Henry Cardenas

“Never, no one expected that,” Cárdenas tells Billboard. “In fact, Noah [Assad, Bad Bunny’s manager] called me like three days before and said, ‘How many tickets do you think we’ll sell [in presale]?’ He thought it’d be around 150,000. I told him 200,000…. If Bad Bunny puts 50 dates more on sale today, he’ll sell them. In Miami, we sold out his three shows and there were 97,000 people waiting online to buy tickets.” Bad Bunny is arguably the hottest artist in the world right now, and ended 2020 as the most streamed act on Spotify. That he would sell was not in question. But, how did the Chicago-based CMN capitalize on the potential, and how did Cárdenas land the deal? Here, he explains what went into booking this tour when live music still seems so far away for so many. I have to thi...