Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour didn’t hit screens until 12 October – a date the superstar moved up, as a surprise for fans – yet AMC Theatres announced worldwide ticket pre-sales had already exceeded $100m (£81.5m). First-day sales alone topped $26m, breaking box office records. Many industry experts expect the film to land among Barbie and The Super Mario Bros. Movie – both of which have grossed upwards of $1.3bn (£1.06bn) to date – for biggest opening weekends of the year.
As astounding as these figures are, they’re just another part of the economic effect of Taylor Swift’s massive Eras Tour, which kicked off 17 March at 70,000-seat State Farm Stadium in Arizona, US. The tour has grossed an estimated $1bn, and will continue to smash records as Swift takes it to Canada, South America, Asia, Australia and Europe into late 2023 and 2024. Most dates are already sold out.
Throughout 2023, Swift’s tour has generated massive revenue for each US host city, as fans spend to see her – in many cases, laying out thousands of dollars on tickets and lodging, outfits and merchandise.
“This isn’t just about music or storytelling or brand – she is pioneering an economic model,” says Dan Egan, VP of behavioural finance and investing at Betterment, a US-based financial advisory company. “Cities are constantly strapped for cash, so the impact of the Taylor Swift economy is that cities will have the revenue to invest in public infrastructure, transit, safety and planning.”
Swift is on her way to being a billionaire herself, but the real financial power of the Swift brand is found downstream with the industries – and individuals – that benefit from her presence. The numbers are staggering.
$5bn: Overall economic impact
In May 2023, the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia noted in its Beige Book that Swift’s Eras Tour stop was a boon for the city’s tourism industry. The effect spread: the tour’s opening night in Glendale, Arizona brought in more revenue for local businesses than the Super Bowl, held at the same venue earlier this year. Combined, there’s a lot of money moving across the country: a June estimate from market-research firm QuestionPro estimated the economic impact of Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour at $5bn for the US economy.
After two nights of concerts at Paycor Stadium in Cincinnati, Ohio, the region’s travel and tourism board Visit Cincinnati reported that Swift brought $90m to the greater Cincinnati area. Those concerts, held on 30 June and 1 July, each had about 60,000 attendees, many of whom travelled into the area for the shows. The hotels in downtown Cincinnati had a record-breaking 98% occupancy, and Visit Cincinnati noted the hotel revenue was double year-over-year; the visitor’s bureau estimated that Swift is responsible for $7.9m added hotel revenue for those two concert days.
“A Taylor Swift concert is a vacation level of spending,” says Egan. “It’s about a good experience, not a good deal, and you’re more comfortable spending a fair amount of money on it.”
Egan says framing attending a show like taking a holiday can help explain how Swift affects local economies: as fans spend more money in specific geographic regions, that money goes to businesses located there, employed by people who live there. When local residents make more money, they have more spending power, too. That cycles back into other local businesses.
On 14 and 15 July, Swift played two shows in Denver, Colorado at Empower Field at Mile High, to a combined 140,000 people – who overall contributed $140m to the state’s GDP. What’s impactful about this increase, says Egan, is that “Swift’s GDP stimulation keeps a lot of the money flowing around in the local economy instead of it going somewhere else”. Egan explains this is the opposite of what typically happens: most GDP spikes happen because of exports. Instead, with Swift, the money exchanges from person to person domestically, and is more likely to be recirculated within the country.
