Usher's Aim Was To 'Spend Every Dollar' On The First Leg Of His Las Vegas Residency, Ultimately Leading It To Generate $100M

The success of Usher Raymond’s Las Vegas, NV, residency was due to his focus on legacy over profit.

During an interview with V-103 Atlanta, the 2024 Super Bowl performer, often crowned with the title of being the “King of R&B,” revealed his initial intentions when he was producing the show that would go on to sell more than 470,000 tickets. His catalog which includes classic hits such as “Superstar,” “Confessions, Pt. II,” and “U Got It Bad” have remained a fixture in culture throughout the decades.

His fourth studio album “Confessions,” which includes some of the aforementioned tracks, is now 14 times platinum, per Entertainment Weekly. Today, Usher is still ringing out tunes, releasing his ninth studio album “Coming Home” in February 2024, Hypebeast reports.

Indebted to his fans and understanding his on going contributions to the world of music, Usher reveals he invested every dollar that he was given during the first run of his residency into the show which was held at the Colosseum at Caesars Palace in 2021.

“I made it known if I do this, spend every dollar that we have. Yeah, we don’t make no money this first run because I want people to love this show. I have to invest in this show,” Usher explained during the interview. “I got to invest in this future because what’s going to happen a year from now is why I’m making this investment. It wasn’t even intended. There was no way to even make any money, you know, and we didn’t have a lot of merchandise and things like that, but it was an investment. It was an investment in the future. It was an investment in my legacy. It was an investment in the songs that you had sang. It was an investment in my audience because they meant that much to me. I want to make certain that if I brought you here it was faith, it was belief.”

As AFROTECH™ previously reported, Usher would earn $18.8 million from 84,000 tickets sold during his first residency. He would later host the “My Way: The Vegas Residency” at Park MGM’s Dolby Live, which generated $95.9 million from 394,000 tickets sold, bringing the total amount to 114.7 million from 100 shows.