At the height of his popularity, Bad Bunny eschewed a typical North American tour and instead focused on his homeland. Featuring a historic 31-show residency in San Juan, Puerto Rico. The sold-out residency, titled “No Me Quiero Ir de Aquí” (I Don’t Want to Leave Here), attracted more than half a million visitors.
The shows took place at the José Miguel Agrelot Coliseum (known locally as “El Choli”) and ran on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays starting July 11, 2025. The first nine shows were open exclusively to Puerto Rico residents. The following 21 shows were aimed specifically at non-residents traveling to Puerto Rico to see Bad Bunny in his homeland.
While several studies have measured the residency’s economic impact on Puerto Rico – focusing on spending by those who traveled for the concerts – the full cultural and economic impact of this residency on Bad Bunny’s homeland goes far beyond these dollar amounts.
Economic impact and studies
Indira Luciano Montalvo, associate professor in the Department of Economics at the University of Puerto Rico in Río Piedras, conducted a study on the economic, cultural and social impact of the residency. The study, which she describes as “very conservative,” shows that the residency brought in at least $176.6 million, mostly through documented wages and taxes.
“The methodological approaches vary depending on the study, which leads to different estimates,” explains Luciano Montalvo. “My study estimated the economic impact of the event itself. How much it generated in production, revenue, employment and audience spending. Without including ticket costs or venue spending.”
The nonprofit tourism organization DMO Discover Puerto Rico estimates that the residency generated about $200 million in tourist spending on accommodations, transportation and food. A report from Gaither International estimates $733 million in profits. The estimated value of increased international visibility and changing global perception of Puerto Rico is also taken into account.
Indirect effects and the “musical effect”
But the indirect economic benefits, which are difficult to fully measure, could be even more significant. “There is a direct impact of the residency that we can tangibly measure,” says Javier Hernández Acosta, dean of the School of Arts, Design and Creative Industries at the Universidad del Sagrado Corazón in Puerto Rico. “But more importantly, seeing all the impact it has on different aspects of the economy.”
These economic effects include a 340 percent increase in sales of Vejigante masks in Ponce. Local bookstores see a 280 percent increase in sales of works by Puerto Rican authors. Or average income increases of 65 percent for local salsa, bomba and plena artists, as AMW Group reports.
One of the main beneficiaries of the attention that some of these studies have measured are other Puerto Rican musicians that Bad Bunny featured during the residency. The group Chuwi, for example, performed at all 31 shows and is now opening the Latin American leg of Bad Bunny’s world tour. “I believe there is an invisible value that is difficult to measure given all the possibilities [Bad Bunny] just by putting us in the spotlight,” says Wester Aldarondo from Chuwi.
Los Pleneros de la Cresta and cultural investments
Another group that performed every night of the residency was Los Pleneros de la Cresta. The group first met Bad Bunny on November 3, 2024 at the Festival de la Esperanza, the final event for pro-independence political candidates in Puerto Rico, which featured many notable Puerto Rican musicians.
“While we were waiting backstage to perform, Bad Bunny arrived with his team. He greeted us and said he was listening to our music, which of course surprised us. He saw our astonished faces and said, ‘And I’m going to tell you a secret that I hope stays here. And that is that you’re going to be on our next album.’ Our faces were even more surprised,” recalls group member Jeyluix Ocasio Rivera. “Then he pulled out his phone and showed us the album’s tracklist in his notes, and sure enough it said ‘CAFé CON RON’ featuring Los Pleneros de la Cresta.”
In January 2025, DeBÍ TiRAR MáS FOToS was released, and everything changed for the Plena group, founded in 2013 at the University of Puerto Rico in Río Piedras, with the aim of teaching Plena and keeping the Afro-Puerto Rican tradition alive.
Following their collaborations with Bad Bunny, Los Pleneros de la Cresta went from tens of thousands of monthly Spotify listeners to 12 million. This led directly to a changed economic reality, which in turn influenced the cultural and political projects that the group devoted itself to in Puerto Rico. In parallel with the start of the residency, Los Pleneros, together with their non-profit organization Acción Valerosa, launched Ruta Café Con Ron – a cultural experience in which participants purchase tickets for an educational version of a chinchorreo, a typical bar crawl on a Puerto Rican-style party bus.
Sustainable cultural change
The route traveled from urban Bayamón to the mountain town of Ciales and included stops for coffee tastings, local art and more. It generated $45,000 in proceeds, 100 percent of which will go toward the restoration of the Yerba Bruja Historic Cultural Center in Ciales. “These investments begin so that we can direct them specifically to our organization, strengthening our ability to continue to impact the lives of Puerto Ricans by hiring community leaders, providing services to them, and investing the money where it goes directly to the heart of the Puerto Rican people. It’s a chain,” says Joseph Ocasio Rivera of Los Pleneros de la Cresta.
Similar to Los Pleneros, Chuwi only had a few thousand followers before the release of her collaboration “WELTiTA” with Bad Bunny on “DeBÍ TiRAR MáS FOToS”. After the album release, they quickly grew to 14 million monthly Spotify listeners. They played their first NPR Tiny Desk concert in September.
“[Bad Bunny] didn’t have to do any of that. “I don’t think any artist in history has put so much effort into helping other artists from the island climb the ladder,” says Chuwi’s Wester Aldarondo. “That he does, that he invests so much energy and resources, sends a clear message: ‘No, Puerto Rico, we will all climb together.'”
International impact: “De Puerto Rico Pa’l Mundo”
In addition to Chuwi and Los Pleneros de la Cresta, the residency featured more than a dozen Puerto Rican musicians known as “Los Sobrinos,” as well as a crew of dozens of Puerto Rican dancers, as well as individual artists such as cuatro player José Eduardo Santana and the voice of Sapo Concho, Kenneth Canales – all now part of Bad Bunny’s world tour.
Since the end of the residency, Bad Bunny has been on the road with his world tour project “DeBÍ TiRAR MáS FOToS” and is already generating economic effects in other parts of Latin America. The first stop was the Dominican Republic, where the three-day concert series in Santo Domingo reportedly brought in around 15,000 foreign tourists and approximately $14 million in revenue.
On December 21, Bad Bunny completed a series of eight concerts at the Estadio GNP Seguros in Mexico City. According to Mexico City’s National Chamber of Commerce, Services and Tourism, these shows were expected to generate $177 million – from ticket sales, hotels, food, local transportation, retail and more. More than half a million people attended the concerts, up to 45 percent of them from abroad.
Bad Bunny’s residency sparked a multi-faceted economic revolution for his native Puerto Rico. As his extraordinary year of records and innovation comes to an end, he is now taking these effects around the world as part of his world tour.