Why we’ll never see anything like the Eras Tour again

It’s the end of a truly phenomenal era. After 149 shows in 53 cities across five continents, grossing an estimated total of at least $US2 billion ($3.1 billion), Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour has reached its final stop.

The superstar has just performed her last show in Vancouver, as fans around the world reckon with how their lives will change after almost two years of constant Swiftie content. There will be no more livestreams. No celebrity sightings. No friendship bracelets. No Mastermind (the game, named for a Swift song, in which fans predicted every outfit and surprise song from each night of the tour and then compared scores with fellow Swifties).

Taylor Swift on stage in Toronto last month.Credit: Getty Images for TAS Rights Management

It’s no surprise that this was the most successful concert tour the world has ever seen. According to data from Pollstar, Eras outsold the previously highest-grossing tours from Elton John and Ed Sheeran last year – when Swift had only just left the US. But it’s now earned more than both those previous record-holders’ tours combined.

And that doesn’t even consider the revenue earned from highly coveted merchandise, the Eras Tour movie (now the highest-grossing concert tour film of all time) or the just-released book, which sold almost 1 million copies in its first week.

Not to mention sales for the blockbuster album she released during this time, or the fact she was the most-streamed artist on Spotify globally for both years the tour ran.

Has the Eras Tour completely smashed our metrics for success?

“It’s hard to imagine who else could do this,” says Dr Georgia Carroll, who wrote her University of Sydney PhD on Taylor Swift fandom and was a keynote speaker at last year’s Swiftposium (an academic conference about the pop star’s work and influence).

Exclusive Swift products were sold at Target during last month’s US Black Friday deals.Credit: Getty Images

“Nobody can see into the future, but this could go down in history [as the biggest tour of our lives].”

While Swift has always been extraordinarily successful, Carroll points out there were several unique factors that made this a particularly “magic moment”. The biggest: the disruptions caused by COVID.

“This wouldn’t have happened without the pandemic,” she says. “Swift hadn’t toured since Reputation in 2018, and fans hadn’t had a chance to see her in four or five years. She released three albums and two re-releases with vault tracks by the start of this tour. So there was just all of this content that fans wanted to see.

“It was also a post-lockdown period where fans wanted joy and excitement in their lives.”

The Eras Tour became a moment of mass communion, especially for women in their 20s and 30s who grew up with Swift’s music. And the hype around the event created a “snowball effect”, where even non-fans wanted to witness the spectacle.

“I think it’s going to be hard [to replicate this kind of success] because nobody can ultimately put on the show that Eras was,” Carroll says.

“Even if they try some of the same marketing and encourage the same kind of fan behaviours, it’s not going to be that 3½-hour journey through a decade-and-a-half of somebody’s career.”

Swifties outside Sydney’s Accor Stadium before Swift’s show earlier this year.Credit: Getty

She argues that this has actually “changed what it means to go to a concert” for some younger fans.

“You see people paying ‘Eras money’ for concerts [as ticket prices have recently skyrocketed], but not getting that same over-the-top show. I think it’s going to be interesting how consumers’ expectations come down and whether there will be that pressure on celebrities to try and replicate it.”

Fans of much newer pop stars such as Sabrina Carpenter, for example, have complained on social media about shows running for about 90 minutes (despite the fact she’s touring an album just 36 minutes long). And 22-year-old artist Billie Eilish has responded to the idea directly, reportedly telling fans earlier this year: “I’m not doing a three-hour show, that’s literally psychotic.”

Swift might even face similar expectations – to perform so much of her back catalogue – the next time she launches a tour. “But that’s not realistic for her, as a human,” Carroll says. (At roughly 210 minutes a show, Taylor Swift has now performed the incredibly physically demanding Eras Tour for a total of 521 hours – which equates to 69 full working days.)

“This tour has been the ultimate love letter to her fans. She’s given us so much.”

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