Swift announced her Eras Tour on Nov. 1, 2022, writing on social media, “I’m enchanted to announce my next tour: Taylor Swift | The Eras Tour, a journey through the musical eras of my career (past and present!).” The tour would start on March 18, 2023, in Arizona with it originally ending on Aug. 5, 2023, People magazine reported. The tour was quickly expanded and added onto several times.
The tour set records and even spurred a federal investigation.
It all started when tickets went on sale on Nov. 15, 2022, when tickets went on presale to verified fans on Ticketmaster and brought outages and delays that left people waiting for hours in a virtual queue and unable to buy tickets on the primary market, Billboard reported. Ticketmaster, three hours after the sales were supposed to start on the East Coast, said they were not prepared for the “historically” large demand.
Days later, the Justice Department launched an antitrust probe into Ticketmaster’s parent company, Live Nation to determine if it had too much power in the live music industry, The New York Times reported. The U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee held a hearing to “examine how consolidation in the live entertainment and ticketing industries harms customers and artists alike,” People reported.
In May 2024, the DOJ ended up suing Live Nation and Ticketmaster for monopolizing the industry, CBS News reported. The lawsuit included 29 states and the District of Columbia.
But the DOJ wasn’t the only lawsuit the companies faced. Swifties took Live Nation and Ticketmaster to court, alleging “unlawful conduct.” The lead plaintiff said she tried 41 times on the first day to get tickets, CNN reported.
Despite the Ticketmaster meltdown, the tour, which covered 10 of her eras through 44 songs in each 3 1/2 hour show, helped boost the economy of the U.S. so much that the Federal Reserve noticed, The Associated Press reported.
Economists last year figured that fans spent on average $1,500 on plane tickets, hotel rooms and concert tickets, the AP reported, without accounting for the shirts, records, books, friendship bracelets or anything else Swift fans needed to get.
Pollstar estimates that the Eras Tour would bring more than $2 billion by Sunday, the AP reported.
“This is the very first time I’ve ever acknowledged to myself and admitted that this tour is gonna end in December,” she said in June, adding, “this tour has really become my entire life.”
So, what comes next?
Cosmopolitan called it her “post-Eras era,” saying that the singer/songwriter will take some time off. She is expected to watch her boyfriend Travis Kelce and the Kansas City Chiefs during the last two months of the NFL regular season.
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