One Direction to smash records with billion dollar tour
It has?been one big year for One Direction star Liam Payne – and 2014 looks set to be even bigger as the boyband prepares for what could be the world's first ever billion-dollar tour.
Huge ticket sales have already seen next year's Where We Are tour sell out at locations across the world.
Incredibly, music industry moguls say the stadium tour will help the band surpass records set by rock legends U2 and The Rolling Stones. 1D could become the first act to break the billion dollar mark in a year, experts predict, sending the group catapulting ahead of bands who have been around for much longer.
The band – featuring ex-Wulfrun College and St Peter's Collegiate School student Liam – could also steal the title for the record average tour attendance.
This currently belongs to Irish rockers U2 and stands at 66,100 per gig for their 110-date 360 Tour, from 2009 to 2011.
Liam, 20, who comes from Bushbury, and bandmates Niall Horan, Zayn Malik, Louis Tomlinson and Harry Styles have 88 dates booked for 2014 and will be appearing at some of the world's biggest stadiums with record sales now seen as secondary to the money to be made from appearing live.
If they do hit the £1 billion tour mark, it will be the latest record to be smashed by Simon Cowell's proteges, who shot to fame on the X Factor. The Rolling Stones pulled in £341 million from their Bigger Bang tour from 2005 to 2007, just behind U2 – who raked in £467 million.
One Direction already entered the Guinness World Records in 2013 for being the first British group to debut at number one in America with their first album.
A spokesman for One Direction, said: "Demand was so enormous for Where We Are tickets that 21 American dates had to be added," he said.
"It is absolutely conceivable that still more could be squeezed in before the end of 2014. It would be amazing for 1D to climb to the top of the tour league so early in the group's career."