Taylor Swift's 'Unbelievable Eras Tour' Makes History with $100M Budget

Taylor Swift’s The Eras Tour: began with a  bang on March 17 at State Farm Arena in Glendale, Arizona. The 44-song performance took almost three hours with an extravagant backdrop of all her albums divided into epic eras on the stage. With a dozen of costume changes and sultry stage sets that depicted each of her albums divided into epochal eras for the fans.

The show started with a subtle pink, cotton candy dreamworld-like performance by Swift and ended with a sparkling twilight feature. The non-stop show concluded with snippets from Swift’s most recent album, Midnights, with the stage suddenly turning opaque, representative of both the title of the album and the conclusion of the concert. 

“It’s almost like a different Broadway musical for each song,” Dave Brooks — Billboard Senior Director of Live Music and Touring — told The NYPost. 

He continued - “The production quality is just so far ahead of whatever has been [done] … They’re building these very elaborate sets that they’re using for several songs as opposed to the whole concert.” The ticket prices for the tour have been astronomical and worth the hype. “The cost has gotta be well north of $100 million … probably a lot more than that,” Brooks explained. “It’s going to be one of the most expensive tours ever, but it will also be one of the highest-generating tours financially. So it pays for itself basically.”

For a stadium tour of this magnitude, Brooks said, “They have advance teams that can be prepping and pre-building.” It is reported that an estimated 90 trucks were used to bring the materials to the venue for constructing the sprawling centerstage for Swift to perform on her career-spanning hits ranging from the 2006 self-titled debut album to her latest LP, 2022’s Midnights.

Erica Gabriel, an event producer who traveled from Salt Lake City to Glendale to catch the second live show of the tour on March 18, said - “It literally exceeded every expectation that I had set for myself — like, by 10 times — and I already had high expectations.” 

Swift changed into a dozen different styles according to her songs on the opening night, including a gold Roberto Cavalli flapper dress, a lavender Alberta Ferretti gown and bedazzled bodysuits by Atelier Versace and Oscar de la Renta.

“All costumes are typically modified in some way that’s going to make it really easy to get in and out of,” Dan George, a onetime tour manager who has also worked for Shakira and Britney Spears. “A dress that would typically have buttons, maybe they add a zipper on it instead. Or the performer might need to have a pouch for a battery pack in a  costume. You know, little customizations that make things easier.”

Speaking about her three-hour-long marathon Brooks further added - “Her endurance is really the ‘next level’ to me,” said Brooks. “The fact that she’s gonna do this marathon, three-hour-plus shows — it’s gotta be exhausting.”

Taylor Swift has returned on tour for the first time since 2018 with the 52-date Eras Tour. The audience will be enthralled with these fifty-two dates' live performances, in 20 different stadiums, with 10 albums worth of grand show.