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Taylor Swift’s Elas Tour grossed $2.1 billion, making it the highest-grossing concert in history and capping the pop star’s two years of economic and cultural domination.
Officials say this figure covers 10 million tickets sold for 149 performances. Swift wrapped up her tour Sunday night with a final performance in Vancouver, Canada.
At $2.1 billion, it’s twice as much as any other concert tour in history. This includes Elton John’s five-year tour, which grossed $939 million from more than 300 shows, and Coldplay’s Music of the Spheres, which grossed more than $1 billion from about 170 shows. It also exceeded.
This huge revenue does not include money made by resellers on the secondary market, where seats can fetch thousands of dollars above face value, or from merchandise sold at concerts.
Swift recently published a photo book from the Ellas tour, which quickly surpassed most major releases from professional publishers. Eras tie-in books are available exclusively through retailer Target. sold It sold 814,000 copies in its first weekend of release, about the same number as Barack Obama’s 2020 memoir.
Swift, whose music is distributed by Universal Music, achieved a level of cultural and musical domination during her Elas tour that resembled the frenzy surrounding the Beatles half a century ago.
When tickets first went on sale in November 2022, overwhelming demand crashed Ticketmaster’s site, sparking a public backlash and prompting the U.S. Department of Justice to file a lawsuit against the ticket sales giant. The tour traveled first across the United States and then around the world, boosting local economies.
Last year, Swift accounted for 1.8% of all U.S. recorded music sales and 1 in 78 U.S. audio streams, according to data group Luminate.
The singer, who started writing songs after school in Nashville as a teenager, broke down in tears during a recent show in Toronto as she reflected on the end of her tour after 18 months.
“My band, my staff, all the performers, we’ve dedicated so much of our lives to this,” she said.
