Christopher BarrettMadonna has ended her The Celebration Tour with the largest concert ever staged by a single act.
The veteran artist’s free Brazil concert at Rio’s Copacabana beach on Saturday, 4 May, was attended by an audience of 1.6 million. Promoter Live Nation Entertainment (LNE) said that apart from the annual New Year’s Eve event on Copacabana Beach, the Rolling Stones held the previous record for largest audience for almost 20 years.
Madonna’s first concert in Brazil for more than a decade saw 18 sound and video towers built on the beach to enable the huge audience to view the onstage action. The construction of the stage and towers reportedly involved a crew of 4,000. Rio police’s Marco Andrade said 3,200 officers were deployed at the concert, and that facial recognition technology and drones were used to monitor the crowd.
The landmark concert was the brainchild of Luiz Guilherme Niemeyer, a partner at Bonus Track Entertainment, who won financial support for the free show from backers including Brazilian bank Itaú, Heineken, Deezer, Rio de Janeiro City Hall, Rio de Janeiro State Secretariat of Tourism, State Secretariat of Culture, FUNARJ – Fundação Anita Mantuano de Artes do Estado do Rio de Janeiro, Government of the State of Rio de Janeiro, KLEFER, Globoplay, Multishow, TV Globo and LNE.
The concert was the final show on the 65-year-old’s The Celebration Tour. Celebrating her 40-year music career, it is understood to have generated more than $225m (£180m). The tour was launched in London at The O2 arena in October 2023, before taking in Canada, the US and Mexico.