Fresh off a rousing finish to 2015, Adele is already on track to securing the most successful year of her career in 2016. On November 20, the “Hello” songstress dropped her long-awaited third studio album, 25, and the results were massive. Not only did the British star sell over 5 million albums since its debut, it broke the records for most albums sold in a week, and became the first album to sell 1 million copies two weeks in a row.
Adele announced a massive world tour shortly after the album was released, and the tour announcement has created pandemonium on the ticket market. Adele is continuing the tradition of British pop stars cultivating their fame in the UK and bringing it to the masses resulting in a resounding boom in her popularity.
The European leg of the 2016 tour kicks off February 29 at Belfast, Ireland’s SSE Arena and will hit 34 shows in the European continent. The tour will run until June 15 when it wraps in Belgium, and the North American leg will start less than a month later. The London-based artist will also make six stops in her hometown at the O2 Arena and unsurprisingly, every date has already sold out. Those mid-March hometown shows promise to be an incredible event, and may even see international fans seeking out lodging in London and buying secondary market tickets in order to share in the experience. In an even more impressive feat, every show in both the U.K. and the U.S. sold out in a matter of minutes.
As it stands, tickets to see Adele across her six dates in London are currently averaging $503 on the resale market, with the most expensive night scheduled to be her March 18 performance. For that show, tickets are averaging $867, with the cheapest ticket available for a pricey $291, according to secondary market ticket data.
Although 2015 has been frequently cited as the year of Taylor Swift, it seems as if Adele is already on track to dethrone the popstar. After just a handful of weeks on the shelves, 25 has surpassed the sales of Taylor Swift’s 1989 (5.57 million) to become the biggest selling album released in the U.S. since Adele’s last album, 21, which debuted in 2011, making the last two Adele discs the biggest selling albums since 2009. On December 18, 25 became the fastest 2 million-selling album in U.K. chart history as it smashed the previous record (held by British pop duo Robson & Jerome from 1995) in just 29 days.
