Miss Americana, also known as Taylor Swift, has already broken multiple records with her Eras Tour and is set to break even more in the next year. The Eras tour was announced in November 2022 on “Good Morning America”, started in March 2023 in Glendale, Arizona, and won’t end until November 2024 in Toronto, making the tour over a year and a half long! She has 146 different shows in five different continents, having 53 shows in North America alone. Over ten million people have the chance to attend the tour over the 146 shows, but the tickets still sell out within minutes.
Groves 9th grader Anna Carrel, who attended the tour, said that the first time she tried to get tickets, she got kicked out of Ticketmaster and ended up getting tickets when a friend got them.
“I found out in the middle of art class through my friend that we had got them and I was like, oh my god,” Carrel said.
The price for tickets ranged anywhere from $49-$499, but resale tickets reached over $20,000 for floor seats! The tour has already made over 1 billion dollars but is set to generate up to 2.2 billion dollars by November 2024. During the tour, Swift announced 2 new albums, “Speak Now (Taylor’s Version)” and “1989 (Taylor’s Version)”. “Speak Now (TV)” was released on July 7, and “1989 (TV)” was released on October 27.
Taylor Swift’s fans, dubbed “Swifties”, are just as crazy as her. In one show in Seattle, the amount of Swifties jumping up and down created a 2.3 magnitude tremor. One tradition that caused quite havoc around the stadiums was the number of people “Taylor-gating”. Swifties meet up long before the concert starts to trade bracelets and meet other Swifties around the stadium. Many of them don’t even have tickets. They simply come for the good vibes and hope to get a chance to score some last-minute tickets. Once in the stadium, fans stand in line for hours to get the coveted Eras Tour merch, including sweatshirts and t-shirts. In total, most Swifties dropped an average of $1,300 on the experience – not including the tickets; outfits, costumes, bracelet-making kits, travel, merch and dining are all included in this total.
Carrel said that her mom stood in line for the merch so she could watch the opener because otherwise, she would miss the whole opener— Gracie Abrams, who she was looking forward to seeing. Some other artists that have opened for Taylor on the Eras tour have been Paramore, Gayle, Beabadoobee, Muna, Phoebe Bridgers, Owenn, Girl in Red, Haim, and Sabrina Carpenter.
“Midnights”, Swift’s tenth album, was released just before she announced the Eras tour, and in one of the songs, “You’re On Your Own Kid”, she mentions friendship bracelets. This sparked the idea for Swifties to bring friendship bracelets to the tour and trade them with other people attending.
Taylor has also been very generous with the money she makes through the tour. She gave her truck drivers bonuses adding up to more than 55 million dollars, and has already made several donations including donating to local food banks at every stop. Taylor has had a huge economic impact on the cities she’s performed in, generating as much tourism as the Super Bowl! Many people who attend her concerts spend the night in the cities she performs in or even fly out to the city. This generates a lot of revenue for the places she visits, thus creating an overall economic boost to the states and even countries she performs in.
The tour has also meant a lot to her fans because it is the first time they have seen her perform her four newest albums live. Due to COVID breaking out in early 2020, her Lover Fest tour about her seventh album was canceled. Her eighth and ninth albums, “Folklore” and “Evermore”, were both released later in 2020 during COVID, so they were without a concert. Her latest album, “Midnights”, was released before her tour started. Being able to hear multiple songs from each of these albums live for the first time had many Swifties in tears, showing Taylor doesn’t just impact the economy, but also people’s hearts.
