The El Dorado World Tour was the sixth world tour by Colombian singer Shakira, in support of her eleventh studio album, El Dorado. Comprising a total of 54 shows, It was her first tour in seven years, the last being The Sun Comes Out World Tour. The tour began on 3 June 2018, in Hamburg, Germany and ended on 3 November 2018 in Bogotá, Colombia. The tour was set to begin in November 2017, but due to a hemorrhage at Shakira's right vocal cord acquired at her last round of rehearsals, the entire tour was postponed to start mid-2018.
Background After an anticipation tweet from Shakira's official account featuring the flags of 18 countries and a link to a newsletter subscription to her music label, the tour was announced three days later, on 27 June 2017, primarily sponsored by Rakuten. Also teaming on the tour were Live Nation Entertainment's Global Touring Division (that had previously collaborated with Shakira on her The Sun Comes Out World Tour) and Citi, which were, respectively, the producer and the credit card for the North American leg of the tour. As part of the tour introduction, Live Nation posted a video via their official social networks as a further reminder.
The tour was planned to begin on 8 November, in Cologne, Germany, but due to vocal strain during her tour rehearsals, the date was cancelled one day prior to the original tour schedule. On 9 November she announced the postponement of the dates for both shows in Paris, as well as the ones in Antwerp and Amsterdam. On 14 November, she announced through her social networks that she had acquired a haemorrhage on her right vocal chord at the end of October during her last batch of rehearsals, and needed to rest her voice to be cured; so all the European legs were postponed until 2018. On 27 December 2017, she also announced the postponement of all North American dates, and the rescheduling of all announced dates so far; the tour officially started in June 2018.
On 22 January 2018, she announced three additional European dates for the cities of Hamburg, London and Bordeaux. A second Los Angeles show was added on 9 May; and, a day after, Shakira announced a date for Istanbul, 11 years after visiting Turkey with her Oral Fixation Tour, as well as the Latin American dates. After these, it was announced that the Colombian singer would visit Lebanon, to perform at the Cedars International Festival. Although some Israeli media had reported a concert would be held on 9 July 2018 in Tel Aviv, which caused some negative reactions, and a threat of boycotting her Lebanese concert, supported by BDS, Live Nation confirmed through their Twitter account that no date had been set for Israel.
On 29 June 2018, it was confirmed by the mayor of Shakira's hometown Barranquilla, Alejandro Char, that the native singer would perform at the inauguration of 2018 edition of the Central American and Caribbean Games, to be held in the Colombian city. For this special event, Shakira performed 3 songs ("Me Enamoré," "Hips Don't Lie," and "La Bicicleta") in the Estadio Metropolitano Roberto Meléndez on 19 July.
Development Preparations for the tour as originally scheduled started in late August 2017, with rehearsals taking place in Barcelona, as revealed by the singer herself. Shakira posted through her social networks a series of videos documenting the creative process of the tour from its earliest stages. Among the first videos was one where she introduced part of her crew, and one posted a day later showed her working out. As rehearsals continued during October, more videos from backstage and rehearsals came out. One of the videos most commented on by the press was one posted by Shakira's partner, Gerard Piqué, of him attending her performance of her 1997 single, "Antología". After the tour hiatus for the singer's recovery, rehearsals resumed on 9 May 2018, and Shakira continued documenting her tour preparation through her social networks.
As part of her interaction with fans during the original tour preparation and anticipation, on 7 August 2017 Shakira urged her followers through her social networks to collaborate in the selection of the songs that would be featured on tour, expressing a desire for "this tour to be particularly special for her fans". In this way, Viber, a subsidiary of official tour sponsor Rakuten, carried out a poll to help her pick out some tracks. The winning choices were announced a week later on the mobile platform. Seconding this research, Shakira joined Viber again to promise a surprise contest for fans, on 10 October, that was announced two days later, on the same instant messenger application. One of the prizes was a trip to Barcelona to attend rehearsals. Rakuten Spain delivered a similar prize contest (valid only for Spanish residents), in which the winners were able to watch a private show by Shakira's team also in Barcelona, on 4 November, a few days before the tour was to have kicked off originally. As for 2018 resuming rehearsals, the official Spanish tour sponsor kept on posting anticipation notes through their social networks, and the partnership with Viber for exclusive content from tour was kept too.
