Look What You Made Me Do To The U.S. Economy (Taylor’s Version)

By Anthony Davis

Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour has had an estimated $4.6 billion impact on the US economy. This seems absurd at first, but HVS analysis reveals that Swift’s tour is an immense outlier from other concert tours in attracting attendees from out of town. More than 3.7 million people traveled more than 100 miles from home to see Swift perform.

Taylor Swift and her fans may be one of the most powerful forces in the world. They have broken Ticketmaster’s website multiple times with overwhelming demand for tickets for Swift’s Eras Tour and forced stadiums to bar gatherings of fans outside the venue during the concert. According to some estimates, Eras may inject as much as $4.6 billion into the US economy. These massive and opaque estimates may cause some to roll their eyes at another justification for public spending on stadium projects. But Swift’s tour is truly unique in the scale of economic impact it generates relative to other concert tours. HVS compared the number of concert attendees who traveled more than 100 miles to attend a performance of one of five tours from 2022 through August 2023. The massive economic impact of the Era’s Tour is generated by the huge number of attendees traveling long distances to see Swift perform.

Economic impact refers to increased economic activity due to increased spending in a market area. But, not all economic impact is created equal. Some of it is a transfer of spending, and some is imported, increasing overall economic activity. A transfer of economic impact is spending that would have occurred in the market area regardless: a Chicago resident goes to see Swift at Soldier Field instead of seeing a different show, a baseball game, or spending disposable income on something else that weekend. They spend money in Chicago either way: at another music venue, Wrigley Field, Soldier Field, or in other economic sectors like restaurants and bars.

The imported economic impact is more meaningful because it focuses on new spending that would only have occurred in a market with an event. People who travel to see Swift at Soldier Field from St. Louis or Des Moines would not have otherwise spent money on entertainment in Chicago. Their spending on hotels, concert tickets, meals, and shopping is new to Chicago and caused by the Swift tour.

To identify the attendees who are new to the market and import their spending, HVS used data from Placer.ai. Placer.ai uses phone tracking data from third-party apps to count attendees at an event and to track their origin and distance traveled. HVS also used data from Pollstar to identify different tour dates and stops for the acts chosen.

HVS identified four other large US tours besides Swift’s Eras tour to analyze the origin of attendees. These tours occurred from 2022 to August 2023, including Beyonce, Dead and Company, Ed Sheeran, and Elton John. The table below shows the artist and percentage of attendees that traveled more than 100 miles to attend a show on the tour.

Percentage of Attendees that Travelled More Than 100 Miles

Source: Placer.ai, HVS

At 45%, Taylor Swift has the highest percentage of attendees from more than 100 miles to attend her shows on the Eras Tour. These are the people importing spending, and the Dead and Company tour is the only one close to matching her with 40% of attendees. Ed Sheeran draws about a third of his attendees from more than 100 miles away, and Beyonce and Elton John are around a quarter of their attendees.

This difference between Swift and the Dead and Company may seem insignificant, and the economic impact of the Dead is rarely lauded in the national press despite the number of people who travel long distances to see them. The reason is that the Dead and Company tour, made up of former Grateful Dead members and friends, has an immensely loyal following that travels with the tour from city to city. What sets the Swifties apart from the Deadheads is the volume of attendees to drive the massive economic impact.

The figure below shows the average number of attendees at a show that are from more than 100 miles away.

Average Attendees that Travelled From More Than 100 Miles Away

Source: Placer.ai, HVS

Per show, Taylor Swift is attracting more than 72,000 people from more than 100 miles away to her tour. This is more than double the second largest, Ed Sheeran, with less than 30,000. Despite 40% of attendees being from more than 100 miles away, the Dead and Company’s attendance falls off due to playing smaller amphitheaters and baseball stadiums, unlike Swift’s use of massive football stadiums.

This gap is exacerbated even further when you consider the length of each tour. The Eras tour lasted 53 shows, with the next longest being 29 done by Dead and Company and Elton John. The Beyonce and Ed Sheeran tours are ongoing, and data collection stopped after 8/15.

The figure below shows the total number of attendees from more than 100 miles away for the tours. For the two ongoing tours, which conclude in October, HVS assumed the average number of attendees from more than 100 miles away for the shows before August 15th would remain consistent for the shows scheduled after that date.

Total Attendees From More Than 100 Miles Away

Source: Pollstar, Placer.ai, HVS

^{[1] The Wall Street Journal, It’s Taylor Swift’s Economy, and We’re All Living in It, Retrieved August 16, 2023.}

^{[2] Forbes, Taylor Swift’s the Eras Tour Could Generate $4.6 Billion for Local Economies, Retrieved August 16, 2023.}