This fall, Charli XCX & Troye Sivan Present: Sweat will bring the British and Australian pop stars to arenas across the U.S. and Canada. It’s the first time that either of them will headline North American arenas, but following their respective recent releases and subsequent solo shows – let alone the growing force behind the fall shows’ sales – they need not sweat it.
The tour, which kicks off Sept. 14 in Detroit and went on sale in April, has already sold out more than 90% of its tickets, according to Brian Greenbaum, Sivan’s agent at CAA.
Greenbaum says the tour dates in Boston, Chicago, New York and San Francisco sold out immediately, while high demand pushed a second show in Los Angeles. He notes that tickets across the tour were 67% sold after the first weekend of availability, and 70% by the end of May.
The Sweat announcement and on-sale were planted after Sivan’s latest album cycle (for the October 2023 release of Something to Give Each Other) had mainly run its course, but before Charli’s Brat rollout kicked into high gear (June 7 release date). That off-cycle and on-cycle rollout was by design, giving ample time to sell arena tickets by artists who were not historically arena acts.
But even with strong opening sales, the team behind Sweat knew they’d get “a second bite at the apple,” said Greenbaum. Since the on-sale, Sivan made his arena debut abroad, and Charli executed an entire album campaign. Rather than the typical drop-off, momentum has carried Sweat through the (Brat) summer, with Greenbaum noting that North American sales rose to 80% by mid-June and beyond 90% by the end of July.
Sivan’s third studio LP, Something to Give Each Other, earned him his first two Grammy nominations and became his first album to land multiple songs on the Billboard Hot 100.
That success set up the European leg of the Something to Give Each Other Tour, leveling him up to arenas in Europe on his own before coming Stateside with Charli. According to figures reported to Billboard Boxscore, he played 15 shows across the continent in May and June, grossing $5.7 million from 108,000 tickets sold, averaging $379,000 and 7,227 tickets per show.
Those figures mark a 225% increase over Sivan’s last European jaunt. In Amsterdam, he went from selling 6,000 tickets at AFAS Live on The Bloom Tour in 2019, to 13,500 at the Ziggo Dome in June. In Berlin, he leapt from 3,333 tickets at Tempodrom to 8,884 tickets at Velodrom. In London, his audience ballooned from 5,133 tickets at Eventim Apollo to 11,254 at OVO Arena Wembley.
In the eight European markets where Sivan returned, attendance grew by no less than double, and earnings multiplied by at least three. Assuming similar growth in the U.S., where he played more shows and commanded bigger grosses on The Bloom Tour, he is well set up for arenas in North America, especially teamed up with a similarly buzzy pop star.
In June, Charli XCX played a string of club and festival dates in North and South America. In contrast to Sivan’s international arena tour, she chose to tease their fall tour with underplays that lived in the more intimate, visceral world of Brat. Her handful of headline shows sold out, ranging from 850 tickets in Sao Paulo to 5,000 in Los Angeles.
The numbers on Charli’s live shows were intentionally smaller than Sivan’s, but the energy and word-of-mouth around them matched the intensity of the album. Not only did it debut to career-peak commercial returns (No. 3 on the Billboard 200) and universal acclaim, it has penetrated the cultural consciousness. Amid a string of music videos, remixes and viral dance challenges, Brat has infiltrated the 2024 U.S. election cycle via a swirl of memes and momentum behind Democratic presidential hopeful Kamala Harris (“kamala IS brat,” Charli virally tweeted last month).
It’s perfect timing, then, for Sivan and Charli to join forces on Sweat. In her own words, in Billboard‘s July cover story, it finally made sense due to the dance-leaning nature of both of their albums – the first No. 1 for each of them on Top Dance/Electronic Albums. They’ve built toward arena status over their decade-plus careers, each building cult-pop success from one album to another.
Beginning her career with a smattering of hits with Iggy Azalea and Icona Pop and songwriting credits alongside Selena Gomez and Shawn Mendes, Charli continued to accrue acclaim for her solo projects, growing her base from 965 tickets per show on 2014’s Girl Power North America Tour, to 1,439 on 2019’s Charli Live Tour, and then to almost 4,000 tickets on 2022’s Crash the Live Tour. Sivan’s recent European leg grew his base two-to-one, while The Bloom Tour expanded his reach worldwide, with more than 60 shows on five continents.
With more than a month left before Sweat begins, sales are expected to creep closer toward a continental sell-out. Just this week, Brat track “360” jumped from No. 78 to No. 55 on the Hot 100, while “Apple” debuted, becoming the album’s third track to chart. A new remix looms, hinting at more gas in the tank in the remaining weeks before opening night.
Both Sivan and Charli will tour on their own again after Sweat wraps, with each artist playing hometown shows in Oceania and the U.K., respectively. By the end of the year, their combined ticket sales could approach 500,000 in 2024.