Crew members were announced by Shakira little by little, one of the first ones being Anna Kaiser, her personal trainer, through videos and photos of the singer's AKT InMotion workout sessions. On 30 October 2017, Shakira herself revealed band members, including her longtime fellow musicians guitarist Tim Mitchell, keyboard player Albert Menendez and drummer Brendan Buckley. Besides them, there were, debuting on a Shakira tour, bass player Erik Kertes and violinist Caitlin Evanson. As for the actual tour start in mid-2018, all band members remained the same except bassist Joe Ayoub who joined to replace Kertes. Production design company Vita Motus was commissioned for stage design, and Syndrome Studio was in charge as the graphic design for screen backdrops. Longtime Shakira contributor Marjan Malakpour was the executive stylist for tour, and among those in charge of designing costumes for tour were French fashion house Balmain, American fashion designer Brian Lichtenberg, and fellow Colombian fashion designer Juan Carlos Obando. For most of the Spanish concerts, she wore a belt with feathers designed by Hawaiian-based online clothing store Iheartpolynesia, adapted from the same type of piece this shop had previously designed for Miss Latina Hawaii 2018.
Commercial performance
Ticket sales Tickets for first 33 announced dates went on sale on 30 June 2017, two days after a Viber presale valid for just one day. Live Nation and Citi also offered presales after rescheduling, although the presale by Citi was valid only for performances within United States. Shakira also teamed up with Ticketmaster to sell tickets. Ticket prices ranged from US$40 to over 2000 USD for both European and North American dates. second dates were added to cities such as Paris, Barcelona, Miami, Los Angeles, and Mexico City. The pre-sale tickets for the show in Ecuador grossed over $500,000 in its first 6 hours, and the show was almost sold out on the first day. Ticket News reported that the show in Capital One Arena took the best-seller spot on Thursday, July 5.
Accolades A second date was added due to overwhelming demand, making Shakira the first female artist in history to add a second consecutive date in this stadium. In Ecuador, she broke the record previously held by Bruno Mars, of having sold the most tickets during a pre-sale period. She is also the first artist to perform in Rosario's Estadio Gigante de Arroyito. Based on the Live Music annual report published by the Spanish Musical Promoters Association (APM), all five performances in Spain had over 71,000 attendees. In New York City, she is the second Latin artist to gross over 2 million in one night in American concert history after Romeo Santos's Yankee Stadium show in 2014. In Miami and Los Angeles, she is the only female artist to have two shows in both American Airlines Arena and The Forum in 2018. The two shows in Miami extended her record of having the most concerts in American Airlines Arena, 9 shows since Tour of the Mongoose, more than any artist. According to Billboard, the two sold out nights in Miami were the venue's biggest in 2018 with almost 3 million dollars.
Revenue Pollstar initially estimated that the tour grossed around $75 million over 52 shows. Based on their 2018 year-end report the tour grossed $40.7 million worldwide in 28 shows, with an average of $1.6 million per show. Billboard reported that the North American leg of tour grossed $28.2 million. The revenue for her Bsharri, Lebanon, concert totaled $2 million according to some Middle East media. The organizers of the Ecuador show reported that the quick sale of presale tickets grossed over $500,000 in only 6 hours.
Concert synopsis The show starts by a flash of light appearing on the big screen, as Shakira's voice can be heard repeating "estoy aquí" (Spanish, "I am here"); at the same time, on the side round screens, a series of black and white pictures of hers is displayed in chronological order to showcase an infant Shakira growing up and becoming the superstar she is now. Once the slideshow is over, a victorious and smiling Shakira runs on stage waving at fans (with a firework rain at the back of the stadiums for the Latin American dates), opening the setlist with an EDM medley of her 1995 breakthrough hits "Estoy Aquí" and "¿Dónde Estás Corazón?." She plays a synth keyboard in between the songs and a confetti shower explodes once the second song of medley is played. The costumes of this act are designed by Balmain, Brian Lichtenberg, and Black Majesty. After the "memorabilia medley," an intermission comes: Shakira is seen sitting on a rock chair with chains around her; the entertainer starts dancing, chest pumping and hair whipping, to finally succeed in breaking the chains, and her 2009 hit "She Wolf" begins. After its second chorus, she plays again the synth keyboard and walks through the catwalk right to the B-stage, asking to the women in the crowd to howl à la "She-wolf style." The concert continues with a rockified version of her 2000 hit "Si Te Vas" (a traditional feature for most of her stage tours), what is followed by two recent El Dorado singles: "Nada" and "Perro Fiel;" the latter as a mash-up with another Nicky Jam's single, "El Perdón." The two artists (him on background) sing both songs of mash-up, and pyrotechnique effects appear throughout this number. In sequence, she introduces her band, and they play a R&B version of her English-speaking 2002 tune "Underneath Your Clothes." A slightly edited version of "Me Enamoré" comes after. Then, the Latin songwriter takes an electric guitar to play her 1998 rock hit "Inevitable." The act ends with 2016 megahit "Chantaje," where Maluma appears for a moment in the central screen.