Earlier in September, Ed Sheeran wrapped his gargantuan four-year stadium tour. The +-=÷x Tour (The Mathematics Tour) launched in 2022 after the release of the previous year’s = (Equals) and continued through the releases of 2023’s – (Subtract) and Autumn Variations. Over three album eras and 188 shows across four continents, Sheeran grossed $875.7 million and sold 8.8 million tickets according to figures reported to Billboard Boxscore. That makes it the highest grossing tour of his career and thus, one of the biggest tours of all time.

Sheeran has only been a global touring figure for less than 15 years, but mounting his most successful tour yet was no easy feat. His previous trek, The ÷ Tour (The Divide Tour), ran from 2017 to 2019 and set records in its final stretch as the highest grossing and bestselling tour in history. More shows in a shorter timeframe, The Divide Tour grossed $776.4 million and sold 8.9 million tickets, breaking U2’s longstanding records in both metrics for the U2 360° Tour ($736.4 million and 7.3 million tickets in 2009-11).

On the other side of the pandemic, Sheeran was surpassed as the biggest earner, first by Elton John’s Farewell Yellow Brick Road Tour ($939.1 million) and then by Taylor Swift’s The Eras Tour ($2.1 billion) and Coldplay’s ongoing Music of the Spheres World Tour ($1.5 billion through Aug. 31). In terms of attendance, both Coldplay and Swift surpassed 10 million tickets, with the former now up to 12.8 million and counting.

The Mathematics Tour finishes fourth all-time in gross (behind Swift, Coldplay and John) and attendance (Coldplay, Swift, The Divide Tour). Like his prior tour, this one took Sheeran around the world and back with five legs in the U.K. and Europe, two in Asia, 25 shows in North America and 15 in Oceania.

Europe and the U.K. were the obvious standouts for the British singer, accounting for 59% of the tour’s total gross and 63% of its attendance. Combined, the five legs grossed $517.1 million and sold 5.5 million tickets over 117 shows. Next was North America with $170.7 million and 1.6 million tickets. Asia’s 31 shows earned $102.4 million and sold 753,000 tickets. The one leg of dates in Oceania added $85.5 million and 810,000 tickets.

The expanse of The Mathematics Tour includes various warm-up shows in the weeks leading up to its stadium launch, plus a Subtract promo breakout in 2023, putting Sheeran in relatively intimate arenas in the U.K. and Ireland to specifically promote his then-new record. It does not, however, include The Subtract Tour in North America, which hit U.S. theaters in the same cities of some of his Mathematics stadium shows. Also outside of the proper tour, there was an isolated date at Brooklyn’s Barclays Center on May 22, 2024, to celebrate the 10-year anniversary of x (Multiply). From Dublin’s Whelans (357 capacity) to four nights at London’s Wembley Stadium (420,000 tickets), Sheeran adapted his live show to maximize his tour’s reach.

But that’s not all! Sheeran released Play last week (Sept. 12) and is already plotting a tour to follow. He announced the Loop Tour, which will commence before the year is even over. Five arena shows are set in December across Paris, Munich and Dublin, plus two in England. Then, it’ll be 17 stadium dates in Australia and New Zealand in the early months of 2026. While no dates have been officially announced, he teased a leg of U.S. concerts next year during a live performance on TikTok.

Dating back to Sheeran’s first reported concert at QPAC Concert Hall in Brisbane, Australia (July 31, 2012 – $101K; 1,488 tickets), he has grossed over $1.7 billion from 18.9 million tickets sold. He is one of the 10 highest grossing and bestselling acts in Boxscore history.

Sabrina Carpenter is returning to 30 Rock — this time as a Saturday Night Live host.

NBC announced Thursday (Sept. 18) that the pop star is set to make her hosting debut on the live show’s Oct. 18 episode, serving as her own musical guest. The installment will arrive in the third week of the upcoming season 51, which officially begins with a kickoff episode airing Oct. 4.

The first episode of the upcoming season will feature Bad Bunny returning as host. Benito will also be joined that night by Doja Cat in her musical guest debut.

The following week, Amy Poehler is locked in to host while Role Model is on the docket to perform. The showcase will also be the rising pop singer’s first time serving as musical guest on the show.

Carpenter has been steadily building up to pulling double duty on the show for more than a year. She made her debut on the show in May 2024, performing “Espresso.” Months later, she took part in SNL‘s 50th anniversary celebrations, singing “Homeward Bound” with Paul Simon for SNL50: The Anniversary Special and appearing in a viral “Domingo” sketch alongside Pedro Pascal. Her latest appearance will follow the release of album Man’s Best Friend this past August, with Carpenter debuting at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 in the LP’s first week.

Bad Bunny, on the other hand, has hosted SNL previously, leading a memorable episode in October 2023. He made his musical guest debut two years before that in February 2021, and in May 2025, he returned to 30 Rock to perform on a Scarlett Johansson-hosted episode.

