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Taylor Swift more than doubled her net worth just months after hitting the stage for her record-breaking Eras concert tour.
Swift, 34, began the world tour in March 2023 and it quickly became the highest-grossing live music tour of all time, with expectations it will make $2 billion overall. Due to unprecedented demand, Swift extended the Eras run from a little more than 50 to 152 dates across five continents. She ended up performing 149 shows— the concerts in Austria were canceled due to a terror threat— to over 10 million people across five continents.
When starting Eras 21 months ago Swift was already one of the highest earning entertainers in the world. At the time her net worth was around $570 million and within a few months that had jumped to $740 million, according to Forbes magazine.
Before 2023 concluded she reached billionaire status for the first time and was reported to be worth $1.1 billion.
Tour, Royalties, Merchandise, Music Catalog
The Eras tour officially ended on Sunday in Vancouver, Canada, and Swift is now worth $1.6 billion, meaning she almost tripled her net worth since starting Eras. While much of the cash comes from ticket sales, Swift has plenty of different income streams.
According to Forbes, Swift was "the first musician to make the billionaire ranking primarily based on her songs and performances." Her fortune "includes nearly $600 million amassed from royalties and touring, plus a music catalog worth an estimated $600 million and some $125 million in real estate."
Some industry experts also estimated that merchandise sales have been a big boon for Swift thanks to Eras and have earned her $500 million since March 2023.
Swift also released her 11th studio album this year, The Tortured Poets' Department, which smashed records with millions of album sales and streams in its first week alone.
Eras, the Movie (and Book)
In December 2023, Swift released a feature length film of Eras, which within days became the highest-grossing concert movie of all time. It brought in nearly $262 million worldwide. Most of those box office takings came in the U.S. where it earned around $181 million.
Thanks to a groundbreaking deal with the AMC theater chain, Swift will earn 57 per cent of the U.S. takings after her company self-produced the movie and negotiated directly with AMC to distribute it.
Last month, Swift released her first-ever book, The Official Eras Tour Book, which includes never before seen photos of the tour and the musician's own reflections.
The book sold 814,000 copies in its first week, making it the second-biggest nonfiction debut behind Barack Obama's 2020 memoir, A Promised Land.
The figures used throughout this story are from Forbes. Newsweek has contacted a representative for Swift for try to confirm the information.
When Taylor Swift sings definitively and defiantly “Try and come for my job” at the end of “I Can Do it With a Broken Heart,” it’s more than a closing shot. Invincibility is her mantra.
Who in entertainment could match Swift’s achievements on the “most fun, joyful, exciting, intense, powerful tour” she’s ever done, as she referred to her billion-dollar-earning exhaust-a-thon Eras stadium tour during its final trio of shows in Vancouver?
Not even Michael Jackson or Madonna in their prime circled five continents throughout 21 months, playing 149 shows stocked with 45 songs, including special acoustic “surprises” at every gig. Her epic concerts gift-wrapped fans nearly 3½-hours of heartfelt music, clever lyrics, sparkly costumes, glistening production and, most importantly, unpretentious charm.
Swift has set records in the touring, film and book industries with the highest-grossing tour of all time, highest-grossing concert film ever and fastest-selling book of 2024.
Taylor Swift's ambition is limitless
Sunday’s finale at BC Place in Vancouver was a dichotomous bookend: Swift launched the sprawling "Eras Tour" in March 2023 in the blazing Arizona desert and brought this chapter to its conclusion during damp, chilly winter in Canada.
During the tour’s tenure, she engaged with as many weather elements as she did eras. She performed in soaked costumes in a Nashville downpour, made a joke about her frizzy hair on a humid Singapore night and braved the frigid cold in Edinburgh, Scotland.
While romping through the type of grueling shows that would level mere mortals after nearly two years, Swift, who turns 35 on Friday, earned a trio of Grammys (including a record-breaking fourth album of the year nod with “Midnights”); became a billionaire; landed on the cover of Time with one of her beloved cats, Benjamin Button, as the magazine’s 2023 Person of the Year; and in her spare time, dropped a 30-song album in April, “The Tortured Poets Department,” which is nominated for album of the year at the 2025 Grammys.
Swift is so prolific that she couldn’t even get through a tour without having to add another era.
