Renaissance World Tour
The Renaissance World Tour was the ninth concert tour by American singer-songwriter Beyoncé. Her highest-grossing tour to date, it was staged in support of her seventh studio album, Renaissance (2022). The tour comprised 56 shows, beginning on May 10, 2023, in Stockholm, Sweden, and concluding on October 1, 2023, in Kansas City, Missouri. It was Beyoncé's first tour since the On the Run II Tour in 2018, and was her fourth all-stadium tour.
This article is about the concert tour. For its companion film, see Renaissance: A Film by Beyoncé.Location
- Europe
- North America
May 10, 2023
October 1, 2023
56
2.78 million
$579 million
The concerts lasted between two and a half and three hours and were split into six or seven acts, with Beyoncé performing the tracks from Renaissance in order, interspersed with songs from across her discography. The stage consisted of a giant screen with a large "portal" in its center, and featured sculptures, robotic arms and ultraviolet technology.
According to official figures provided by Billboard Boxscore, the tour broke ticket sales records worldwide, becoming the seventh-highest-grossing concert tour of all time, the highest-grossing tour ever by a female artist,[a] and the highest-grossing tour by a black artist. It also achieved the two highest monthly tour grosses in history and ranked at number one on the Top Tours Year End 2023 list. The shows received critical acclaim, with particular praise for the production value and Beyoncé's vocal performances. The tour boosted both local and national economies and was a sociocultural phenomenon. Renaissance: A Film by Beyoncé, which chronicles the creation and execution of the tour, was released in cinemas on December 1, 2023.
Background
The tour was teased on October 23, 2022, when Beyoncé auctioned a ticket for an unspecified show. It was sold for $50,000 in a charity auction[2] at the Wearable Art Gala to support the WACO Theatre.[3] It included two tickets to the concert, first-class airfare, a three-night hotel stay, and a personal backstage tour led by Beyoncé's mother.[4] On February 1, 2023, Beyoncé announced the tour via her Instagram account.[5]
In March 2023, Business leaders in western Sydney began advocating for Accor Stadium to take priority over Allianz Stadium for a Beyoncé concert in New South Wales, due to Accor having twice the audience capacity to accommodate her ticket demand.[6] The possibility of Allianz Stadium securing a Renaissance World Tour concert has chiefly provoked the New South Wales government to end a 57-year ban on holding more than four concerts per year at the stadium.[7] The ban could be lifted as soon as October 2023 to allow the venue to host Beyoncé in 2024. The Premier of New South Wales said that this could bring local businesses "an additional $1.3 billion."[8] The concert cap has existed since 1965 due to noise complaints from nearby residents, but now the government is pushing to increase it to 20 concerts per year.[9]
In April 2023, Beyoncé rented an indoor arena, Paris La Défense Arena, in Nanterre, to rehearse for the tour.[10] She underwent knee surgery just a month before the reherseals and was in rehab while the tour started.[11] Khirye Tyler and Dammo Farmer are credited as the tour's music directors, with Damien Smith as head of the music production and Tiffany Moníque Ryan as Vocal Director.[12] Producer Amorphous assisted with the show's musical arrangements,[13] while composer Emily Bear was the featured pianist for the tour.[14]
Ticketing
Alongside the announcement of the tour, it was also announced that a public on-sale for the North American leg would initially not happen, with all initial ticket sales for the leg using Ticketmaster's Verified Fan system. In addition, all the cities in the North American leg of the tour would be split into three different registration groups that would all have different registration periods and on-sale times.
Jay Peters of The Verge noted that this spreading out of demand appeared to be an attempt by Ticketmaster to prevent an incident identical to the 2022 Ticketmaster fiasco of Taylor Swift's Eras Tour that had occurred less than three months earlier, in which the website crashed during the Verified Fan presale. Peters questioned how effective the strategy would be since people could sign up for each of the registration groups instead of just one.[15] In light of the mismanagement of Swift's concert ticket sales, and the U.S. Senate hearing it sparked,[16] the Senate Judiciary Committee tweeted from their official Twitter account, "We're watching, @Ticketmaster," in reference to the Renaissance World Tour ticketing.[17]
In light of this, Ticketmaster has implemented new policies to try and combat difficulty for concertgoers and to "create a less crowded ticket shopping experience for fans". Registration does not guarantee a ticket. Instead, a "lottery-style process" affects who is placed on the waitlist and who is given a unique access code after registering as a Verified Fan.[18] Tickets bought in European markets also cannot be resold on Ticketmaster for more than their original price.[19]
Production
Staging and lighting
The tour was planned in the lapse of four years and three identical stages for the show were developed, with one stage being set up in a city while the other two travelled to be constructed in the following destinations.[20] The design process took eighteen months and was held in charge by Es Devlin Studio and Stufish Entertainment Architects, along with Beyoncé and her creative team, Parkwood.[21][22] The staging consists of two separate platforms connected by a broad ramp: the A stage with a circle shaped cavity in the middle of a giant, flat screen; while the B stage is subdivided in a circumferenced structure surrounding the so-called VIP section "Club Renaissance", with an extension of the ramp acting as the radius of the layout.[23] It also features monumental sculptures and metallic tanks, mannequin-horses, robotic arms, pyrotechnics and ultraviolet technology.[24][25] Beyoncé was treated for bronchitis and had nearly continual sinus infections as a result of excess inhalation of the various smoke effects on stage.[20]