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Taylor Swift wrapped up her Eras Tour in Vancouver last week — and it grossed more than any tour in history.
With 149 dates across 21 countries, the Eras Tour earned more than $2 billion, according to Pollstar. While that 10-figure sum is in large part due to the sheer number of shows she played — she said the tour was attended by over 10 million people — there was a strategy to her touring that helped her maximize the profits from each stop.
Swift spent eight nights in London and six in cities like Toronto, Los Angeles, and Singapore. Meanwhile, she skipped nearby cities that she visited on past tours, like Ottawa and Pasadena.
These mini-residencies likely added millions of dollars to her personal bottom line.
The underlying business assumption was that Swifties would travel and pay big bucks for tickets, no matter where she performed. It turned out to be correct: All of her shows were sold out. Playing in fewer cities meant less money spent on production, travel, and labor — which in turn meant more profit for Swift and her team.
"It significantly reduces the overhead of a tour," Nathan Hubbard, the former CEO of Ticketmaster who founded the management firm Firebird, told Business Insider. "Think about the cost of taking down an entire stage, packing up 50 trucks, moving it all to another town. Every night you can avoid striking the set saves millions of dollars."
Swift's representatives did not respond to a request for comment.
Swift isn't the first performer to employ this strategy.
Harry Styles tested it with his 15-night runs at New York's Madison Square Garden and Los Angeles' Kia Forum, an extension of the Las Vegas residencies that have long minted millions for stars.
"Coming out of Covid, the largest artists understand that their fan bases will travel to be with them," Hubbard said. "Previously, this was just happening in Las Vegas. But so many of these cities can be a fun excursion for a fan and their friends. That's driving a lot of what we're seeing in the evolution of touring right now."
BI spoke with several fans who said they traveled out of state to see and across the Atlantic to see Swift perform.
"I probably would've come to Scotland at one point, but it was the concert that got me here," one Swiftie from Minneapolis told BI.
"We said to ourselves, 'Let's just go and have an adventure," her friend added. "Tickets are outrageously expensive in the US, and this entire trip for both of us was cheaper than our friends back home paid."
Of course, it's a delicate balance. Swift is considered among the pop stars most in touch with her fans and wouldn't want to alienate anyone by skipping over their local venues. But with nearly 150 shows in 50-plus cities, it would be hard to complain about her doing a few extra nights in one place and passing over another.
Plus, she's charged less — an average of about $219 per ticket, per Pollstar — than she could have. The average resale price for the North American leg of her tour was $3,801, Pitchfork reported.
And she's not the only one profiting.
The Common Sense Institute said that "the totality of Taylor Swift's US tour could generate $4.6 billion in total consumer spending, larger than the GDP of 35 countries." In Europe, the total figure will surely be impressive as well.
Turns out that she's an industry disruptor — if not the smooth-talking huckster — after all.
