Taylor Swift on the verge of breaking the record for the highest grossing tour ever

Taylor Swift could beat Elton John's record as the artist who has grossed the most during a single tour. The American singer could make a total of $1 billion throughout the 106 concerts that make up her "Eras Tour."

The artist announced on November 1, 2022 that she would go on tour. Taylor Swift would tour the country and perform 52 concerts across the United States. At that moment, the singer's fans (known as "Swifties") breathed a sigh of relief: it was the first time in three years that the star had returned to perform concerts across the country.

Ticketmaster sparks controversy

Her "Eras Tour" did not take long to start but the beginning was full of controversy. A problem with Ticketmaster upset both fans and the artist. It all started with ticket sales, which opened on November 15, 2022. Within minutes, the website crashed and fans were unable to purchase their tickets.

Ticketmaster shielded itself by saying it was due to unprecedented demand. The ticketing site expected a total of 1.5 million fans to log on to buy tickets but there ended up being 14 million who tried to purchase their ticket at the same time, including several bots that crashed the website. Nonetheless, Ticketmaster managed to sell more than 2 million tickets and made Taylor Swift the artist who sold the most tickets in a single day in the entire history of the ticketing site.

That was just the beginning of the profits and Billboard was quick to announce it. A first survey conducted by the entertainment website revealed that the singer could make $591 million just from domestic concerts. The data is an estimate, as the singer did not want to provide Billboard Boxscore, the site in charge of comparing concert attendance data, with the actual number until the end of the tour. The analysis site got the $591 million estimate by basing its calculations off the average price of each ticket, $215.

Taylor Swift close to grossing $1 billion with 'Eras Tour'

The figure would make her the highest-grossing female touring artist in history, surpassing Madonna. During her "Sticky & Sweet Tour" (2008-2009), the singer grossed $407 million. Her new U.S. tour would have put her fourth on the Top Tours of All Time list. The top 3 tours are Elton John's "Farewell Yellow Brick Road Tour" (2018-2023) which grossed more than $887 million; Ed Sheeran's "Divide Tour" (2017-2019) which grossed $776 million, and the "U2 360º Tour" (2009-2011), which made the Irish band $736 million.

However, Taylor Swift was not satisfied with the number 4 spot on the Top Tours of All Time list, so she added more dates, making her "Eras Tour" an international tour. On June 2, the artist announced dates in Latin America and a few days later, on June 20, she announced dates in Europe, South America, Asia and Australia, making for a total of 106 concerts.

This tour could generate more than $1 billion and would make the artist break the record for the highest-grossing tour in history. Jarred Arfa, Billy Joel's co-agent and director of operations for Artist Group International, highlighted this fact during a brief interview with Wall Street Journal: "What we’re seeing on this particular Taylor tour is almost like a once-in-a-lifetime phenomenon. It’s pretty astonishing," he said.