Photo: AFP
Taylor Swift (pic) is bringing in ticket sales of more than $13 million a night on the road - putting her on a trajectory to deliver the highest-grossing tour in music history.
Most of the money goes toward the cost of production, and that sum doesn’t include the additional millions dollars in merchandise sales that the Eras tour is generating. But it still makes Swift, 33, the top-grossing artist in the world and marks the biggest tour of her career.
Swift is on pace to gross more than $1 billion, a threshold no artist has ever hit. Through 22 dates, the tour has grossed $300 million, according to Pollstar, an industry publication. She was scheduled to perform more than 50 dates in the US in all and then go abroad. Pollstar estimates Eras could top $1.3 billion.
Swift is also setting a high-water mark for prices - in a year marked by concert inflation. The average ticket to a Swift show costs $254. Seven of the 25 best-selling acts of the first half of the year are also charging more than $200 a night. The list includes Bruce Springsteen, at $224, Phish at $206, and George Strait at $282.
Just five years ago, the only two acts that topped $200 were Britney Spears and Celine Dion. That year’s biggest performer, Ed Sheeran, could be seen for an average of $89 a night.
Since then, the average price of the 25 best-selling tours has jumped by $37. Adjusted for inflation, the jump is about $13.60, demonstrating that ticket prices are rising faster than consumer prices generally.
You can see what’s happened if you group it into tiers.
Before 2018, almost every ticket cost between $75 and $130, though a couple of acts charged at the higher end. Now, there are more top acts charging upward of $200 than there are top performers charging less than $100.
Coincidentally, 2018 happens to be the last time Swift was on tour. This is what’s happened to her pricing since the Reputation tour in 2018 and even further back to Speak Now in 2011:
The cost of seeing Taylor Swift has increased by $134. That hasn’t stopped more than 1.1 million people from buying tickets. - Bloomberg
