It’s official: Ed Sheeran‘s ‘Divide’ tour is the highest grossing tour of all-time.
Following the ‘Shape of You’ singer’s show in Hanover, Germany tonight (August 2), the ‘Divide’ tour will have grossed $736.7 million — this surpasses the previous $735.4 million record set by U2 in 2011. In a statement to Pollstar, Sheeran described breaking the record as an “amazing feeling.”
The ‘Divide’ tour launched on March 16, 2017 and is due to end on August 26, which means Sheeran will almost certainly add more money to the tour’s total gross. However, it’s worth noting that U2 only spent 760 days on the road; by the time Sheeran finishes this current tour, he would have been on tour for 893 days.
Sheeran actually topped U2′s attendance record of 7.3 million back in May, following a show in France, which pushed the ‘Divide’ tour’s total attendance levels up to 7,315,970.
Last month, Sheeran released his new album ‘No. 6 Collaborations Project’, which features guests including Eminem, 50 Cent, Travis Scott, Stormzy and Justin Bieber.
In a three star review, NME’s Nick Levine said: “It’s less an album, more a collection of savvy and generally savvy collaborations which blurs traditional genre boundaries unselfconsciously and acknowledges that Latin-pop is the sound of the near-future.”
In a recent interview, Sheeran opened up about his “daily battle” with anxiety, touching on the irony of not feeling comfortable around big groups of people.
“I don’t like large groups of people, which is ironic given I play shows to thousands of people,” he said. “I feel claustrophobic and I don’t like being around many people. I have no problem with talking to people. But it’s when people film me and stare at me. It makes me feel weird.”