THE O2 has been named the top arena in the world at the Billboard Awards.

The awards honour the music industry’s top artists, professionals and venues based on the Billboard Boxscores chart.

This is the first time the North Greenwich landmark has won this award, taking the accolade from Madison Square Gardens in New York which has won for the past five years.

The award follows the London venue being crowned the world’s most popular arena just a fortnight ago by Pollstar, which showed The O2 had sold nearly 1,600,000 tickets so far this year.

On receiving the reward, Chief Executive and President of AEG Europe David Campbell said: “Thank you to the entire AEG family for helping create the world’s most popular music venue in London.

"The O2 has generated more than 2,500 jobs in London and this award is for those people.

"We are a bit biased but we think The O2 is a very special place, and we particularly want to thank the 600 artists who have played since we opened just over two years ago.

"In otherwise difficult times it’s great that music, and particularly live music, can make a positive difference to so many people."