Taylor Swift is already one of the highest-paid entertainers in the world, but now it looks like her Eras Tour could be the highest-grossing tour of all time, earning a record-setting $1 billion in sales.
Swift's stadium concert tour — which features sprawling 40-song sets with elaborate staging, choreography and over a dozen costume changes — is expected to eclipse Elton John's farewell tour in terms of gross revenue for tickets, merchandise and sponsorships, as reported by the Wall Street Journal.
Exactly how much Swift's tour has earned is unclear, as it hasn't been reporting nightly grosses to Billboard Boxscore, which tracks concert tour data.
Last December, Billboard estimated that Swift's tour would gross $590 million based on 52 tour dates. But with recently added concerts in Latin America, Asia, Australia and Europe through 2024, the tour has a total of at least 106 dates, for now.
This suggests that over $1 billion in total gross revenue is likely. With the added dates, another estimate has Swift taking in a total of $1.4 billion in gross revenue, according to concert data tracker Pollstar.
Have any other artists come close to that amount? Here's a look at the 10 highest-grossing concert tours, based on Billboard Boxscore's most recent data as of April 20, 2023.
- Elton John — Farewell Yellow Brick Road Tour (2018-20, 22-present): $853 million
- Ed Sheeran — The ÷ (Divide) Tour (2017-19): $776 million
- U2 — U2 360° Tour (2009-11): $736 million
- Guns N' Roses — Not in This Lifetime... Tour (2016-19): $584 million
- The Rolling Stones — A Bigger Bang Tour (2005-07): $558 million
- The Rolling Stones — No Filter Tour (2017-19, 21): $547 million
- Coldplay — A Head Full of Dreams Tour (2016-17): $524 million
- Roger Waters — The Wall Live (2010-13): $459 million
- AC/DC — Black Ice World Tour (2008-10): $442 million
- Harry Styles — Love on Tour (2021-present):$418 million
The success of Swift's tour is not surprising. When tickets first went on sale in November 2022, Ticketmaster's website crashed from all the traffic. During the first day of ticket sales, the Eras Tour sold over 2.4 million tickets, the most sold by an artist in a single day, according to Ticketmaster.
Tickets for the Eras Tour range from $50 to $899 for the most expensive VIP package. However, in the resale market tickets are much pricier, as even the cheapest seats go for $1,000, according to Axios.
Including other expenses like clothing, hotel accommodations and travel arrangements, concert-goers spend $1,300 on average to attend the tour, according to a recent survey by QuestionPro, a research company.
Based on the survey's findings, total spending on Taylor Swift's tour in 2023 is expected to be around $5 billion. That's larger than the gross domestic product of 50 countries, according to Billboard.
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