Those are just some of the staggering figures that have emerged from Swift\u2019s Eras Tour, which wrapped in December after a nearly two-year run. Before Eras, for example, no tour had passed the billion-dollar mark in ticket sales; Swift shattered that record, raking in $2.2 billion in gross earnings.<\/p>\n
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Three people, one holding a phone on a selfie stick, pose for a photo in front of a tower of TVs with Taylor Swift\u2019s face on them.<\/p>\n
Taylor Swift fans take pictures next to an Eras Tour installation at the Marina Bay Sands complex in Singapore on Feb. 28. Roslan Rahman\/AFP via Getty Images<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
Yet that number doesn\u2019t even begin to account for all of the revenue generated beyond concert ticket sales. In September 2023, the U.S. Travel Association estimated the tour\u2019s total economic impact at the time had surpassed some $10 billion\u2014and that was just five months in.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf she were her own economy, she would be bigger than 50 or so of the poorest nations in the world,\u201d said Adam Gustafson, a professor of music at Penn State Harrisburg, who likened Swift\u2019s influence to a \u201cmassive gravitational pull.\u201d<\/p>\n
Swift may have humble origins in West Reading, Pennsylvania, but the Eras Tour has laid bare just how powerful her gravitational pull has become.<\/p>\n
She has drawn in powerful world leaders, including Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who attended her show in Toronto, and Chilean President Gabriel Boric, a known Swiftie who once leapt to her defense on Twitter, tenderly sending \u201chugs from the south.\u201d Her tour has captured the attention of the Bank of England and the U.S. Federal Reserve. And the force of her fandom has, quite literally, shaken the world, with the dancing at her concerts in Edinburgh and Seattle generating enough of a seismic shock that scientists took notice.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t think we\u2019ll ever see anything like it again, and I don\u2019t think we\u2019ve seen anything like it before,\u201d said Ryan Herzog, an economics professor at Gonzaga University who partnered with New York Times<\/em> columnist and economics professor Paul Krugman to develop a class on \u201cSwiftonomics.\u201d<\/p>\n Taylor Swift sings into a microphone and flips her hair over her shoulder while on stage in a giant stadium that is packed with fans.<\/p>\n Swift performs in Melbourne, Australia, on Feb. 16. This concert drew the biggest crowd on the Eras Tour. Graham Denholm\/TAS24\/Getty Images<\/p>\n<\/div>\n You don\u2019t have to be a devout Swiftie to have felt the economic reverberations of the popstar\u2019s marathon tour, which extended into the far reaches of the global economy over its nearly two-year run.<\/p>\n The numbers alone are eye-popping: $2.07 billion in ticket sales, 10,168,008 attendees, 149 shows, 51 cities, 21 countries, five continents.<\/p>\n Beyond the gold rush in ticket sales, the Eras Tour pumped up hotel revenue; drove up demand for flights\u2014prompting Southwest Airlines to add new flights to \u201chelp Swifties get to and from her concerts,\u201d per a company statement; and spiked retail and restaurant spending. The bead market also boomed: Michaels, a retailer known for its arts and crafts supplies, reported that its sales for bracelet materials surged, popularized by the beaded friendship bracelets that have become a trademark of the Eras Tour.<\/p>\n \u201cThe magnitude of her impact was large everywhere she went,\u201d said Herzog.<\/p>\n The last time that Swift toured was in 2018, after she released Reputation<\/em>, a defiant album defined by its slithering snakes and angsty feuds. (Remember \u201cLook What You Made Me Do\u201d?) Reputation<\/em> spanned 53 shows and 7 countries, but even that feels small compared with the colossal Eras Tour.<\/p>\n In an evolving music industry now dominated by streaming giants, such as Spotify or Apple Music\u2014which give artists only a sliver of profits\u2014experts said touring can be a key source of income for many musicians.<\/p>\n \u201cArtists really don\u2019t get a lot of money from streaming; that is why they\u2019re putting on these big shows,\u201d said Kara Reynolds, an economist at American University who teaches a class on Swiftonomics. \u201cAll the money now in the music industry is really in touring.