Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour is officially the highest-grossing music tour ever, becoming the first to surpass $1 billion dollars in revenue.
The tour, which began in March 2023 and is set to conclude in December 2024 after a total of 151 shows worldwide, has earned $1.04 billion (£840 million) to date, according to Pollstar.
This breaks the record set by Elton John’s five-year farewell tour which ended earlier this year, bringing in $939 million (£749 million) over 328 shows.
Swift’s sixth concert tour is in fact so popular that it has earned more than this year’s next two highest-grossing tours (Beyoncé’s and Bruce Springsteen’s) combined.
Beyoncé’s 56-date Renaissance World Tour broke Madonna’s 14-year-old record for the highest-grossing music tour by a female artist, earning $579 million (£468 million) between May and October, before The Eras Tour subsequently took the title.
Described by Swift as a journey through all her musical “eras”, each show is over 3.5 hours long with a set list of 44 songs divided into 10 acts.
It has received immensely positive reviews from critics, who have heaped praise on the production’s concept and quality, as well as Swift’s performances.
Her devoted fanbase, the Swifties, have turned out in full force to see their idol, crashing ticketing sites, selling out hotels, and even causing earthquake-like seismic activity at certain shows, as happened in Seattle in July.
With roughly 72,000 people in attendance at each concert, and tickets averaging around $238, the tour is grossing over $17 million per show.
According to Pollstar, 4.3 million tickets have been sold to date, and at this trajectory, the tour could realistically rake in over $2 billion dollars if all the remaining scheduled shows are played.
Merchandise has also proven to be a lucrative source of revenue, with estimates that it has brought in around $200 million so far.
The Eras Tour is just one of Swift’s many successes in 2023. In addition to recently being named Time’s Person of the Year, and the re-recording of her decade-old 1989 being the best-selling album of the year, she has broken multiple world records.
In June, she was awarded the record for the most simultaneous albums on the US Billboard 200 for a living artist, with 10 of her albums charting at the same time.
She then broke several more records in July:
Most US No.1 albums by a female artist – 12
Most US singles chart entries (female) – 212
Most Top 10 debuts on the US Hot 100 (female) – 31
Most simultaneous new entries on the Hot 100 (female) – 26
Most cumulative weeks at No.1 on US albums charts (solo female) – 63
And in August, she made history with the most monthly listeners on Spotify (female), becoming the first female artist to amass 100 million.
With plans to release more music and continue on her record-breaking tour, we’ve no doubt that Taylor Swift will achieve many more Guinness World Records titles in 2024!
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