How Latin Touring Soared, According to Wisin y Yandel, Rebeca Leon & Marc Ventosa: Billboard Latin Music Week

Leila Cobo
·3 min read
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The much-documented growth of Latin music in the past 24 months has occurred not only in streaming numbers and overall consumption, but also in the touring space.

Record ticket sales have been notched not just by the likes of Bad Bunny, but also nostalgia acts like Mexican group Los Bukis, who scored the biggest Latin tour of 2021, earning $49.6 million, according to Billboard Boxscore.

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“Talk about unexpected successes,” said Hans Schafer, SVP of global touring for Live Nation, noting that Los Bukis sold out stadiums throughout the U.S., and in many cities, like Chicago, became the first Latin acts ever to sell out a stadium. Schafer was part of the “Latin Touring Goes International” panel during day one of Billboard Latin Music Week at the Faena Forum in Miami Beach.

And although the surge in touring numbers is in part due to doors opening after the pandemic, “I think we still have a few years of big volume,” said Schafer.

That notion was seconded by Wisin, one-half of reggaetón duo Wisin y Yandel, who are currently in the midst of their biggest tour ever. “What’s happened with the [Latin] business is extraordinary,” said the artist.

Although the numbers are impressive now, they’re the result of years of work, said the duo, recalling a nearly 20-year career that began in clubs — and that gave birth to their touring philosophy based on collaboration with promoters. “We urban artists represent the barrio; we were born in the barrio. This has been a relay job: In her new album, Rosalía has a song inspired on a song we did with Daddy Yankee in 2004.”

Rebeca León, founder of Lionfish Entertainment (which manages Rosalía), who moderated the panel, recalled that as a concert promoter in her early years, she was one of the first to book Wisin y Yandel for major arena shows.

“When Rebeca [who then headed Latin touring at Live Nation in the late 2000s] told me we were playing two Staples Center [concerts in Los Angeles], I said, ‘What?’” recalls Wisin. “But that day I opened my eyes to what the movement could become.”

It has become a trans-Atlantic force.

Marc Ventosa, director of booking for Last Tour in Bilbao, Spain, recalled that Spanish festivals were more often than not headlined by big English-speaking acts. That changed with Rosalía in 2018, followed by Bad Bunny and J Balvin.

Prior to that, he said, “Reggaetón was not viewed as viable [in Spain]. Presenting those artists as festival headliners “was a way to open the market to artists in festivals where they normally wouldn’t find a place.”

Beyond reggaetón, Spain has also seen a surge in touring by Latin pop artists like Camilo, and more recently, by indie artists like Rels B, who is filling arenas.

“It stopped being Latin music for Latinos, and now it’s Latin music for the world,” says Ventosa.

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