed web margin: 70%
- Band web per present (after bills): $2,800,000
- Per member per present (5 members): $560,000
Full 35-show run (with first 3 at $0)
- Netting exhibits: 32
- Band web complete: 32 × $2,800,000 = $89,600,000
- Per member complete: 32 × $560,000 = $17,920,000
BSB vs. Beyoncé vs. Taylor
Whenever you line up the numbers facet by facet, the brilliance of the Backstreet Boys’ Sphere technique comes into focus. Beyoncé’s “Cowboy Carter” tour grossed $400 million from 32 exhibits, however at an estimated 20% margin, her private take-home was about $80 million, roughly $2.5 million per present, or $32 per fan when unfold throughout 2.5 million ticket consumers.
Taylor Swift’s record-shattering “Eras” tour grossed $2.1 billion from 149 exhibits, netting her round $420 million at a 20% margin. That works out to about $2.8 million per present and $41 per fan throughout 10 million attendees.
The Backstreet Boys, in contrast, are netting roughly $2.8 million per present on the Sphere—proper in step with Taylor’s nightly determine—however they’re doing it in entrance of simply 17,000 followers per evening. On a per-fan foundation, that is an unbelievable $150 web per attendee, practically 5 occasions extra environment friendly than the most important excursions on Earth. In different phrases, whereas Taylor and Beyoncé generate greater totals, the Backstreet Boys are squeezing way more revenue out of each seat, each evening, with out ever leaving Las Vegas.
Then vs. Now: Black & Blue Tour vs. The Sphere
Again in 2001, the Backstreet Boys launched the “Black & Blue World Tour,” which spanned 110 exhibits throughout the globe. The tour grossed a formidable $315 million, making it one of many greatest live performance excursions in historical past on the time. However regardless of the large headline quantity, the band seemingly did not take dwelling as a lot as followers would possibly assume.
Why? As a result of world excursions within the early 2000s carried crushing bills. Tens of thousands and thousands have been spent on stage design, lighting rigs, freight, pyrotechnics, and the military of employees wanted to maneuver the manufacturing from metropolis to metropolis. Add in journey prices, venue cuts, promoter splits, Lou Pearlman’s ponzi scheming… and the web margin was in all probability no increased than 10–15%. On $315 million gross, that interprets to possibly $30–45 million complete web, or roughly $6–9 million per Backstreet Boy for an exhausting 12 months of touring.
And make no mistake, that tour would have been bodily brutal. Evening after evening, they needed to go away all of it on stage, belting vocals and executing high-energy choreography in a brand new metropolis each different day. Evaluate that to immediately’s Sphere setup: the group performs in a single place, with graphics doing many of the heavy lifting. Truthfully, are their microphones even on? Would any of the 17,000 screaming followers—a lot of them nostalgic 40-somethings reliving their teen years—care if the fellows have been mouthing lyrics whereas performing some gentle synchronized dance steps? Most likely not. The visuals are spectacular, the nostalgia is actual, and the checks clear both method.
Backside line: the Backstreet Boys could have stumbled onto the best gig in music historical past. Uber to the venue, carry out for an hour, pocket $560,000 every, rinse and repeat. Do it once more in one other 12 months or two, everytime you really feel like making a straightforward $18 million.
