How Swifties Boosted The L-A Economy by $320M

When Dallas resident Adriana Akhtar planned a recent Los Angeles trip with her family to see Taylor Swift perform as part of the artist’s ballyhooed “Eras Tour,” she wasn’t necessarily thinking about boosting the local economy. 

But over the course of four days, Akhtar, 47, did just that: She estimates her family spent about $35,000 on luxury accommodations, meals at some of the city’s hottest restaurants and transportation within the area — and that figure doesn’t even include a five-figure shopping splurge. In short, her Taylor trip became an L.A. vacation done to the max.

And Akhtar makes the point that she was hardly alone. “Rodeo Drive was overrun with moms and daughters in town for Taylor Swift,” she told MarketWatch. 

Add up all that spending by so many Swifties over the course of Swift’s sold-out, six-show run at SoFi Stadium in the Los Angeles suburb of Inglewood and you have a $320 million boost to the city, according to a detailed report from the California Center for Jobs & the Economy. The Los Angeles engagement concluded Wednesday night, which also marked the end of the first leg of the “Eras Tour.”

Notably, the $320 million doesn’t include the bulk of the money spent on tickets and merchandise, since that’s channeled to Swift, officials with the center told MarketWatch. But if that was added to the mix, the total would be $490 million — or nearly a half-billion dollars. The $320 million does, however, encompass everything from hotel stays and restaurant visits to sales taxes generated.

It’s been estimated that 420,000 people attended the Swift shows in Los Angeles. Many of those traveled from out of town — just like Akhtar. And befitting the joyous mood of the concerts, they clearly came to have a good time and spend, spend, spend, said Robert Lapsley, president of the California Business Roundtable, which runs the center.

“This became a vacation for people,” Lapsley told MarketWatch. “They probably planned their whole summer around it.”

The phenomenon was hardly limited to Los Angeles. Cities across the U.S. that hosted the tour saw all kinds of upticks in business.

In all, the “Eras Tour” will provide a $5 billion boost to the global economy, according to market researcher QuestionPro — “more than the gross domestic product of 50 countries,” the company said in a press release. QuestionPro said that each concertgoer spends about $1,300 on average to attend the show, including the cost of the ticket itself.