[ad_1]
When she bought the tickets, her family said, “Courtney, this is pretty amazing.”
Perhaps even more oddly, Goodman and Amelia are not alone.
Since Swift began the European legs of her 51-night international stadium tour in May, American fans have been fulfilling a Swiftie dream of flying halfway around the world for cheap tickets to see the pop star.
Due to strict rules on resale and limits on marking up prices above face value, tickets in Europe tend to be thousands of dollars cheaper than sold-out North American shows.
That means the combined cost of airfare, hotels and meals for a trip to Europe could potentially cost less than a single ticket to one of Swift’s concerts in the US.
For example, take a trip to a concert in Amsterdam.
Tickets to Swift’s three shows in July will cost around $500, while a two-night air and hotel package in the city will run you about $1,000, according to Expedia.
By comparison, as of June 14, the cheapest nosebleed seats for Swift’s concert in Indianapolis this November were going for more than $2,000 on resale sites.
Tickets to Goodman’s Paris show were $1,000 apiece, half the going rate for the rest of the U.S. tour, which resumes in October.
According to CNBC, the average ticket price for Swift’s U.S. shows last year was $1,088, second only to British singer Adele, whose average concert ticket price was $1,243.
However, further pressure may be coming on for upcoming US dates after Swift announced last week that her Eraser tour will officially end in December, with 15 dates remaining in North America, six in the US and nine in Canada.
In the United States, Ticketmaster has come under intense scrutiny over its handling of ticket distribution and clashes with artists and fans.
But fans have benefited from tighter restrictions on scalpers and lower demand for tickets in many European countries, justifying the flight across the Atlantic for fans like Courtney and Amelia to see Swift perform.
We wanted to go, but we weren’t sure if she would be willing to go on another date.
Last year, Swift drew thousands of Swifties to Chicago for three nights at Soldier Field. In the months leading up to the shows, fans spent hours glued to their laptops trying to buy stadium seats. Demand was so high that ticket sites crashed, and some people reported waiting as long as eight hours.
The surge in Swift-following tourists and associated economic revenue to Chicago led to a record-breaking weekend for Chicago hotels: As many as 60,000 Swift fans visited the city in one night, and hotel occupancy rates in the city hit a new record of nearly 97 percent, according to data released by the Chicago Convention and Visitors Bureau last year.
Last summer, Melissa Sanchez, a legal assistant from Cicero, Illinois, splurged on tickets to an Eras tour in Chicago, paying $5,500 for a seat in row six next to her cousin.
“We wanted to go, but we didn’t know if she had any further dates planned,” Sanchez, 47, said.
When tickets for Swift’s European shows went on sale, Sanchez bought tickets for three shows in Stockholm, London, and Dublin, and said the combined price for the three European tickets was less than the $5,500 ticket for the Chicago show.
Three times as many Americans are traveling internationally for live concerts this summer than last year, according to a summer tour report from international online ticket marketplace StubHub.
Swift appears to be fueling this trend: StubHub called her the most in-demand artist of the summer after a record-breaking year as the most searched for artist of 2023.
The three-hour show sees Swift perform songs from all but one of her 11 studio albums, each in its own act, or “era,” complete with costume changes and intricate stage projections.
The singer also picks a surprise song from her nearly two-decade career for each show, with fans on social media creating online games to guess which songs she will perform and track nearly every element of the show.
Each concert is a little different, encouraging dedicated fans to attend multiple shows: When Sanchez came to Stockholm for a three-night show in May, he secured a last-minute ticket for the second night for just $450.
We Americans have a warped sense of what is affordable, and we can justify anything under $1,000.
Prescilla Malater, 40, was unable to buy tickets to last year’s Chicago show and the upcoming Indianapolis show because she didn’t get a pre-sale code that gives fans first access to full-price tickets and VIP packages.
Initially, her travel expenses were enough to attend shows in Canada, but after comparing the high cost of living in Canada with the cheaper costs in Europe, she set her sights on Stockholm.
Malaiter, who lives in Munster, Indiana, had saved up enough flight credits to cover the airfare for the trip, and Sweden seemed like the perfect destination to meet up with two high school friends who, like her, are avid Swift fans and live in the Philippines.
Malateur spent $350 on concert tickets and, to her surprise, had trouble selling the extra tickets after someone canceled their trip, which she said illustrates the dramatic difference in demand for tickets.
Even with the loss of the extra tickets, she still saved hundreds of dollars compared to waiting for the Indianapolis show, a three-hour drive from her home.
“We Americans have a warped sense of price, and we can justify anything under $1,000 for tickets in the U.S.,” says Malateur. Not only did she save a lot of money — her total expenses for the trip came to just over $1,000 — but Malateur says the cheap concert tickets made a three-day trip to Europe to see a friend worth it.
A new album released earlier this year has also added to the excitement among U.S. fans for the band’s international shows this summer.
Goodman said she and her daughter were among the first audience members to hear some of Swift’s new songs live in Paris.
Swifties have also found a surprising community of other American fans who attend European shows. Sanchez, who became a fan of “Swiftie” when it was released in 2012, redare members of a Facebook group who were exchanging tips and tickets while planning to go to Swift’s concert in Sweden.
About 50 people from the Eras Tour were on her flight back to Chicago, she said.
[ad_2]
Source link