\u201d<\/p>\n But for almost five years, Swift took a break from touring. Rather than hitting the road, particularly when much of the world shut down during the COVID-19 pandemic, Swift churned out four new albums: Lover<\/em> (2019), folklore<\/em> (2020), evermore<\/em> (2020), and Midnights<\/em> (2022). Her most recent album, The<\/em> Tortured Poets Department<\/em> (2024), was released during the Eras Tour.<\/p>\n An artist\u2019s depiction of Taylor Swift is painted on a flight of steps behind a crowd of fans.<\/p>\n Fans pose for pictures with the Spanish Steps outside Wembley Stadium, west of London, on June 21. The steps were renamed as the \u201cSwiftie Steps\u201d after being painted by a street artist prior to an Eras Tour concert.Benjamin Cremel\/AFP via Getty Images<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Some of the Taylormania can be traced back to the isolation of the pandemic and pent up demand for Swift\u2019s new music. \u201cThe timing after COVID just was impeccable,\u201d said Herzog, who said that there was a \u201cperfect recipe\u201d of factors. \u201cThe fact that she hadn\u2019t toured enabled her to put on a show unlike anything anyone had experienced.\u201d<\/p>\n Yet all recipes, no matter how perfect, need capable hands. With some two decades of experience under Swift\u2019s belt, economists and seasoned watchers described her as a savvy businesswoman and marketing whiz, one who has leveraged social media to her advantage and strategically made bold, even unusual, professional decisions to directly connect with fans and establish her empire.<\/p>\n Dani Winchester, co-host of the Swift-focused Taylearning podcast, likened Swift to a \u201ctwo-headed dragon.\u201d \u201cOne head is her immense talent, her unparalleled pen, and just what an incredible musician and artist she is,\u201d she said. \u201cThe other head is this absolutely insane businesswoman.\u201d<\/p>\n Take, for example, Swift\u2019s decision to rerecord her older albums, allowing her to rerelease her music under her ownership, as Taylor\u2019s Version. There\u2019s all of the Easter eggs that she has planted in music videos, social media posts, and interviews, offering clues and veiled messages to her legions of fans. There\u2019s the nearly three-hour Eras Tour movie she released last October, and the hardcover tour book that she dropped in November. It\u2019s also hard to forget her feud with Ticketmaster, which ultimately helped pave the way for a Justice Department lawsuit against the company and its parent firm, Live Nation Entertainment.<\/p>\n And then there\u2019s the career-spanning Eras Tour, which by some estimates is set to funnel some $4.1 billion directly into Swift\u2019s pocket.<\/p>\n For Gustafson, the Penn State Harrisburg professor, understanding Swift\u2019s economic impact starts with seeing her as Swift Inc. When you start \u201cthinking about her as a financial engine rather than as this artist,\u201d he said, \u201cyou start realizing that the hundreds and hundreds of people below her, they\u2019re all kind of at work to make this cultural product happen.\u201d<\/p>\n A grid of four photos shows two people in Union Jack flag dresses and hats, people posing with friendship bracelets in a dark stadium, two people wearing pink cowboy hats and taking a selfie, and a cheering crowd with illuminated phones.<\/p>\n Clockwise from the top left: Swifties at Eras Tour stops in London, Rio de Janeiro, Tokyo, and Amsterdam in 2023 and 2024.Getty Images<\/p>\n<\/div>\n The sun had yet to rise when Megan Wysocki clambered out of bed and rushed over to her local Target store in New Jersey. A student at American University, Wysocki is decidedly not<\/em> a morning person, she told Foreign Policy<\/em>\u2014but this was something even she couldn\u2019t miss.<\/p>\n She wasn\u2019t alone. When Wysocki arrived at Target in the early hours of Nov. 29, a line had formed of people who were there for the same reason: snagging Swift\u2019s self-published Eras Tour Book<\/em>, a 256-page tome packed with more than 500 glossy images of Swift as well as her reflections. Swift released the book exclusively through the retailer on Black Friday, prompting eager fans to turn to Reddit to mastermind plans to secure a copy.<\/p>\n \u201cWill people camp out? What time should I arrive?!\u201d one Swiftie asked. \u201cObviously no one here can answer that question but I was curious if anyone had a game plan yet.