Taylor Swift’s Eras tour is set to become the most lucrative tour in music history.
The stadium-filling shows, which kicked off in March and are set to run until late 2024, are projected to raise a total of $5.7 billion, which would be enough to send everybody in the US $20.
The estimate, cited by the Washington Post, comes from Peter Cohan, an associate professor of management at Babson College in Massachusetts. The numbers suggest that Swift’s income from the tour would be larger than the annual GDP of 42 countries in the world.
The income is also set to be boosted by the release of Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour, an official concert film that was released in cinemas yesterday (October 13). The film took more than $80 million in advanced ticket sales and is projected to raise $196 million during its theatrical run.
The record-breaking tour is having a significant impact on the US economy too, with ticket sales, merchandising and travel all contributing to the overall total. The software company QuestionPro has calculated that each show raises around $93 million for the local economy.
The average ticket price for one of the 33-year-old’s shows stands at around $450, and Swift herself is estimated to receive as much as $4.1 billion from the tour in total.
“Swift and her ‘Eras’ tour have redefined entertainment economics,” said Chris Leyden, director of growth marketing at the ticket retailer SeatGeek, in an interview with Washington Post. The average ticket resale price for a Taylor Swift ticket is currently $1,611.
Shows on the tour span over three hours, with Swift performing a setlist made up of songs split into 10 distinct acts that portray her different studio albums.
Cities across America have noted the impact of the tour on their local economy, with the Cincinnati Regional Chambers’ Center for Research and Data citing a $48 million boost, while Los Angeles estimated that the six shows she played in that city raised a total of £320 million.
When tickets were first made available for the Eras Tour last November, Ticketmaster were forced to delay the general sale due to “extraordinarily high demand”. Responding to the issue, Swift wrote that “I’m not going to make excuses for anyone because we asked them multiple times if they could hand this kind of demand and we were assured they could. It’s truly amazing that 2.4 million people got tickets, but it really pisses me off that a lot of them feel like they went through several bear attacks to get them.”
In a four-star review of the concert film, NME wrote: “It’s a staggering feat. In the space of one seamless performance, Swift is at turns a playfully eccentric artist, a country star and genuine pop icon. Yet for all the spectacle, it might be those acoustic songs that linger longest in the memory.”
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