scorecard
  1. Home
  2. entertainment
  3. news
  4. Yes, concert tickets really are getting more expensive – and Taylor Swift might be to blame

Yes, concert tickets really are getting more expensive – and Taylor Swift might be to blame

Ryan Hogg   

Yes, concert tickets really are getting more expensive – and Taylor Swift might be to blame
Entertainment2 min read
  • Tickets for Taylor Swift shows have more than doubled since 2018, per a Bloomberg analysis.
  • The pop superstar is making more than $13 million from each date on her "Eras" tour, per Pollstar.

Taylor Swift's Eras tour is on track to set a new record – but it's also a reminder of just how expensive it can be to see a concert by the world's biggest acts.

Data from Pollstar, a music industry trade publication, shows Swift has already generated more than $300 million from the first 22 dates of her highly anticipated Eras tour.

That amounts to a nightly gross of about $13.6 million from an average of about 54,000 fans attending each concert. It's likely her tour will be the first to top the $1 billion mark when it concludes in London next year, according to Pollstar.

As reported by The Wall Street Journal, Swift hasn't been revealing her nightly earnings to Billboard Boxscore, which usually tracks such data, but intends to provide them later.

If industry expectations are right, Eras will become the highest-grossing tour, beating Elton John's farewell tour.

Swift is charging an average of $254 for a ticket to her shows, in the latest sign of the escalating price of fandom.

According to analysis from Bloomberg, she's in an exclusive group of acts charging more than $200 a ticket.

Tickers for seven of the top 25 acts this year cost more than that sum, per its analysis – up from just two five years ago.

The cost of seeing Swift play has more than doubled since her "Reputation" tour in 2018. That's a much fast increase than the industry average increase of $37 in that time, per Bloomberg, not to mention far outpacing consumer price inflation generally.

Still, the average cost doesn't reflect the huge prices being charged on the resale market. One 31-year-old fan named Paige told Insider she spent $5,500 on two resale tickets for an "Eras" show.

Swift has proven herself to be exceptionally savvy when it comes to the business side of her music empire.

The singer avoided a $100 million deal with the doomed crypto exchange FTX, in part because she asked whether the crypto and NFTs it was selling were "unregistered securities," a lawyer taking on FTX promoters told "The Scoop" podcast.

Swift, whose father Scott is a former broker at Merrill Lynch, also invests in a niche closed-end fund, according to hedge fund manager Boaz Weinstein.


Advertisement

Advertisement