She also unwittingly sparked a fringe market for fan-crafted outfits that painstakingly replicate the pastel-speckled leotard she wears during the “Lover” era, her regal and sparkly red coat donned for “All Too Well” and her white Vivienne Westwood dress decorated with song lyrics that is spotlighted during “The Tortured Poets Department” segment, which she added in May.
Friendship bracelets and the art of devotion
Her zealous fans earned their own spotlight in this Eras gallop around the world when they started a grassroots trend by making and swapping friendship bracelets. The braided and beaded trinkets are woven with messages of kindness, song lyrics or inside jokes among her devotees, who cluster in venue aisles and interminable merchandise lines at concerts to trade as part of their own secret society.
Even Swift marveled at the movement, saying at Saturday’s concert, “I have one line in one song (“You’re On Your Own, Kid”) about a friendship bracelet and you made that idea synonymous with 'The Eras Tour.'”
It’s but one symbol of the unusual intimacy cultivated among her fans, which span generations and cultures.
Kaitlyn Mark, 26, and her mom, Casey, 55, from Blaine, Washington, caught "The Eras Tour" twice in 2023 and decided to dole out $2,400 for a pair of resale tickets in the 400-level for Saturday’s Vancouver show just to share the experience one final time.
“We saw the second set of dates in Las Vegas in 2023, so I feel like it’s cool for us to share this (at the end of the tour),” Casey said.
Kaitlyn, who teaches third grade, is already spreading her love of Swift to her young charges.
“I have a quote on the classroom wall that says ‘You make the whole class shimmer,'” she said, citing a modified lyric from Swift’s song “Bejeweled.” “I’m, like, the Taylor Swift teacher.”
When it comes to dedication to Swift, there is seemingly no limit on the amount of money or time her fans will invest.
Molly Menounos, a 5th grade teacher in the Boston area, flew standby Friday after her Thursday flight into Vancouver was canceled.
She and three friends initially bought $68 presale tickets in November 2023 for Friday’s show. But after the travel snafu, they sold their tickets on StubHub and purchased resale tickets for Saturday in a similar section for $1,300 each. The Swift supporters also split a hotel room within walking distance of the stadium for $4,000 per night.
“She cares so much, and that’s why we have to get there, because we care so much,” Menounos, 24, said of Swift, while on her flight to Vancouver. “Yeah, I’m losing money and I’m only going to be there for a little more than 24 hours, but it’s still worth it.”
Menounos, who had seen Swift on her tours behind the “Red,” “1989” and “Reputation” albums but not yet the Eras spectacle, recalled listening to Swift since she was in eighth grade. Her love of Swift helped forge enduring friendships in high school and among her college roommates and stretches to her family, including her Swiftie dad, who urged her to make the trip after an anxiety-riddled day of travel uncertainty.
Though she was eager to finally witness the Eras marathon, Menounos expected warring emotions when it’s over.
“I know I’m going to cry,” she said. “But I think it will be a catharsis.”
Taylor Swift is generating enough money 'to be a small country'
The money spent by Menounos and her friends is one of literally millions of examples of the Swift effect on the 51 cities she’s played on tour.
Between boosts to the airline industry – Southwest Airlines used signature numbers in her music to add flights with designations including #1989 and #22 for her fall U.S. dates – and the tourism dollars generated at restaurants and hotels, a Swift weekend of shows produces nearly as much money for a city as a Super Bowl.
A Bank of America study earlier this year compared spending during the Super Bowl in Glendale, Arizona, and a weekend of Swift shows in Pittsburgh and found similar increases. Fans spent $96 more in restaurants and $74 more in bars for Super Bowl weekend compared to $77 and $56 more, respectively, during an Eras weekend.
It's an unparalleled phenomenon in the music industry.
“If you look at the global impact of her concerts outside of ticket sales, she’s generating enough money to be a small country at this point,” said Adam Gustafson, associate teaching professor of music at Penn State’s School of Humanities who has given several presentations about Swift. “It’s not even just a regional thing. People have traveled across the world to see her, and multiple times.”
Gustafson attributes that devotion and willingness to spend money, whether on concert tickets, T-shirts, coffee table books or movie screenings, to Swift’s genuine rapport with fans.
“There seems to be a real sense of younger people that if the person on the other end is authentic, they’re more than happy to support them. If they feel it’s inauthentic or overly corporate, they’ll get leery. But Taylor’s whole life is out there and there is no way for her to be inauthentic,” Gustafson said.
