One Direction Top ‘X-Factor’ Rich List But Earnings Dwarfed By Simon Cowell

In terms of musical acts, One Direction are The X-Factor’s biggest earners. As all One Direction fans know, Harry Styles, Louis Tomlinson, Niall Horan, Liam Payne, and Zayn Malik were formed into One Direction on the 2010 season of Simon Cowell’s reality TV show The X-factor. While One Direction did not win the show, they have gone on to become the world’s biggest boy band. Of the acts who have gone on to major success from The X-Factor, One Direction have been by some distance the biggest success story.

While the members of One Direction have become household names and amassed a sizeable fortune, the Daily Mail reports that they are still a long way from The X-Factor’s biggest earners. It is estimated that One Direction have earned around $40 million each during the five-year life of the band. That is undoubtedly a huge amount of cash, and the members of One Direction are clearly very wealthy young men.

Pause for a second and reflect on some other figures. Heatworld reported that the 2014 One Direction world tour generated something upwards of $250 million. That One Direction tour was the highest grossing tour of 2014, and it covered 69 dates and was seen by around 3.4 million people.

The Independent reports that One Direction will return to The X-Factor this weekend to appear on the show’s live finale. While they are there, they may well reflect on some of the figures earned by the shows judges.

The Daily Mail reports that Simon Cowell has earned more than $450 million from The X-Factor in total and over $100 million in the last year alone. Of course, Cowell was the brains behind the X-Factor concept, so perhaps it is no surprise that his earnings top One Direction’s earnings by a huge margin.

One Direction are some distance ahead of other X-Factor contestants’ earnings. The hugely successful Leona Lewis trails in One Direction’s wake with earnings of around $20 million. Boyband JLS are way behind One Direction with an estimated $35 million.

None of these figures are paltry sums, of course, but contestants, including One Direction, trail way behind the judging panel when it comes to earnings. Sharon Osbourne, who is largely famous for being famous and married to Ozzy Osbourne, shows One Direction a clean pair of heels with an estimated $220 million fortune. Gary Barlow was an X-Factor judge for three seasons and saw his fortune shoot from around $25 million to $100 million.

Telly Mix reflects that One Direction have earned a huge amount more than Matt Cardle, who won the show when One Direction competed. Cardle is worth around $2 million.

Clearly, The X-Factor has acted as springboard that propelled the likes of One Direction to vast fortunes, but many One Direction fans will wonder how the earnings of most of the judges eclipses those who arguably generate the income. Of course, it isn’t just successful acts like One Direction who have got rich as a result of The X-Factor. According to the Express, twin brothers, Jedward, an act everyone loved to hate, have gone on to earn an incredible $10 million as a result of their appearance on the show.

As any One Direction fan knows the X-Factor alumni have recently completes their massive “On The Road Again” world tour. This tour took in over 80 dates worldwide and, of course, attracted massive crowds. One Direction have also scored another UK No. 1 album with Made in the A.M., so we are likely to see their fortune grow in size when the earnings from those sources are calculated.

One Direction’s fortune will carry on accumulating, but they have a long way to go before any of them approaches the wealth accumulated by judges Simon Cowell and Sharon Osbourne. As has arguably always been the case in the music industry, it seems that One Direction are discovering that the real money in the business is often made by those behind the scenes.

[Photo by Rich Fury/Invision/AP]