Editorial: Big events like Taylor Swift concerts mean economic boon for local economies

There was no way of missing the fact Taylor Swift came to town.

Acrisure Stadium may have been built for football, but this past week, the real score was put up by a 5-foot, 10-inch blond with a sequin-spangled wardrobe and a catalog of catchy, autobiographical hits.

The two Pittsburgh shows in Swift’s Eras Tour sold out. Secondhand seats were starting at $730 and climbing close to $4,000. The line for merchandise opened Thursday and remained impossibly long. Each person in that line translates to even more money spent.

But there is so much more money on the table for Pittsburgh. Hotel rooms. Parking. Restaurants. Gas. Other activities like visiting museums or going shopping. Fortune magazine puts the average expense for a Swift concert experience at $1,300.

Cha-ching.

In total, it could make $1.5 billion over its run.

That would make the tour not just one of the biggest of 2023. It promises to be one of the highest grossing ever. As of now, the biggest moneymaker was Elton John’s “Farewell Yellow Brick Road” tour, which garnered $887 million. It visited Pittsburgh twice, as did Ed Sheeran’s “Divide” tour, which pulled in more than $776 million. Sheeran will be back in the Steel City in July with his “Mathematics” tour.

What stands between Swift and the top of the concert heap is Beyoncé, who has the other hotly anticipated tour this summer. She will be at Acrisure Stadium in August, but for just one night compared to Swift’s two. Still, high-side estimates for her “Renaissance” tour come in at $2.1 billion. Bloomberg is questioning which star’s tour will cross the billion dollar mark first.

Those staggering numbers are just about the tour itself — the tickets and merchandise and experiences sold by the production. Total economic impact on communities for Swift’s is predicted to be three times as high. Fortune is putting it at $4.6 billion.

Concerts are not just big business. They are an infectious business that spreads money like a cold. That is why government attention on the transparency of the associated fees is important.

Ticketmaster — which grossly screwed up early sales of Swift tickets last year — is famous for its litany of extra and unavoidable fees on tickets and its near monopoly on concert promotion and ticketing given the Live Nation merger of 2010.

In a White House event Thursday, Live Nation announced upfront pricing with complete cost, including all fees, will be in place for its owned venues — like the Pavilion at Star Lake in Burgettstown — by September. Ticketmaster will give an all-in pricing option for other venues where it provides services, like Acrisure Stadium.

That makes an impact not only because it lets people know whether they can afford the tickets, but it also lets them know how much money they have for the costs surrounding the event. And that’s the money that flows into local pockets.