How Access Opera’s John Burton Kickstarted Ye’s Touring Comeback: ‘He’s Like the Michael Jordan of This Thing’

Looking outside his Istanbul hotel room, all John Burton has seen is yachts, submarines and oil tankers cruising off the Sea of Marmara’s coast.

After getting Ye (formerly Kanye West) back on the road in January to kick off his comeback with a pair of sold-out Mexico City shows in front of 80,000 fans at Monumental Plaza de Toros — his first concerts in Mexico in nearly two decades — Burton has West on the brink of performing the largest show of his career on May 30 at Istanbul’s Atatürk Olympic Stadium in Turkey.

As of our Memorial Day interview, Burton estimates that 90,000 tickets have been sold and he expects to cruise past the six-figure mark to about 120,000 tickets, which he’s billed as the “Road to 100K” campaign. “I was like, ‘We got something, let’s continue to do this around the world,’” he recalls after seeing the success of Ye’s Mexico City’s shows.

Burton, 43, launched Access Opera in 2017 as a production and management company for opera singers, who he refers to as “athletes of the voice” and classical events. He now serves as Ye’s agent handling overseas touring, independently booking his Mexico City and Turkey shows as well as a handful of upcoming European dates this summer.

“The Road to 100k is a way bigger statement than just the capacity,” Burton adds. “It opens up a lot of opportunity for independent promoters that necessarily wouldn’t have access to an artist like this.”

Like Ye, Burton’s a Southside of Chicago native and has been in the G.O.O.D. Music ethos since a teenager while growing up a super fan of Roc-A-Fella.

He worked for longtime Ye affiliate and streetwear designer Don C, served as the executive assistant to John Monopoly, who’s held lengthy stints as West’s manager and then got his own management chops as Consequence’s road manager for multiple tours in the 2000s.

Burton reconnected with Yeezy in 2019 after seeing him at a party where West asked him to come produce his upcoming operas after hearing about his business venture. Burton would helm operations for Nebuchadnezzar and Mary later that year, while also running point on the children’s choir for Ye’s Donda school.

By 2024, Burton relocated to Bangkok with his wife and the couple welcomed their first child. On a whim, Burton picked up the phone and called Ye with hopes of him being open to touring Asia in a market he saw oozing with potential opportunities. “I called Ye and said, ‘Do you want to tour?’” he recalls. West had already performed in Seoul and Shanghai in 2024 and 2025.

Burton envisioned plotting something similar to Michael Jackson’s HIStory World Tour in 1996 to 1997, which boasted 82 dates across Europe, Asia and Africa, while MJ opted not to hit the continental U.S. as he only performed a pair of shows in Hawaii.

Ye has been open about struggles to book U.S. dates following his string of controversies, including repeated hate speech and antisemitic remarks since 2022. The destruction blew up lucrative deals with adidas, Universal Music Group, Gap and Balenciaga, as companies distanced themselves from the mercurial star.

Ye’s made efforts on his road to forgiveness in recent months. West met with a rabbi in November and took out a full-page ad to pen a letter in The Wall Street Journal in January, which saw him apologize to the Jewish and Black communities for his hurtful actions.

Yeezy has avoided major controversy for the first six months of the year as he continues to seek reconciliation and make things right with those he hurt.

As for Burton, he disagreed with how Ye communicated his message in recent years, but backed his intentions as someone whose known West going on two decades. “I think he could have been articulated a lot differently, and he could have driven the point home if it was more diplomatic,” he explains. “But I believe that the sentiments behind it are spot the f—k on.”

Not everyone else was as quick to forgive West. After releasing his Bully album in March via Larry Jackson’s Gamma label, which debuted at No. 2 on the Billboard 200, Ye was booked to headline three nights of Wireless Fest in London this summer. However, he was denied a travel visa by U.K. government officials, which led to the festival’s cancelation in April.

Other European countries followed suit, as Poland and Switzerland canceled shows due to his antisemitic past. Ye went ahead and postponed his France stop in Marseille indefinitely. West’s July 18 concert with Travis Scott in Italy was also reportedly canceled on Friday (May 29).

The seeds for Turkey’s show were planted across the world in Mexico City when Burton invited ILS Vision founder Erdem Karahan to the pair of Mexico City concerts in January. Karahan bought in and will serve as the promoter for West’s return to the stage in Istanbul on Saturday (May 30). “I was like, ‘We got something, let’s continue to do this around the world,’” Burton adds.

The gates to North America were opened after Mexico City for West as well, who booked a pair of concerts on April 1 and April 3 at SoFi Stadium on the heels of Bully, which went on to be Ye’s first shows in Los Angeles since 2021.

Ye’s return to L.A. grossed a staggering $32.6 million across 149,000 tickets sold, according to Billboard Boxscore. “He’s the Michael Jordan of this thing,” Burton says of West’s place in the rap game and lucrative touring prospects over 20 years into his career.

The two L.A. shows were presented by Rod Wave’s Mainstay Touring, which is backed by Live Nation. According to a release from the company, Live Nation posted a revenue of $25.2 billion in 2025.

Yeezy arrived in Turkey on Thursday (May 28) to plenty of fanfare. Preparations continued throughout the week to bring his globe-shaped stage to Atatürk Olympic Stadium. According to a press release, West’s return to Turkey — which marks his first show in the country in 11 years — is expected to generate nearly $100 million in tourism revenue through hotels, transportation, dining and tourist spending.

YE IN TURKEY will be streamed live on West’s YouTube channel. The Chicago native is set to hit the stage around 2 p.m. ET.

For Burton, he’s already got his sights set on booking more shows for Ye across Europe amid the handful of cancelations.

Yeezy will head to the Netherlands for a pair of dates on June 6 and June 8, before returning to the U.S. for two shows in Tampa Bay at Raymond James Stadium on June 26 and June 28. July currently has concerts set in Albania (July 7) and Madrid (July 20), while he’ll head to Portugal to close out the mini European tour on Aug. 7.

“This opens up the conversation for what artists can do independently for our culture, and there are unlimited seats at this independent table,” Burton proclaims. “We just want to be a production agency that’s a part of the conversation.”

He continues: “We’re not trying to say, ‘We Death Row come over here.’ But what we are saying is that if you want an opportunity, we can provide it at scale and we can be doing it with the biggest artists in the world.”