First thing’s first: Happy birthday, Taylor Swift!
Closing out a year that has seen the now 34-year-old superstar score nothing but touchdowns, the shindig beau Travis Kelce has planned Wednesday night in New York City promises to be quite the celebration.
And well it should be.
With a record-breaking tour that brought in more than $1 billion so far and became a major force in the American economy this summer, a blockbuster concert film that circumvented Hollywood, and the potential to be a top player in next year’s presidential election, Swift has proven beyond any doubt this year that she is the Monarch of All Media.
Having snared a Golden Globes nomination this week for her Eras Tour concert flick in the new, crowd-pleasing Cinematic and Box Office Achievement category, multiple Grammy winner Swift is well poised to find herself at the Oscars too next year if present trends continue.
The fact is, marketed and pitched to near perfection on almost every platform there is, no one in 2023 captured the imagination, the zeitgeist and the credit cards the way Swift did. Or, to put it another way, in America, no one and nothin’ is bigger than the NFL — except Taylor Swift. Why? Because Swift in a private box cheering on the Kansas City Chiefs’ Kelce is what the league turns the TV cameras to when they want to boost ratings. Which is part of why 2023 is a long way from Swift’s POV on “New Romantics,” from her album 1989, when she sang, “I could build a castle out of all the bricks they threw at me.”
Nowadays, Swift has become a cultural and economic powerhouse with all the castles and all the bricks.
So, send Swift those birthday wishes, put those friendship bracelets on, drape your cat over your shoulders and check out 13 (Taylor’s favorite number) highlights of 2023 for the Miss Americana who broke all the rules in the best way.
Swift released two albums this year, Speak Now (Taylor’s Version) and 1989 (Taylor’s Version), as part of her effort to re-record and own her first six albums. At this point, the whole world knows the story of Swift’s ire after her original music label Big Machine Records sold her masters to Scooter Braun’s Ithaca Holdings in 2019. The pop star has never diluted her feelings about the sale, or about Braun, recently positing that the music mogul wanted her records for “nefarious reasons.”
Even Swift herself could not have predicted how successful her efforts would be. In October, 1989 (Taylor’s Version) became Spotify’s most-streamed album of the year…on the day it was released.
Swift has been so successful, in fact, that recording labels (including her own Universal Music Group) are now trying to make it harder for other artists to follow in her footsteps. As Billboard reported in October, some of the top music attorneys have noticed labels overhauling contracts to demand that artists wait up to 30 years to re-record their music after departing the company, rather than the 5 to 7 years that has been industry standard for some time (Swift’s required six years before she could re-record).
Swifties are eagerly awaiting the release of her final re-recorded albums, Taylor Swift and Reputation. No word yet on when to expect those, though Swift has another year of concert dates ahead as she treks across the globe for her Eras Tour — the perfect opportunity to delight her fans and ring in 2025 owning all her music. – KC
Swift truly broke the internet when she debuted her relationship with Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce in September, attending a matchup at Arrowhead Stadium. She also proved that her influence seemingly knows no bounds, somehow making America’s most popular sport even more popular as her presence at games began to boost ratings for the NFL, particularly among women.
Her first appearance at Arrowhead delivered an audience of 24 million viewers as the Chiefs destroyed the Chicago Bears. While that was down versus last year’s comparable game window, it did mark a significant spike in viewership among female demographics across ages 12-17 and 18-49.
In October, the Chiefs’ victory over the Denver Broncos, which Swift attended fresh off the carpet from her The Eras Tour concert film premiere, was up 57% in total viewers from the comparable Thursday Night Football game the year before. Female viewership made up 36% of the total audience, compared to about 32% across the previous four games. The week prior, her heavily publicized attendance at a Chiefs-Jets game drew a whopping 27 million viewers.
The NFL certainly took advantage of this organic audience growth, frequently checking in on her up in the private box during the game broadcasts and playfully making references to their newest fan on social media. NFL commissioner Roger Goodell called Swift “great for the league” and assured they will continue to welcome her at any and all games. – KC
Even before Swift stepped on stage at Glendale, AZ’s State Farm Stadium on March 17 for the opening show of the sprawling Eras Tour, it was obvious to everyone how big a deal her journey around the country and the world was going to be – everyone except Ticketmaster it turned out.
The result was that Ticketmaster’s website was overwhelmed and crashed last November when millions of fans tried to get access to the 52 shows here in the US. Locking out Swift’s verified fans and ignoring their pre-sale codes, the epic fail was compounded by parent company Live Nation waitlisting customers and subjecting them to long digital queues before eventually cancelling general tix sales. The fact that a legion of scalpers scooped up many of the 2.5 million Swift tickets that were sold on November 15 (a record for any performer on a single day) just made a bad situation worse.
“It’s really difficult for me to trust an outside entity with these relationships and loyalties, and excruciating for me to just watch mistakes happen with no recourse,” said Swift herself a few days later.
The fallout saw Live Nation president and CFO Joe Berchtold and others hauled in front of Senate Judiciary Committee to address the fiasco and the lack of competition in the ticket sales racket since Live Nation and Ticketmaster merged over a decade ago. It wasn’t pretty, with senators on both sides of the aisle taking easy swings at the company and the situation.
Though Live Nation promised to erase junk fees after an initiative by the Biden administration, not a lot changed in the big picture — even with the Congress and the Department of Justice probing the Michael Rapino-led company. Last month, as Swift ended the last round of the Eras Tour in Brazil, the Senate’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations subpoenaed Live Nation to “promptly comply with our request for documents essential to understand its business practices.”
Live Nation said in response that they couldn’t hand over what the Senate wanted until the subcommittee swore to comply with what they termed “standard confidentiality measures.”
Oh, by the way, the problems that bedeviled Swift fans last year trying to purchase tickets from Ticketmaster – it’s déjà vu. Yep, a lot of what happened in 2022 for Swift’s 2023 shows has happened all over again when people were attempting to get tickets for her upcoming 2024 shows in France and the UK. – DP
Spreading The Wealth
Swift trailed riches in her wake with the Eras Tour perking up city and state economies as spending by concertgoers proved pure financial jet fuel.
According to the U.S. Travel Association, Swifties averaged $1,300 of spending in local economies on travel, hotels, food, merchandise and costumes. There were beads and bracelets and Eras Tour hairstylists. The group said the spend is on par with the Super Bowl, but that’s one night — this was 53 shows in 20 cities over five months and it generated $5 billion or more in direct economic impact, according to estimates.
That’s larger than the GDP of a small country.
While many attendees were local, each concert attracted visitors who spent multiple days in cities, driving record-high hotel occupancy rates and buoying restaurants and shops.
After polling over 500 Swift fans, software company QuestionPro estimated the singer’s fans spent $93 million per show on tickets, travel and other, working out to an overall $5.7 billion impact.
For instance: the six nights of the Eras Tour at L.A.’s massive SoFi Stadium benefited the city to the tune of $320 million, with 3,300 jobs created, $20 million in sales and local sales tax, and another $9 million in hotel room taxes, said the California Center for Jobs & The Economy. Spending around her two concerts in Denver contributed an estimated $140 million to the state’s GDP, according to local research group Common Sense Institute, noting an estimated $200 million in direct consumer spending associated with the Denver concerts. (These number are all estimates.)
Swift’s two concerts on June 16-17 at Pittsburgh’s Acrisure Stadium generated $46 million in direct spending, said marketing and promotions agency for the region, Visit Pittsburgh. Those dates saw the highest weekend occupancy since the Covid pandemic and the second highest on record.
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