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Posted: 2024-12-08 23:33:12

It's the end of an era for one of the biggest concert tours in history.

It's curtains for Taylor Swift's Eras Tour.

After kicking off last year in Arizona on March 17, the tour played its final show in Vancouver, Canada.

To put that timeline into perspective, a baby conceived on opening night would be celebrating its first birthday this month.

There are an endless number of think pieces about Taylor Swift — her music, her fans, her haters, and why using your head to explain her success is actually a fruitless exercise.

A young woman holds up her phone and beams as she watches Taylor Swift perform
The Eras Tour ran on-and-off for 18 months.()
Taylor Swift smiles on stage with her guitar as the crowd is seen behind her
Taylor Swift played nearly 150 shows.()

"There's an obsessive preoccupation to try and understand 'cultural impact' while it's happening," says Lauren Rosewarne, an associate professor and pop culture expert at the University of Melbourne.

"I don't think it's possible. It takes time to determine the impact anything has on a culture.

"What we do know was that the tour was enormously popular."

So how do we quantify one of the biggest concert tours in history?

As the dust (and glitter) begins to settle, here's what the numbers say.

Let's start with the Australian leg of the tour

4 million — The number of Australians who queued up to buy tickets.

When pre-sale tickets for the Australian leg of the Eras Tour went live, more than 4 million Australians hopped online to try their luck, according to Ticketek.

The ticketing company confirmed the demand set a new record in Australia.

"More than half a billion bot attempts were repelled, which come from scalpers," a Ticketek spokesperson said.

Fans battled it out for hours. Some emerged victorious, while some of those who missed out say they cried themselves to sleep.

96,000 — Swift's career-biggest crowd at the MCG.

When Swift stepped on stage at the Melbourne Cricket Ground, she was performing to the biggest crowd of her career.

96,000 concertgoers packed into the famous stadium that was already sacred ground to cricket and AFL fans — and now, Swifties.

"This is the biggest show that we have done on this tour, or any tour, ever," Swift said on stage that night.

While the MCG has a capacity of 100,024, Swift's set design meant not all the grandstands could be used.

Her three shows at the MCG saw Swift perform to a total of 288,000 concertgoers.

According to tour promoter Frontier, it marked a new record for the most tickets sold by one artist at the venue.

Ed Sheeran holds the venue's single-night attendance record after drawing crowds of more than 109,000 for each of his two shows in 2023.

12,000 — The number of rhinestones one fan glued to her costume.

For some fans, securing a ticket to the Eras Tour was just the start of their stress — it was time to plan their outfits.

Many Swifties got creative and made their own one-of-a-kind costumes inspired by lyrics or fandom references, while others sewed together recreations of the designer outfits Swift dons on stage.

A group of four girls smile and pose with one hand each in the air. They're all wearing glittery bodysuits or dresses
Izzie Peachey (far left) recreated one of Swift's Tour costumes ahead of her Melbourne shows.()

Izzie Peachy told ABC News she became "obsessed" with Swift's pink and blue Lover bodysuit the moment she saw it and set out on creating her own before the Australian tour was even announced.

"[I] can safely say I spent over 100 hours working on it," Ms Peachy said, adding the look involved 12,000 rhinestones and upwards of 7,000 sequins, all individually hand glued and sewn.

"I've joked with my family and friends that I'll be buried in it!"

$300 million — The amount of money injected into the Australian economy, according to one bank.

The seven sold-out shows Swift performed across Sydney and Melbourne generated more than $300 million for the Australian economy, according to NAB.

Julie Rynski, NAB's executive for Business Metro and Specialised, said Swift's Sydney shows "created a buzz in the city not seen since before the pandemic".

"There's no doubt businesses and consumers have had a difficult last 12 months or so, but despite this, it's clear people are continuing to carefully evaluate and prioritise their spending on the things or experiences they truly value," Ms Rynski said in a statement.

However, assigning a dollar figure to so-called "Swiftonomics" varies depending on who you ask.

Research from RMIT University valued the national economic impact of the Eras Tour at more than $500 million.

On the other hand, KPMG's chief economist Brendan Rynne believes Swift only helped grow Australia's economy by $10 million.

"This is going to cause some bad blood in my house," he wrote at the time.

Now let's look at the tour on a global level

The Eras Tour fever that gripped Australia during a sweltering February was replicated wherever Swift and her travelling circus went next.

For those who missed out on tickets, there were an endless number of videos on social media to watch on loop, with Swift performing the same routine captured from thousands of angles.

