Still in her record-breaking era: Taylor Swift tour smashes record with $2-billion revenue
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Taylor Swift is not done with her record-breaking era: The pop superstar’s global tour sold more than $2 billion in tickets, making Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour the highest-grossing tour of all time for a second year in a row.
The “Anti-Hero” and “Fortnight” singer, who wrapped the juggernaut road show on Sunday after a three-night run in Vancouver, sold $2,077,618,725 in tickets during the 21-month outing, The Times has confirmed. On Monday, production company Taylor Swift Touring revealed the final revenue total to the New York Times in its first official disclosure of the show’s earnings. That’s a lot of friendship bracelets and bejeweling.
The pop megastar played the grand finale of her two-year-long world tour on Sunday at Vancouver’s BC Place.
A representative for Swift declined to comment further Monday when reached by The Times.
“This tour has been the adventure of a lifetime, and I speak on behalf of my band, my crew, my fellow performers, who all love their families and have spent time away from everything that they know and love and have performed when they were sick, when anything was going on in their lives,” Swift told the thousands of fans closing out the tour with her in Vancouver’s BC Place on Sunday. “I just wanted to say that on behalf of all of us, I will never forget you giving us that moment.”
The tour launched in March 2023 after a Ticketmaster-busting rush on ticket sales, and crossed the billion-dollar mark last year. It was both a critical and commercial success that superseded the previous record set by Elton John’s record-breaking Farewell Yellow Brick Road tour, which made more than $939 million during its 330-show run. Coldplay’s ongoing Music of the Spheres tour, which recently booked additional concert dates through next year, recently surpassed the $1-billion mark and is being discussed as potentially approaching Eras’ impressive numbers. It currently trails Eras as the No. 2 highest-grossing tour with $1.1 billion in revenue.
Swift, 34, performed 149 sold-out shows and 10,168,008 people attended the concerts, the New York Times said. Each seat costs an average of $204 — a significantly higher price point than the industry standard, which the trade publication Pollstar estimates at $131 for the top 100 global tours of 2023. (Fans and scalpers surely forked over much more).
Taylor Swift is worth an estimated $1.6 billion, Forbes said, making her the world’s richest female musician. Rihanna, who held the title last year, is No. 2.
The “Shake it Off” singer-songwriter powered through songs from her growing oeuvre throughout the production, also finding time to record her 11th studio album, “The Tortured Poets Department,” which she released mid-tour last April. The 14-time Grammy Award winner incorporated songs from the album in the post-release phase of the show, at one point including a cameo from her boyfriend, star NFL tight end Travis Kelce.
On Monday, the Associated Press reported that the tour earned an estimated $1.04 billion in North America. Factoring in Swift’s worldwide concerts, that figure was boosted to $2.2 million, according to Pollstar.
Andy Gensler, editor in chief of Pollstar & VenuesNow, told AP that what Swift and the Eras tour accomplished across five continents and in front of 10 million fans is “extraordinary and unprecedented.”
“The tour’s $2.2 billion estimated gross is the highest of all time and nearly doubles the second biggest tour,” Gensler said. “It’s also an example of the limits this industry continues to push far past while bringing music, community and peak life experiences to legions across the globe.”
Cultural dominance. History-making album sales. Sold-out stadiums. Add them up, and Taylor Swift’s current moment has little precedent in pop-music history.
Pollstar’s estimate falls short of Taylor Swift Touring’s final tally. Nevertheless, the tour’s might was palpable, repeatedly causing seismic activity along the way and being credited with boosting local economies wherever it stopped.
Concertgoers spent an average of $1,300 on travel, lodging, food and merchandise, according to the U.S. Travel Assn., which is on par with what football fans might spend on the Super Bowl. The association says that every $100 spent on live performances generates about $300 in other expenses including spending on hotels, food and transportation. The Travel Assn.’s Eras numbers were reported before Swift brought the tour back to the United States earlier this year.
CNN reported Monday that Swifties spent an estimated $5 billion in the United States, citing figures from survey company Question Pro. That total, however, took into account only direct spending. The numbers could exceed $10 billion when indirect spending is factored in and when non-ticket holders make purchases outside of the venue, CNN said.
Meanwhile, the tour’s corresponding concert film, “Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour (Taylor’s Version),” also dominated the box office. Upon its October 2023 release, “Eras” earned $96 million in its four days at the domestic box office, marking the highest opening for a concert film. The 3 ?-hour film broke another record when it began streaming on Disney+ in March, with the streamer saying it had been viewed 4.6 million times in its first three days of release, Variety reported.
The “I Can Do It With a Broken Heart” singer also commemorated the tour with a 256-page coffee-table book that was released last month. Although the book instantly became a top seller and was the biggest publishing launch of 2024, it was swiftly dubbed the “Errors Tour” book after Swifties discovered that it was teeming with typos, grammatical errors and low-quality photos.
Times pop music critic Mikael Wood contributed to this report.
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