It has been speculated that Ariana Grande could earn upwards of $20 million for her series of Fortnite concerts this weekend. This figure is derived from Travis Scott’s earnings in merchandise, downloads, and streams following his own concert in the game, and the assumption that Ariana Grande will match his success. Given their respective pulls as artists though, it’s fair to reason that Grande could do even better. She has a much larger fanbase, and crucially, her typical fans do not have much crossover with Fortnite players in the way Scott’s do. This means that she’ll both introduce far more people to the game and enjoy a captive audience who will be familiar with her name, but may not know her music. Scott already set the stage – if Grande’s concert is a success, Fortnite could become the new Super Bowl half-time show for the digital age.
Let’s look at the stats first. In terms of album sales, Grande is 85 times more successful than Scott. It’s obviously unlikely that these figures will lead to an 8,500 percent gain for Grande, which would see her bring in $1.7 billion. However, other stats do give us more of a hint as to what we might expect from Ariana Grande’s return. Excluding Fortnite, Scott’s most profitable gig netted him $1.7 million. Grande, during 2017’s Dangerous Woman tour, made $4.7 million from her best gig – just under three times as much as Scott. If those figures translate, that means Grande’s Fortnite appearance could be worth $50 million. That’s not to mention that she has released Sweetener, Thank U, Next, and Positions since then, growing even more popular.
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Of course, this is all speculation. There could be server issues from Epic, she could flop, or she may be too different from a Fortnite fan’s typical playlist to see much of a bump from it. That all seems pretty doubtful, though. Grande is an active gamer, a global megastar, and a talented performer who understands the medium. All signs point to her knocking it out of the park.
Anecdotally, there’s already some evidence of this. I’ve been seeing more discussion of Grande around Twitter, even with people who do not usually talk about music. Personally, I’ve also been listening to her a lot more in anticipation of the gig, something I expect to extend to her concert and beyond. Meanwhile, when I set up Fortnite on my Nintendo Switch, I had to make a new account. Leaning into the campness of it all, I entered ‘HereForAriana’. It was taken. ‘HereForArianaGrande’ was also taken. ‘HereForAri’? Gone. I tried all three again with ‘Only’ at the beginning. Nope, nope, and nope. I eventually got in with ‘Here4Ariana’, so if you see me at the show, come say hi. Granted, this is only six people declaring they’re here for Ariana Grande, but it’s already a small piece of evidence that Fortnite is bringing in people that ordinarily would not play the game. Fortnite, being free, essentially means you’re getting to see Ariana Grande live in concert for nothing. Of course, it’s less of an experience – it’s not truly live, and she’ll likely only perform for 20 minutes. Still, there are people who will view this as money saved and will splurge instead on Ariana Grande merchandise – especially since some is readily available in the game already.
You might reasonably ask me why I care. Just last week, I wrote about the Scarlett Johansson-Disney lawsuit, and how a case between a millionaire and a billionaire should not see us picking sides, since we lose out every time. Fawning over a pop star making potentially $50 million from singing in a video game seems to go against that ethos. However, there are some differences. Johansson was lobbying for poor people to be sent to the cinema during the pandemic in order for a bigger slice of the profit share, while Grande has decided not to put on what would have been a highly profitable Positions tour specifically because of COVID. She did not cancel it – she simply never entertained the thought of it. I’m also not so much excited for Grande personally making money as I am for the emergence of a new concert medium, and the fact that video games are right at the centre of it.
The Super Bowl half-time show is a spectacle in itself. We all remember Prince playing Purple Rain in the rain. We remember Katy Perry’s Left Shark, and – for the wrong reasons – Janet Jackson’s wardrobe malfunction and her brother Michael’s decision to perform surrounded by children just a few months before his trial for molesting a minor. Do you remember the score from any of those games? Do you even remember who played? While hardcore football fans will be able to answer those questions with a resounding ‘yes’, for most people, the half-time show lives on far longer than the game either side of it. Recently, The Weeknd spent $7 million of his own money staging his half-time show, knowing that the boost to his platform and relevance would be worth it. While stats for The Weeknd aren’t available yet, Lady Gaga enjoyed a stream boost of over 1,000 percent in the aftermath of the Super Bowl. Justin Timberlake’s 2018 show, generally agreed to be one of the more disappointing ones of the modern era, still led to a 534 percent uptick.
There is no rival to the Super Bowl half-time show. You can do a world tour, you can headline a concert, you can play at the Sweet Sixteenth party of a billionaire’s daughter, but there is nothing like the Super Bowl. A world tour requires months of gruelling effort, a headline slot is a two-hour long gig where you’re expected to come out and top everybody who’s been on before you, and a private gig is just that – private. You profit off it directly, but you don’t get to share your work or be remembered for it. The Super Bowl is 15 minutes of you, just you, in front of the world. There is nothing like it. Except now there is.
The money matters because you need to attract big names. You need the Ariana Grandes. My Spotify stats put Grande in my top five artists, behind – among others – Olivia O’Brien. I would not have written three different pieces of analysis on O’Brien, because nobody would have been interested in reading them. However, while artists do profit off the Super Bowl, what it really offers is immortality. Travis Scott’s concert was a pop culture phenomenon, and if Grande can deliver a performance of the same quality – she has a longer history of putting on a pop spectacle and is a more talented vocalist, so it’s within her wheelhouse – she can help grow Fortnite even more. It’s unlikely we’ll see too many names bigger than Ariana Grande, given that she is Spotify’s fifth most popular artist in the world and these events take a huge amount of planning, but once she has shown what the platform can do, the floodgates will be open.
Fortnite – and video games as a whole – attract a dedicated audience covering a lot of unique demographics. They also offer a level of creativity and interaction only possible in the digital space. As the medium starts to embrace live music, a challenger to the Super Bowl half-time show’s pop culture dominance has finally emerged.
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