Fans who did get tickets passed on valuable information, from how to tweak your phone's camera settings to get the best content, to strategies on which songs to dip out to in order to game plan a bathroom break.

A black and white photo of Taylor Swift performing as fans billow behind her
The Eras Tour packed out cities’ biggest venues, including Wembley Stadium in London.()

"Taylor Swift's relationship with her fans is certainly unique," Dr Rosewarne says.

"Very few artists have been able to not only cultivate but maintain relationships with fans and, further still, create and foster a fan culture where Swifties would claim there exists a genuine community.

"That is certainly unique and obviously a result of Swift being a celebrity who came to fame at the same time that social media became a dominant force in our culture."

149 — The number of tour dates performed around the world.

Since beginning in March last year, there were a total of 149 tour dates overall around the world.

The Eras Tour travelled to 50 cities across 19 countries, spanning five continents, with stops in Mexico, Brazil, Japan, France, the United Kingdom and Germany, just to name a few.

Swift was meant to play more than 150 shows, but had to cancel three performances scheduled in Vienna after police said a planned terrorist attack had targeted the concerts.

Several politicians and government officials requested the tour be brought to their countries or cities, including Chilean President Gabriel Boric and the mayor of Budapest, Gergely Karácsony.

Even Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau took to social media platform X with a post stuffed full of song references when it was looking likely his homeland would be snubbed altogether.

"It's me, hi. I know places in Canada would love to have you. So, don't make it another cruel summer. We hope to see you soon."

Mr Trudeau's pitch seemed to work, with Swift ending the tour in Canada with nine shows across Toronto and Vancouver.

3 hours — How long Taylor Swift performed on stage each night.

Each time Swift took to the stage, she would perform for more than 3 hours.

Her gargantuan set list comprised of more than 40 songs grouped into 10 eras from her discography: Lover, Fearless, Red, Speak Now, Reputation, Folklore, Evermore, 1989 and Midnights.

"I decided to create the longest, most ambitious show I'd ever even attempted," Swift writes in The Eras Tour Book.

"My goal was for every fan to leave that show knowing I gave them absolutely everything I had."

In May this year, the show was revamped and six songs were cut to make room for yet another era following the release of The Tortured Poets Department.

Each show also included two surprise songs from Swift's back catalogue, with some performances even including mashups.

$1.93 billion — The estimated amount of money the tour generated.

In October 2024, Forbes estimated that the Eras Tour had grossed $US1.93 billion ($3 billion), though Swift has never confirmed these figures.

By that estimate, it makes the Eras Tour the highest grossing tour in history, putting Swift ahead of Coldplay, Elton John, Ed Sheeran and U2.

But Forbes' figure was only calculated off the financial income of 121 shows.

With Swift performing a total of 149 shows, that estimate could likely be higher.

The 'spin-offs' era

It is a truth universally acknowledged that fangirls feel deeply, spend willingly and are mocked relentlessly.

"Ridicule exists because we live in a sexist society where things that girls and women enjoy are widely considered trivial and culturally insignificant," Dr Rosewarne says.

A man wearing a white t-shirt with an image of Taylor Swift as Jesus Christ stands with women dressed up
Fans often dressed up in specific "eras" of Swift's career.()
Three young women show off their stacks of friendship bracelets
Fans made friendship bracelets as a reference to the song You're On Your Own Kid.()
Two young women in pink cowboy hats and friendship bracelets take a selfie outside a stadium
Concertgoers often swapped friendship bracelets, which were decorated with song titles.()

"What many fans find appealing in Swift is a sense of authenticity — that this isn't someone striving to fit society's concept of 'cool', but rather is redefining the label to include her cat lady, tea-drinking, often dorky self.

"This, of course, is an appealing message particularly for her young, female fan base."

So it was no surprise when Swift capitalised on the success of the Eras Tour to create a series of spin-off products to make the tour more accessible — and make more money as a result.

3 — The number of albums released during the tour.

In case you missed it, since 2019 Swift has been re-recording her first six studio albums in order to own her masters.

During the tour, the shows became somewhat of a press conference as Swift regularly made announcements — and some were vastly bigger than others.

In May, 2023 Swift announced during one show that Speak Now (Taylor's Version) would be released in July.

In August, she announced onstage that 1989 (Taylor's Version) would drop in October, exactly nine years since it was first released.

Then, at the 66th Grammy Awards in 2024, as Swift accepted the 13th Grammy of her career, she announced a brand new album — The Tortured Poets Department.

When the album was released in April, fans were surprised to learn it was in fact a double album, with The Tortured Poets Department: The Anthology including a total of 31 songs.

