Taylor Swift’s Eras tour has been confirmed as the most commercially successful tour of all time, raking in more than twice as much revenue as the previous record-holder.
Following the tour’s final date in Vancouver on Sunday, the singer’s company Taylor Swift Touring confirmed the final revenue tally to the New York Times: $2,077,618,725 (£1.62bn). This is the first official disclosure of the tour’s revenue figures.
That eclipses the previous record for a completed tour, namely Elton John’s Farewell Yellow Brick Road which accrued $939m. Swift also managed to generate her astonishing revenue with considerably fewer shows: 149 to Elton John’s 330.
Coldplay’s ongoing Music of the Spheres tour has meanwhile passed the $1bn mark, and with concerts booked into mid-2025, could rival Swift’s tally if they continue to add extra dates.
Eras was a critical as well as commercial success, with no less than four five-star Guardian reviews as it made its way around the world. Swift performed songs from all of her albums in concerts of more than three and a half hours, and between legs of the tour, managed to also find time to write and record her new studio album The Tortured Poets Department, which became a feature of the later tour dates after its release in April.
Tickets averaged out at a cost of $204 each across the entirety of the tour, a relatively high price point that is testament to how invested – in every sense – Swift’s fanbase is.
The demand was so great for tickets when they went on sale in November 2022 that Ticketmaster’s system collapsed as 3.5bn ticket requests were made, precipitating a US Senate hearing over its parent company Live Nation’s position in the ticketing market, with senators alleging a monopoly.
London’s Wembley Stadium was the venue that hosted the most fans overall, with 753,112 attending across eight dates. The highest single concert attendance was 96,006, for one of her three dates at Melbourne Cricket Ground.
The $2bn-plus figure does not take into account the considerable revenue generated by merchandise sales, with vast pop-up shops erected outside venues to sell hoodies, friendship bracelets and more.
A concert film released in October 2023 generated $261m in box office revenue: a record for a concert film, eclipsing the $99m generated by Justin Bieber’s Never Say Never in 2011. The Eras tour film was later made available to stream on Disney+, with anonymous sources reported by Variety claiming the deal was worth $75m.