There’s no denying that Taylor Swift’s power goes beyond pop music. Swift continues to break endless records one album at a time. Her influence in the music industry is incomparable, and now this influence has been extended into the economy. Will we escape the upcoming recession all thanks to Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour?
Prior to The Eras Tour, Swift hadn’t toured since 2018, where she played mostly U.S. dates and a couple in the U.K. Back then, a resale ticket cost a maximum of $191. Currently, on resale platforms like Stubhub, a seated ticket originally valued at around $100 can be sold for up to $1000. Clearly, as Swift’s popularity grew, the demand for concert tickets increased as well, which spiked the prices.
The Eras Tour has had an incredible impact on the tourism industry of every country, town, and continent in which Taylor Swift decides to ‘shake it off’. According to Micheal Fox, “hotel prices on [Booking.com] more than tripled in anticipation of the tour in some cities, including Pittsburgh; Minneapolis; and Kansas City, Missouri. The hotel-occupancy rate in Allegheny County, an area of Pennsylvania that includes Pittsburgh, approached 100% during the Swift tour and hotel-reservation platforms crashed because of the surge in web traffic.”
Dedicated Swifties travel overseas, mountains, valleys, and all that comes in between, just to see their favorite singer and be able to say “I saw Taylor Swift in concert 5 times.’’ Well, with this dedication comes consumer spending: train tickets, fast-foods, coffees, merchandise, parking tickets, and more. Swift’s performance in Denver, according to the Common Sense Institute, was estimated to generate $140 million in the state’s gross domestic product and the 75,000 Swifties in attendance could spend over $200 million in direct consumer spending.
The Eras Tour has also created several job opportunities along the way for concert security, maintenance, servers, and hotel staff. And Taylor Swift is very much aware of how essential these jobs are in enabling her to perform an almost four-hour set all over the world. Therefore, as a token of her appreciation, she awarded her truck drivers over $100,000 in Christmas bonuses — very generous for someone who has just achieved billionaire status.
The concert comes with souvenirs: T-shirts, hoodies, posters, friendship bracelets, and every form of merchandise under the sun. You could put Taylor Swift’s name on a bin bag and it would sell out. Swift understands the loyalty and dedication of her fans, and in order to maintain and enhance this relationship she treats them with constant drops of merchandise and even several vinyl variants of the same album which have landed her the nickname of being a ‘capitalist queen’ despite them constantly selling out.
Shaomian of the University of South Carolina says: “Fans were lining up hours before the arena even opened because the merchandise was set up in a different area and they wanted first dibs on buying. Even if only a quarter of those people bought something, that’s easily at least a million dollars a night.” Swifties can never get enough of Taylor Swift.
Another mastermind plan Swift conducted that enchanted her fans was the release of The Eras Tour Film. I vividly remember the battle of trying to secure a cinema ticket for the release of the film, and never mind mentioning the exclusive cup or popcorn bucket. Swift’s film surpassed the most popular film in box offices of 2023, Greta Gerwig’s Barbie. The film garnered a whopping $96 million in the United States and Canada alone, and according to AMC, it shattered the U.S. record for the highest ticket-sales revenue during a single day in AMC’s 103-year history.
Overall, it is estimated that Taylor Swift’s The Eras Tour is going to gross $4.6 billion, making her the highest paid and most popular entertainer ever in the world’s history… Talk about being a powerful woman.