Hilary Duff Accepts Pop Tour Award as Lucky Me Tour Passes 610,000 Tickets

Hilary Duff accepted the Outstanding Pop Tour of the Year award at the Billboard Live Music Summit on Tuesday, 10 November, at the 1 Hotel West Hollywood. The honour recognises her Lucky Me Tour, which she discussed on stage with Billboard executive editor Lyndsey Havens.

The tour is her first in almost 20 years. Duff toured behind her album luck… or something after a long break from the road, and the numbers from its opening leg are now public. According to Billboard Boxscore, the tour has grossed $48.3 million from 610,000 tickets sold across its first 40 shows. Gross is the total value of ticket sales before any costs are taken out.

The tour is not finished. It will continue with 32 more arena dates across Europe, Latin America and the United States, running from May through November. Arenas are large indoor venues, and each date adds to the total that promoters and artists count as a live run.

Behind those figures sit people. A tour of this size needs stagehands, lighting and sound crews, truck drivers, bus drivers and venue staff, often hired city by city. Each extra date keeps those jobs running for a few more weeks, and each show is also a night's work for the musicians on stage.

Duff was also Billboard's cover star at the time of the summit, a placement the magazine gives to the artist it is featuring that season. The summit itself is an industry gathering where executives, artists and managers discuss touring, recording and the business that connects them.

For fans, the next part of the schedule is the one to watch. The arena leg is set to run for most of next year, with dates on three continents. Ticket prices and on-sale dates for each city are set by the promoters and venues involved, and they are the details most likely to change how many people see the show.

Awards like this one are given by industry publications rather than by public vote, so they reflect how the trade measures a tour. Here the measure is ticket sales, attendance and the length of the run. Those are the figures the award was judged on, and they are the figures the tour will keep adding to as the arena dates continue.