You're making me feel phenomenal," Taylor Swift likes to tell the soldout stadium of fans at each stop on her Eras Tour, right before she performs her feminist anthem "The Man." Basking in the applause, the 34-yearold pop star then flexes her biceps and kisses the muscle, all of which whips the audience into a bigger frenzy. "You're making me feel," she says, as a smile spreads across her face, "powerful."
It's brilliant theatrics, but Swiftie Nation knows that she is, and has always been, the true source of her own power-and 17 years into her remarkable career, Swift has never had more economic, cultural and political clout. All this has caused her to soar up the ranks of Forbes' World's 100 Most Powerful Women, from No. 79 in 2022 to No. 5 this year.
Thanks to the record-breaking success of the Eras Tour, Swift became a billionaire in October-making her the rare recording artist to hit ten-figure status, joining the likes of Jay-Z (net worth: $2.5 billion) and Rihanna ($1.4 billion). A three-and-a-half-hour concert retrospective of her career, the tour has grossed nearly $850 million over 63 U.S. shows. Its first leg has added an estimated $190 million, after tax, to Swift's coffers, boosting her net worth to $1.1 billion. The show will head to Europe and Asia next year.
The so-called Taylor Swift Effect casts a wide financial halo, meanwhile. Two nights of her tour in Denver added an estimated $140 million to Colorado's GDP, thanks to fans spending an average $1,300 apiece on hotels, restaurants and retailers. The Philadelphia Federal Reserve even cited Swift in its June Beige Book, noting that May-the month the Pennsylvania native performed at Lincoln Financial Field in Philly for three nights-marked the strongest month for city hotel revenue since before the pandemic. The U.S. Travel Association estimates that, collectively, the U.S. leg of the tour added more than $5 billion to state economies.
“She’s like a big corporation, essentially, that’s in many sectors,” says labor economist and University of Chicago professor Carolyn Sloane. “Her audience has skewed so young and so female for so long that people may have underestimated how big this thing could be, economically. I don’t think anybody doubts that today.”
That predominantly young, female audience also followed Swift to the box office this year. Here again, she flexed her entrepreneurial muscle, bypassing Hollywood studios to release The Eras Tour movie directly with AMC in October despite the fact that she had no traditional marketing apparatus at her back. No matter: Swift herself is the ultimate marketing machine. Stacy Jones, founder of marketing agency Hollywood Branded, estimates that over the last two years the singer has amassed more than $130 billion in "earned media"-a bit of a voodoo number that attempts to estimate the value of free publicity. Word of mouth and a few well-timed appearances at Kansas City Chiefs football games were more than enough visibility to get fans in the seats. The movie notched a $93 million opening weekend in the U.S. and has grossed more than $200 million worldwide.
[https://cdn.magzter.com/1369322608/170228980...
It's brilliant theatrics, but Swiftie Nation knows that she is, and has always been, the true source of her own power-and 17 years into her remarkable career, Swift has never had more economic, cultural and political clout. All this has caused her to soar up the ranks of Forbes' World's 100 Most Powerful Women, from No. 79 in 2022 to No. 5 this year.
Thanks to the record-breaking success of the Eras Tour, Swift became a billionaire in October-making her the rare recording artist to hit ten-figure status, joining the likes of Jay-Z (net worth: $2.5 billion) and Rihanna ($1.4 billion). A three-and-a-half-hour concert retrospective of her career, the tour has grossed nearly $850 million over 63 U.S. shows. Its first leg has added an estimated $190 million, after tax, to Swift's coffers, boosting her net worth to $1.1 billion. The show will head to Europe and Asia next year.
The so-called Taylor Swift Effect casts a wide financial halo, meanwhile. Two nights of her tour in Denver added an estimated $140 million to Colorado's GDP, thanks to fans spending an average $1,300 apiece on hotels, restaurants and retailers. The Philadelphia Federal Reserve even cited Swift in its June Beige Book, noting that May-the month the Pennsylvania native performed at Lincoln Financial Field in Philly for three nights-marked the strongest month for city hotel revenue since before the pandemic. The U.S. Travel Association estimates that, collectively, the U.S. leg of the tour added more than $5 billion to state economies.
“She’s like a big corporation, essentially, that’s in many sectors,” says labor economist and University of Chicago professor Carolyn Sloane. “Her audience has skewed so young and so female for so long that people may have underestimated how big this thing could be, economically. I don’t think anybody doubts that today.”
That predominantly young, female audience also followed Swift to the box office this year. Here again, she flexed her entrepreneurial muscle, bypassing Hollywood studios to release The Eras Tour movie directly with AMC in October despite the fact that she had no traditional marketing apparatus at her back. No matter: Swift herself is the ultimate marketing machine. Stacy Jones, founder of marketing agency Hollywood Branded, estimates that over the last two years the singer has amassed more than $130 billion in "earned media"-a bit of a voodoo number that attempts to estimate the value of free publicity. Word of mouth and a few well-timed appearances at Kansas City Chiefs football games were more than enough visibility to get fans in the seats. The movie notched a $93 million opening weekend in the U.S. and has grossed more than $200 million worldwide.
[https://cdn.magzter.com/1369322608/170228980...
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Forbes (Digital) - 1 Issue, December 2023 - January 2024