\u201d<\/p>\n Wysocki, for her part, appeared to be bracing for chaos. \u201cPrior to going, I was fully expecting, like, it\u2019s going to be unorganized \u2026 there\u2019s going to be a stampede, I\u2019m going to have to fight someone for this book,\u201d she said, laughing. It was, mercifully, a fairly seamless process\u2014no brawls necessary\u2014and by the time she left the store at around 6:45 am, she said there were only two or three books left.<\/p>\n \u201cI think if Bill Gates went and wrote a book, people would not be lining up at Target at 5:30 in the morning,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n Wysocki\u2019s purchase of the Eras Tour Book<\/em> was just one of 814,000 print copy sales of the volume over the Thanksgiving holiday weekend. Those sales smashed yet another record for Swift: the biggest total first week print sales of 2024.<\/p>\n To see the Eras Tour in the United States, some fans paid steep prices, shelling out thousands on resold concert tickets alone. Others travelled abroad to Europe, where a stricter regulatory environment helped ensure that ticket prices were some 87 percent cheaper than they were in the United States. In Paris, for example, more than a quarter of tickets sold for Swift\u2019s shows in the city were snapped up by Americans.<\/p>\n Top: A hillside covered with people. Bottom left: The back of a head with Eras Tour spelled out in sparkly gems. Bottom right: A person in a denim jacket with Taylor Swift iconography on it.<\/p>\n Top: Fans sit on Olympic Hill and wait for Swift\u2019s concert to begin in Munich on July 27. Bottom: Fans with bejeweled attire in Gelsenkirchen, Germany, and Mexico City in 2023 and 2024.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Others tuned in online. At every show, tens of thousands of fans unable to attend in person would watch unofficial fan-organized livestreams, complete with shaky video footage, frenzied live chats, and even engagement proposals. It\u2019s euphoric. It\u2019s electric. It\u2019s adoring. It\u2019s Swiftiedom.<\/p>\n \u201cHer fan base, I think, genuinely feels that she\u2019s authentic, that they\u2019re seeing a real her,\u201d said Gustafson. \u201cThat sort of feeling of authenticity, and attachment to it, is really something that I think just draws fans in\u2014that they\u2019re not just consuming the movement; they\u2019re actually a part of it with her.\u201d<\/p>\n Whether you\u2019re pining for a stranger who doesn\u2019t know you exist, reeling from crushing heartbreak, experiencing the thrill and agony of a new crush, spiraling in self-doubt, recovering from professional setback, or reveling in a tender friendship, fans say, Taylor Swift has a song for you.<\/p>\n \u201cShe has mastered the art of autofiction and of taking stories that have happened to her\u2014no matter how small\u2014and turning them into these moments, through her songs, that we can relate to, that we can listen to, and experience, and grow with her,\u201d said Winchester.<\/p>\n It\u2019s a bond that spans generations. \u201cWhen [I was] a young teenager, I found that my feelings weren\u2019t taken as seriously \u2026 because, you know, I don\u2019t even take my feelings as a 15-year-old as seriously as 15-year-old me would like,\u201d said Olivia Kotarski, who co-hosts the Taylearning<\/em> podcast with Winchester. \u201cBut Taylor Swift took them seriously when I was 15,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n After the whirlwind of the Eras Tour, what\u2019s next for Swift? Spending the holidays with beau Travis Kelce, for one. Professionally, Swift is sure to keep writing songs, and there are two more album rerecordings in the pipeline, said Stephanie Burt, a professor at Harvard University who taught a course called \u201cTaylor Swift and Her World\u201d and is writing a book on the popstar.<\/p>\n Beyond that, it\u2019s anyone\u2019s guess. But Burt is excited.<\/p>\n \u201cWe have no idea,\u201d she said. \u201cI just feel like it\u2019s going to be awesome.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" When tensions flare in the contested South China Sea, age-old territorial feuds or military drills are typically to blame\u2014not American popstars known for their blond tresses and… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":22056,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-22184","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-football"],"yoast_head":"\n
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