Is Bad Bunny Capitalizing On A Wave Of ‘Concert Tourism’ Ignited By The Eras Tour?
Bad Bunny just kicked off his three month sold out residency at Puerto Rico’s José Miguel Agrelot Coliseum in San Juan, and videos of his performances (and its celebrity attendees) are already making the rounds on social media. It’s starting to feel like the void left by last year’s The Era’s Tour and “Brat Summer” is being filled once again, by a masterfully executed marketing plan that draws on the success of both.
Announced back in January, following the release of his sixth studio album Debí Tirar Más Fotos (I Should Have Taken More Photos) which hit the number one spot on the Billboard 200, the residency, titled No Me Quiero Ir De Aquí (I Don’t Want To Leave Here) received notable praise for its prioritization of ticket sales to native Puerto Ricans, preventative measures to deter scalpers, scheduling during off-season, and intentional messaging around responsible tourism to the island.
And it’s absolutely genius.
Why? In a nut shell, Bad Bunny is currying favor with his base, earning brownie points for authenticity and loyalty to the community that launched his career and granted him most of his political power and cultural currency in the 2020’s. At the very same time, he, and his team, know what the “Brat Summer” campaign and watching The Era’s Tour on social media and did for both tours.
In the case of The Era’s Tour, people bought tickets to concerts in other states when they could not afford or access tickets in their own city, and even traveled to foreign countries across the globe to make it to the “must attend” event of a lifetime.
By having the residency role into the Debí Tirar Más Fotos World Tour, which purposefully excludes any U.S. venues and kicks off this November, all American fans will fall into that same predicament by default. By making a Bad Bunny show the “must attend” event of the summer/year, through the residency’s exclusivity, and circulating videos of Lebron James swaying in time to the music and even joining Bad Bunny on stage, the World Tour is made travel-worthy, and “Concert Tourism” finds new life beyond the Swifties.
If anything, the album, with its samples of traditional Puerto Rican salsa, plena, bomba, and jíbaro, becomes a destination in and of itself. Bad Bunny isn’t just selling you music, he is selling a culture and an identity. His latest music video for “NUEVAYoL” even integrates an AI voiceover of Donald Trump apologizing to the immigrant community, as well as references a 1977 protest where Puerto Rican Nationalists occupied the Statue of Liberty. We may not have seen a music video this intentional, well-researched, or socially relevant since Childish Gambino’s “This Is America”.
But what really perfects his approach, is that alongside all of the reverence, respect, defiance, and activism, Bad Bunny maintains a sense of light-heartedness and fun, almost as if he’s prescribing us an antidote. His album promotions at Brooklyn’s Toñita’s with AOC in attendance, or surprising New York subway riders with a performance alongside Jimmy Fallon before his Tonight Show appearance turned full-blown parranda, all prove that Bad Bunny represents, most importantly, a good time, which may be what we all want and need most right now.
