Sticky & Sweet Tour
2008–2009 concert tour by Madonna / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Sticky & Sweet Tour was the eighth concert tour by American singer Madonna, to promote her eleventh studio album, Hard Candy (2008). It was Madonna's first major venture under a new ten-year 360 deal with Live Nation. Following a series of promotional appearances in support of Hard Candy, the tour was announced in May 2008, with concerts in Europe and North America; additionally, it marked the singer's first dates in Latin America in fifteen years. The first part of the tour began on August 23, 2008, at the Millennium Stadium in Cardiff, Wales, and ended on December 21 at the Morumbi Stadium in São Paulo, Brazil. Afterwards, it was announced that Madonna had decided to resume the tour in the summer of 2009, with twenty-seven more concerts, mostly in European markets she had either never played in or visited in several years; the 2009 extension started on July 4 at the O2 Arena in London, England, and concluded on September 2 at the Hayarkon Park in Tel Aviv, Israel. Though initially planned, the tour did not visit Australia and East Asia due to financial problems and the financial recession. The show was described as a "rock driven dancetastic journey" and, like previous tours by the singer, was divided into different thematic acts: Pimp, Old School, Gypsy, and Rave.
World tour by Madonna | |
Location |
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Associated album | Hard Candy |
Start date | August 23, 2008 (2008-08-23) |
End date | September 2, 2009 (2009-09-02) |
Legs | 4 |
No. of shows | 85 |
Box office |
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Madonna concert chronology | |
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It received generally positive reviews from critics, who praised the production, the singer's energy, and the performances. Besides positive reviews, the tour broke many records in terms of its ticket sales, commercial gross and audience attendance. After the 2008 leg, it became the highest-grossing tour by a solo artist, earning US$282 million ($399.07 in 2023 dollars[1]) and breaking the previous record Madonna herself had set with her Confessions Tour two years earlier. With an additional $129 million generated from the 2009 extension, the final gross was reported to be $411 million ($583.7 in 2023 dollars[1]), making it the second highest-grossing tour in history at the time, then behind only the Rolling Stones' A Bigger Bang Tour. It remained the highest-grossing tour ever by a female artist for 15 years. The Sticky & Sweet Tour won Top Boxscore, Top Draw and Top Manager for Guy Oseary at the 2009 Billboard Touring Awards.
The tour generated some controversies: a video which compared then-presidential candidate John McCain to Hitler and Robert Mugabe faced criticism from the Republican Party; Madonna also publicly voiced her opposition against then-Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin. While performing in Romania in 2009, Madonna's statement about Romani discrimination in Eastern European countries was negatively received by the crowd. A planned concert at Marseille's Stade Vélodrome was cancelled following an incident that killed two workers. The concerts at Buenos Aires' River Plate Stadium in December 2008 were recorded and broadcast through Sky1 as Madonna: Sticky & Sweet. The special was also aired many times through American network EPIX. In 2010, it was released on DVD, Blu-ray and as a live album under the title Sticky & Sweet Tour.