Taylor Swift‘s ‘Eras’ Tour has officially become the first tour to gross $1billion (£796million).
According to Pollstar, a live entertainment trade magazine, Swift has now set the record for the highest-grossing tour of all time. The popstar hit the ten-digit threshold after sixty shows and eight months of being on the road.
Previously, Sir Elton John held the record for the highest-grossing tour, with his ‘Farewell Yellow Brick Road’ tour earning $939million. The legend achieved this number with 328 shows and five years of touring from September 8, 2018 to July 8, 2023.
The magazine also claimed that Swift sold a “mind-boggling 4.3 million tickets at an average ticket price of $238.95”, and calculated that the singer grossed roughly $17.3million for an average show for the current leg of her tour.
Pollstar estimated the sales based on their box office reports, along with “ticket prices in each market”, “record capacities at each venue” and “comparable tour data”. The figure doesn’t include The Eras Tour movie (which earned roughly $250million), or tour merchandise (which garnered Swift another $200million).
Swift has recently spoken about the constant comparisons between her tour and Beyoncé‘s ‘Renaissance’ tour and concert film: “Clearly it’s very lucrative for the media and stan culture to pit two women against each other”
She also praised Beyoncé as “the most precious gem of a person — warm and open and funny. And she’s such a great disrupter of music-industry norms. She taught every artist how to flip the table and challenge archaic business practices.”
In other news, Swift has been announced as Forbes’ most powerful woman in media and entertainment. She also won TIME’s Person of the Year, which X/Twitter CEO Elon Musk warned could cause some negative backlash: “Some risk of popularity decline after this award,” he wrote. “I speak from experience lol.”