Taylor Swift's generosity also deserves admiration
Swift’s altruism is frequently tagged as a reason for respect and admiration, even from those with a cursory interest in her.
Gustafson notes the $100,000 bonus checks Swift presented to her trucking staff in 2023 as not only an indicator of her generosity, but how it reminds people – as she often does – that this level of success in a fluid live production cannot be achieved alone.
“It draws attention to the dancers in the background, the musicians playing with her, the production crew, all of it, and how she’s often showing people that this is a team effort,” he said.
Swift’s humanity is the reason T’Lene Hayes became a fan – and enough of one to spend $735 each on the obscenely marked-up $13.99 behind-the-stage tickets, which offer fans a view of the screens beside the stage but not the stage itself, Swift released last week.
“Once I saw the positive impact she was having on cities (where she performed) I began to respect her more as a human and then became a fan of her music,” Hayes, 36, said. The Seattle-based nurse and her boyfriend, Adam Carver, 29, bought their tickets to Saturday’s show on the resale market that morning and promptly drove the three hours to Vancouver, listening, of course, to a Spotify playlist of Swift songs.
While Hayes now also appreciates Swift’s music – especially “Folklore” and “Evermore” – she’s still most impressed with Swift’s benevolence.
“The donations she made to food banks (on every stop of 'The Eras Tour') and the bonuses she gave her staff, it just warmed my heart that the people pulling off probably the biggest tour ever were being appreciated,” Hayes said. “She saw those people as humans.”
Carver added that he’s most impressed by Swift’s business savvy.
“She’s such a powerful woman. It’s like witnessing an historical figure, like Alexander the Great or something, in action,” he said.
How Taylor Swift became her own brand
Indeed, even with her 14 Grammy Awards, billions of streams and millions of albums sold, Swift has rocketed her career from admired singer-songwriter to an inescapable brand like a shot of adrenaline to the heart. Only she doesn’t need flashy logos or cutesy names as marketing tools because she is the brand.
Alyse Lancaster, vice dean for Academic Affairs at the University of Miami School of Communication started teaching “The Mastermind of the Taylor Swift Brand” this semester, an idea influenced by her 17-year-old Swift fan daughter.
For 16 weeks, 189 students pile into an auditorium to discuss and debate Swift’s ascension to billionaire status and how she “created her own economy,” as Lancaster put it.
“It’s not just becoming a billionaire, but how that branding gives back,” Lancaster said. “The way she treats her employees, the handwritten notes, she always puts a personal touch on everything she does and that’s what differentiates her from other celebrities. She never forgets that the fans are the ones who continue to put her where she is.”
Swift’s effect on the NFL, an inadvertent byproduct of her giddily public relationship with Kansas City Chiefs player Travis Kelce – whose already-high profile has escalated to ubiquity – is indisputable.
Menounos said the kids in her class are always asking about the Chiefs, while Lancaster remarked her daughter, who “didn’t even know what a touchdown was before (Swift and Kelce),” has a Chiefs sweatshirt on her holiday gift list.
“Think about the number of advertisers if Kansas City goes back to the Super Bowl, all of the female-centered products like makeup companies that might consider advertising,” Lancaster said. “Taylor has changed the entire marketing strategy even for an event like that.”
Lancaster plans to teach her course again in the fall, especially after fully understanding the Swiftian vibe when she caught "The Eras Tour" with her daughter in October in Miami. Though she had an inkling of what to expect from seeing clips of the show online, she was engulfed by the nearly tangible feeling of togetherness at Hard Rock Stadium.
“Her shows are a beautiful place to be and create that kind of space for women,” Lancaster said. “But for men, too. You see dads who have little girls putting sparkles on their heads and they’re fine with that. My daughter, who is very shy, was walking up to strangers asking if they wanted to trade friendship bracelets. Taylor has created an environment that feels loving and safe.”
Taylor Swift rounded the sides of her massive stage, arms outstretched in her magenta shawl, the last notes of her final Eras Tour concert an entry into the luminous history of her career. Clasping hands with her backup singers and dancers, she concluded "the most beloved chapter of my life," she said.
Sunday night was also one of the most memorable excursions in pop music history, doing it, as usual, her way. No guests. No extra songs. Just Swift in the spotlight, swapping love with her fans like a musical friendship bracelet.
She took the crowd on "one last grand adventure," which, she said, has been shared with more than 10 million people since her live extravaganza began.
