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Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.
MainFT, yesterday:
Taylor Swift’s Eras tour made $2.1bn in sales, making it the highest-earning concert run in history and capping off two years of financial and cultural domination for the pop star.
The figure covers 10mn tickets sold across 149 shows, said a person familiar with the matter. Swift completed the tour with a final performance on Sunday night in Vancouver, Canada.
This is a massive overall number — of which Taylor Swift will get a handsome cut — and that’s without including the amount Swifties and their enablers will have spent on merchandise (almost certainly a large amount, but probably a smaller amount than ticket sales).
It’s a testament to the tour’s huge impact, which Alphaville covered here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here, encompassing topics from inflation to economic activity to . . . well mainly inflation.
With this Big Number in place, though, it’s probably worth reflecting on one piece in particular — our deep dive into media attempts, circa last autumn, to figure out exactly how much money Swift would make from Eras.
Our strongly implied conclusion that an estimate published in the Washington Post — that Swift would make $4.1bn in personal earnings from the tour (“more than the yearly economic output of 42 countries, including Liberia”) — was almost certainly utter bollocks.
And, uh, yeah. Looks like it was. Ah well.
Further reading:
— The FT’s 25 most influential women of 2024