As for Reputation (Taylor's Version) … fans are still waiting for that one to drop.

$402 million — The amount of money the concert movie grossed at the global box office.

In October last year, Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour, hit theatres worldwide.

An adult ticket cost movie goers $19.89 (a nod to her album 1989) with a child's ticket costing $13.13 (Swift's favourite number).

With a run-time of 2 hours and 43 minutes, the concert movie cost $US15 million to make.

But it went on to gross more than $US261 million at the global box office, making it the most successful concert film of all time.

It dethroned Justin Bieber: Never Say Never by grossing nearly double at the box office, with the 2009 Michael Jackson concert film, This Is It, currently in third place.

814,000 — The number of concert tie-in books sold in a single weekend.

On Black Friday, Swift released The Eras Tour Book, a 256-page volume featuring 500 on-stage and behind-the-scene images.

The book marked the launch of Swift's own publishing house and smashed sales upon release.

The Associated Press reported The Eras Tour Book sold 814,000 copies over the Thanksgiving weekend, according to Circana, which tracks 85 per cent of the print market.

However, some fans spotted typos and grammatical mistakes within its pages, with one TikTok user popularising the phrase "The Errors Tour Book".

The only bigger non-fiction launch was the first volume of Barack Obama's presidential memoir, A Promised Land, which sold 816,000 copies in its first week on shelves in 2020.

Despite the huge sales, the book will never become a New York Times bestseller because it is sold exclusively through Target.

"A title sold exclusively by a single vendor does not qualify for tracking," the Times confirmed to Esquire.

Plenty happened offstage as well

Even when the Eras Tour wasn't on the road, Swift still dominated the headlines.

Travis Kelce and Taylor Swift kiss while surrounded by a media pack
Travis Kelce and Taylor Swift celebrated with a kiss on the field after the Super Bowl.()

Her romance with a particular NFL player created a frenzy among fans thanks to sounding like a love story taken straight from her teenage hits.

Meanwhile, her endorsement of a specific presidential hopeful got as much news coverage as the highly anticipated Trump vs Harris debate.

11.4 million — The number of likes on an Instagram post endorsing Kamala Harris.

In September, just under a month out from the 2024 US presidential election, Swift endorsed Democratic nominee Kamala Harris.

"I've done my research, and I've made my choice," Swift wrote in the lengthy caption of an Instagram post which garnered 11.4 million likes.

The accompanying image was a portrait from her TIME Magazine Person of the Year shoot where she posed with one of her cats as a subtle jab at JD Vance's "childless cat ladies" comment.

After remaining apolitical during the 2016 election and endorsing neither Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton, Swift said publicly during the 2020 election that she was voting for Joe Biden.

As we know, former US president Trump ended up winning the 2024 election, with his running mate JD Vance to become vice-president.

87 — Travis Kelce's Kansas City Chiefs number.

When the tour kicked off all those months ago, Swift was still with her long-term partner, actor Joe Alwyn.

After six years together, the pair broke up in April 2023, right about the time the Eras Tour began.

Swift was then briefly entangled with The 1975 frontman Matty Healy, who many believe was the inspiration to multiple songs on The Tortured Poets Department.

Then, last summer, Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce started courting the pop star by attending one of her shows, with his phone number crafted on a friendship bracelet.

The pair began hanging out, with Kelce attending Swift's shows, and Swift attending Kelce's football games.

Fast forward to February of this year, and — after months of dating — the Kansas City Chiefs became back-to-back Super Bowl champions, with Kelce and Swift celebrating with a kiss on the field.

4 — How many times Swift has won the Grammy for Album of the Year.

Swift made history at the Grammys during her Eras Tour era when she became the first and only artist to win Album of the Year four times.

She took home the award for Midnights, and had also won for Fearless (2010), 1989 (2016) and Folklore (2021).

Swift shared the previous record of three wins with Frank Sinatra, Stevie Wonder and Paul Simon.

"I would love to tell you that this is the best moment of my life," Swift said on stage.

"But I feel this happy when I finish a song or when I crack the code to a bridge that I love or when I'm shotlisting a music video or when I'm rehearsing with my dancers or with my band or getting ready to go to Tokyo to play a show.

"All I want to do is keep being able to do this."

The term "cultural phenomenon" gets thrown around haphazardly — but can it be applied to the Eras Tour?

"Did it change our culture? I think that's much harder to determine," Dr Rosewarne says.

"Success and cultural impact are, I'd argue, two different things.

"Of course, we will have other artists who have enormous success — that's inevitable."

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