Taylor Swift is playing six nights in Los Angeles — a shrewd business move that could mean millions of more dollars more in profit.
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Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour is set to break records, with some estimating it could gross $1.4 billion.
Swift is set to take home hundreds of millions of dollars — and “mini-residencies” will help.
She’s playing as many as six shows in some cities. That makes putting on a big production more economical.
There’s no arguing that, when it comes to her Eras tour, Taylor Swift is polishing up real nice.
Estimates vary, but The Wall Street Journal has posited that Eras may be the world’s first $1 billion tour, in terms of gross revenue, with Pollstar estimating it could rake in $1.4 billion. Some say Swift herself will take home as much as $500 million — though that number may be a little high, considering the $55 million Swift is dishing out in bonuses to truckers, dancers, sound techs, and more.
This will likely be an immensely profitable tour for Swift no matter what, but thanks to one key business move, she’s set to make even more. Swift is playing six nights each in cities like Los Angeles and Toronto, where she just announced she’s adding tour dates — and skipping nearby cities that she’s hit on past tours, like San Diego and Ottawa.
While Swift’s representatives did not respond to Insider’s request for comment, these mini residencies are likely adding millions of dollars to her bottom line.
The underlying business assumption: Swifties will travel and pay big bucks for tickets, so the shows will be sold out no matter where they are. If she plays fewer cities, that means less money spent on production, travel, and labor — which in turn means more profits.
“On the cost side, it significantly reduces the overhead of a tour,” Nathan Hubbard, the former CEO of Ticketmaster and founder of management firm Firebird, told Insider. “Think about the cost of taking down an entire stage, packing up 50 trucks, moving it all to another town. Every night you can avoid striking the set saves millions of dollars.”
It’s a theory that was most recently tested out by Harry Styles, with his 15-night runs at New York’s Madison Square Garden and LA’s Kia Forum, and an extension of the Las Vegas residencies that have long minted millions for stars.
“Coming out of Covid, the largest artists understand that their fan bases will travel to be with them,” Hubbard said. “Previously, this was just happening in Las Vegas. But so many of these cities can be a fun excursion for a fan and their friends. That’s driving a lot of what we’re seeing in the evolution of touring right now.”
For Swift, the math is working out: Insider spoke with a number of fans who said they traveled out of state to see Swift.
“This is the summer of Taylor,” said one St. Louis-based Swiftie, who saw shows in the Phoenix area, Nashville, Chicago, and Kansas City, Missouri. “Whatever we would have set aside for vacation has been set aside for Taylor.”
Even the Federal Reserve has noticed that Swift’s fans affect tourism.
“Despite the slowing recovery in tourism in the region overall, one contact highlighted that May was the strongest month for hotel revenue in Philadelphia since the onset of the pandemic, in large part due to an influx of guests for the Taylor Swift concerts in the city,” the central bank wrote in the most recent Beige Book report on the economy.
Of course, it’s all a delicate balance, and Swift, who is among the pop stars considered most in-touch with her fans, wouldn’t want to alienate anyone by skipping over their local venues. But with 146 shows across 50-plus cities, it would be hard to complain about her doing a few extra nights in one place and passing over another.
Plus, she’s already charging significantly less — an average of about $250 per ticket, per Pollstar — than she could be, if you consider the average resale price of $3,801 that Pitchfork reported.
And she’s not the only one profiting.
“The totality of Taylor Swifts’ U.S. tour could generate $4.6 billion in total consumer spending, larger than the GDP of 35 countries,” the Common Sense Institute estimated.
Turns out she’s the industry disruptor — if not the smooth-talking huckster — after all.