The legendary success of Taylor Swift’s Eras tour, combined with the record box office of the Barbie movie and Beyoncé’s Renaissance tour, is perhaps preventing another economic recession.
146 dates across five continents. Taylor Swift has made a seismic impact on the music industry over the past 17 years. In fact, seismologist Jackie Caplan-Auerbach measured that fans on the Eras Tour in Seattle caused a 2.3 magnitude earthquake.
The Eras Tour is the highest-grossing tour ever, expecting to generate close to $5 billion in consumer spending in the United States alone. According to Dan Fleetwood, President of QuestionPro Research and Insights, “If Taylor Swift were an economy, she’d be bigger than 50 countries.”
Swift’s impact does not stop at the economy. The recently announced Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour film already shattered box office records with a $100 million opening weekend. After the ticket presale went live, the film set a single-day sales record for AMC in just three hours, gaining $26 million in sales in one day. The record-breaking sales beat the previous single-day sales record held by Spider-Man: No Way Home at $16.9 million.
Meanwhile in the box office, Greta Gerwig’s Barbie became arguably the biggest film of the year so far, topping $1 billion in global ticket sales and breaking multiple records including the biggest opening by a female director. Barbie has even made societal impacts, portraying the reality of how women are treated in society by reversing the stereotypical roles of men and women.
Beyoncé’s Renaissance tour is a success as well. Like Swift, Beyoncé’s Renaissance Tour is making significant impacts in every city it stops in. Known as the “Beyoncé Bump,” local shops and businesses have seen a noticeable increase in consumer interest. In Philadelphia, black-owned businesses saw a 14% and 4% increase in beauty and food services, respectively. Women-owned businesses saw a 21% increase in shopping services and LGBTQ-owned businesses saw a staggering 194% increase in shopping services as well. Beyoncé and Taylor Swift’s concert tours and Barbie are expected to add over $5 billion to the economy in Q3 of 2023. As Beyoncé says: “Who run the world? Girls.”