Taylor Swift is set to begin the UK leg of her Eras Tour on Friday, in a string of concerts which is expected to generate £1 billion for the British economy.
Swift will get her tour of Britain underway at Edinburgh’s Murrayfield Stadium on Friday, Saturday and Sunday, with her immense popularity expected to lead to road closures, record attendances and a horde of spending.
Some 220,000 fans are forecast to attend the three performances, the City of Edinburgh Council said, warning that roads and areas near the arena would be disrupted.
In 2023, Harry Styles broke the record for the largest attendance at a stadium concert after over 65,000 fans bought tickets to his Murrayfield performance.
In preparation for Swift’s tour, Edinburgh’s licensing board approved a request from Scottish Rugby to increase its capacity from 67,130 to 72,990.
Following the Scottish leg of the tour, Swift will head to Liverpool, London and Cardiff for a further 12 dates in the UK.
Taylor Swift's UK tour is expected to result in an additional £1 billion in consumer spending, research last month found.
Each attending fan is anticipated to spend £848 in tickets, travel, accommodation and outfits in preparation for seeing the Pennsylvanian artist, data from Barclays found.
In April, a US lawsuit was launched against Live Nation, the owner of Ticketmaster and the event promoter of Swift’s tour, over accusations it had monopolised the live events industry.
Ticketmaster and Live Nation merged in 2010 and are estimated to now control 70% of the ticketing and live event venues market in the US.
Suggestions Swift might be responsible for a near-£1 billion boost to the UK economy "could prove to be an understatement", reckons analyst Dan Coatsworth at AJ Bell.
"Anecdotal evidence from studying social media groups dedicated to the UK tour implies a large chunk of the crowd are coming from overseas, particularly the US, as it’s often cheaper for them to travel and see the musician on these shores than their homeland."
The extra injection of spending on hotel accommodation, food and leisure activities, potentially across multiple days, implies an extra cash injection into the economy beyond activities purely linked to a concert such as tickets, food, drink and merchandise, he says.
Stock market names like Premier Inn-owner Whitbread PLC (LSE:WTB), pubs chain JD Wetherspoon PLC (LSE:JDW) and airlines like easyJet or British Airways (LSE:IAG) are among the companies primed for a boost in customers, Coatsworth says.
"Management teams may have already left a ‘Blank Space’ in the draft of their next results to complete with Swift-related comments once they’ve totted up the takings.”