Madonna has sold 653,000 tickets to the 43 North American dates on her upcoming concert tour, an executive with concert promoter Live Nation Entertainment Inc. said, putting it on track to be one of the top-grossing outings on record.

About 30,000 tickets remain available for the tour’s 36 U.S. shows, Live Nation head of global touring Arthur Fogel said, adding most of those are either single tickets or seats that are set aside for disabled concertgoers.

“We are inches from sellout everywhere,” Mr. Fogel said in a telephone interview with the Wall Street Journal Thursday, adding that around 30% of ticket buyers had signed up for a free copy of the singer’s most recent album, MDNA – an acceptance rate on the high end for such offers.

Of the tickets sold in North America, Mr. Fogel said, 500,000 were in the U.S. Those free-album offers fueled a healthy first week for “MDNA,” according to Nielsen SoundScan, which reported 359,000 copies sold in the U.S. In subsequent weeks, the album’s sales have slowed considerably, and it has now sold a total 456,000 copies in six weeks.

Mr. Fogel said that between 200,000 and 250,000 of those sales represented albums given away with concert tickets.

From the Wall Street Journal.