As if you didn’t already know, Kanye West is kinda like a big deal. Just ask him. Or, you could ask the thousands of fans who turned out for the New York City leg of his Saint Pablo tour. They love the man so much, he sold $780,000 worth of merchandise during one night of his stay at Madison Square Garden. Apparently, album sales are for the birds.
TMZ reports the $780K figure is new record for Madison Square Garden, easily eclipsing the $240K record set by his Holiness, Pope Francis. From a numbers standpoint, Saint Pablo is bigger than Pope Francis. Just don’t tell him I said that because it’ll go to his head. The last thing we need is for the Chicago MC to get a big head.
From the looks of it, the only merchandise available was Saint Pablo hats, t-shirts, hoodies and…yeah that’s it. Both products look like something you’d cop from a street vendor. There’s nothing special about them per se — or at all — but it is a nice way to commemorate you going to a Kanye West show at the world’s most famous arena.
That’s the rub, isn’t it? West is becoming just as a good a marketer as his big brother is, so it’s no surprise that he managed to convince an arena full of people that a green t-shirt with a few red letters on it is something worth having. What is surprising is that he convinced enough of them to sell almost $1 million worth of those shirts.
This begs the question: Why in the world does the Pope need to sell merchandise? I suppose that’s a story for a different day.
(Via TMZ)