Kid Cudi is setting the record straight regarding claims rapper Consequence made that the Ohio native sabotaged a potential Drake and Ye (formerly Kanye West) album in the works.

Cudi hopped on Instagram on Thursday (Sept. 18) to clear the air while vehemently denying he had anything to do with a Drake-Ye album falling through or that he played a role in West’s 2016 hospitalization.

“The other day rapper Consequence made some allegations that were extremely false. The things he said were pretty f—king disturbing,” he began in the video posted to his Stories. “Let me be clear: I had nothing to do with Kanye not doing that collab album with Drake. And I damn sure had nothing to do with him being hospitalized and going to the psych ward.”

Cudi continued: “Kanye gon’ do whatever Kanye wanna do. What I look like being like, ‘Yo, I don’t want you to do this album.’ And him being like, ‘OK.’ Yeah, right, in what universe?”

Kid Cudi said he sent a cease-and-desist letter to Consequence’s team and threatened to up his litigation to hurt his pockets.

“We sent a cease-and-desist, told him to take it down and retract his statement … I need to get a retracted statement tomorrow,” he added. “Saying that is extremely false and if not, you’ll be hearing from my lawyer, period. I’ma hit you in them pockets. That little bit of change you got gonna be mine. Keep f—ing with me, s—t is not a game.”

Consequence eventually deleted the post and tweet subliminally aiming at Cudi: “And the reason we didn’t get this Game Changing project… Is because a Kid… Needed to see Ghosts smh.”

However, Cons appears to be doubling down on his stance as he took to IG, reposting Cudi’s video and mocking him. “Shortly I’ll kick off the ‘Apology’ Tour on X This will be as G.O.O.D. as it gets Receipts don’t Lie and neither do I,” he captioned his post.

Ye and Drake were reportedly working on a collaborative album in 2017, which was rumored to be titled Calabasas Is the New Abu Dhabi as billboards popped up in Los Angeles. The project didn’t come to fruition, and the two clashed in 2018 while Drake feuded with Pusha T.

When Sphere opened in 2023 on the Las Vegas Strip, it was unlike anything built before it. It’s 366 feet tall by 516 feet wide — the world’s largest spherical structure — and is covered in a 160,000 square foot curved LED screen. To show visuals inside its dome, the images must be captured in a 16K resolution — four times the common resolution for digital cinematography, and to project sound, the venue uses cutting edge technology that can laser point hi-definition audio at every seat in its 20,000 capacity house.

According to Josephine Vaccarello, head of booking for MSG Entertainment and Sphere, that’s why picking the right band to open it up was paramount. They selected U2, an act she says “has always pushed the boundaries” with their live set. Since then, the venue has hosted a number of residencies, including Dead & Co, Anyma, Backstreet Boys, Kenny Chesney, Phish and more — all of which Vaccarello and Carolyn Blackwood, head of Sphere Studios, who leads the visuals and immersive content for the venue, say “come with their own set of challenges.”

To understand how a Sphere residency goes from the moment of booking to opening night, Blackwood and Vaccarello did an interview backstage at the Vegas venue for the inaugural episode of Billboard’s new music business podcast On the Record With Kristin Robinson.

Below are edited excerpts from the On the Record interview, which can be watched in full here.

How do the visuals work at Sphere for an artist like Dead & Company, given they’re known for ad libbing during their sets. How do you fine tune a visual to sync up with that?

Blackwood: They’re probably one of the most interesting groups we’ve worked with… Some other shows tend to be more baked, but [the Dead] change their playlist every night. They’ve created a digital library of visuals they use and tools they use so that they can play around with the visuals in real time as they jam.

How many shows does it typically take to break even and then start bringing a profit on these shows?

Vaccarello: I don’t know that there’s a finite number, but I think that 12 is in the right spot.

How do you handle booking for an artist like Backstreet Boys, who did a run of shows this summer, but are now coming back for two additional legs of their residency in the coming months, do you reserve those spots in advance for them?

Vaccarello: It’s exactly that. Honestly, dealing with the calendar here is unlike other buildings where you come in and pop in an act for a few days here or there — it’s really Tetris because you don’t know what the [success] will be like until the show starts…. And we’re a building that runs 365 days a year. We don’t have dark days, so we have experiences on the same day as concerts. We will do two experiences in the morning and then flip the house over and do a concert that night.

Do you have any software or tools that help you predict how many nights someone could sell out?

Vaccarello: There’s a lot of data we can use to figure this out — how many tickets they’ve sold, what their touring history is, all that, but what they would do on tour and then what they could do in Sphere is different. Sphere has its own oomph to it. It changes what maybe would normally happen on tour.

How do you plan to use generative AI at Sphere? Are there any tools on the horizon that you’re excited to play around with?

Blackwood: 100%. We just had a meeting about this last week. We’re very interested in the whole idea behind audio reactive content for the screen, using gen AI to help us develop tools where sound creates visuals… The idea of being able to create an entire show and program that way is something we’re working on.