Throughout the show, Swift was as much a consummate professional as she was a sweetheart, hitting her marks with fierce precision and then mouthing "I love you" to her backup dancers at the end of "You Belong With Me."
Swift’s farewell, the 149th performance on her billion-dollar-earning Eras Tour that has spanned five continents and 51 cities, arrived at Vancouver’s BP Place stadium with the same engrossing mix of precise songcraft, spiffy production and cool glam as when she first unveiled her live opus 21 months ago in Glendale, Arizona.
That night, jaws dropped at the realization that when Swift said she planned to present all of the musical eras in her then-17-year career, she didn’t mean a trite, two-hour mix of medleys.
No, Swift’s genius concept – and the ultimate reward to steadfast enthusiasts who catapulted her from successful country-pop chanteuse to the most mega of stars – was a carefully constructed 3 ½-hour career overview unlike anything ever seen on a concert stage.
“I’ve never done this many shows,” Swift admitted during her three sold-out (as usual) nights of the Canadian conclusion. “But you guys have made it such a wonderful experience.”
Taylor Swift wears her emotions proudly
Swift’s easy accessibility, one of her most endearing traits, was on display Sunday from the moment she greeted fans with her usual, “Oh, hi” and a red-lipsticked grin between the opening salvo of “Miss Americana & The Heartbreak Prince” and No. 1 hit “Cruel Summer.”
Fan ovations were frequent and lengthy. Not that there haven’t been outpourings of unconditional adoration at every show whenever she bats her cat-eyelined eyes or tilts her head with a combination of gratitude and bemusement.
But the sustained roar at the end of “Champagne Problems” as Swift sat behind her moss-covered piano, bangs damp against her forehead, was nearly as long as the four-minute song.
With an awed expression and misty eyes, Swift marveled at the waves of aural affection, taking out her ear monitors to fully experience the overwhelming sound. After reminding the crowd of the dedication of her band and crew, Swift smiled and thanked the crowd. "We will never forget you guys giving us that moment," she said.
Swift teared up a few times, keenly aware that tonight meant the last black hat she’d bestow on a lucky kid’s head during “22” and her final opportunity to playfully waggle her hips in a short sequined skirt to “Shake it Off.”
What were Taylor Swift's final surprise songs?
The nine eras of Swift’s show captivate with their own personalities. The vengeful red-and-black snake motif of “Reputation” and its snarling “Look What You Made Me Do” and the monochrome Hollywood glam of “The Tortured Poets Department” – a May addition after she dropped the 30-track album in April – with its stoic drumline during “The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived” and the visceral discotheque that is “I Can Do it With a Broken Heart” among the highlights.
But the portion of the Eras Tour that has captivated fans of Swift’s immense catalog and spurred repeated attendances regardless of ticket price, is her “surprise” songs, one on acoustic guitar and one behind her flower-decorated piano.
At Saturday’s penultimate show, Swift welcomed protégé and show opener Gracie Abrams to share the spotlight for a mashup of “I Love You, I’m Sorry” and “Last Kiss,” which ended with tight hugs between the friends.
Sunday’s closure, the culmination of so much emotion and so much connection with her fans – almost 60,000 at each Vancouver date – hit the perfect note. Saying she wanted to go "back to the beginning," Swift offered the mashup of "A Place in This World" from her 2006 debut album and "New Romantics" from “1989” on guitar. But feelings heightened with a gorgeous piano trilogy of "Long Live" (“Speak Now”), "New Year's Day" (“Reputation”) and "The Manuscript" (“The Tortured Poets Department”), the chorus 'hold on to the memories" resonating deeply in the stadium as Swift closed her eyes and threw her head back as she played.
Taylor Swift is too ambitious to disappear for long
Though happy tears were to be expected as Swift said goodbye, she isn’t the type of performer to pull an Adele and disappear for a few years.
Yes, she has a seemingly thriving personal life with NFL star Travis Kelce and deserves a break after a thoroughly exhausting schedule for nearly two years (really three, as she noted from the stage, given the year of prep time and rehearsals).
The dedication was worth it, Swift told Sunday's crowd because "you have created such a space for joy and togetherness and love."
But Swift is too ambitious, too prolific, too fond of sharing her words and music with fans who manage to present new levels of adoration the more she leaves it all on the stage for them.
Even though this marathon has ended, it feels as if another race will soon approach the starting line.