Diane Wehrle, Beauclair’s Brand Ambassador, provides her insights on the potential economic benefit to towns and cities of hosting the Taylor Swift Eras tour
Taylor Swift and her 2024 Eras Tour has taken the UK – and indeed cities across the globe – by storm. The significance of the tour is reflected in the numbers; comprising a total of 152 shows spread over five continents, and according to The Washington Post Taylor Swift is expected to earn more than $4.1 billion just from ticket sales.
The UK leg of the tour kicked off in Edinburgh on Friday 7th June followed by dates in Cardiff, Liverpool and London. With every UK show being held in stadia with circa 70,000 seats, and with tickets sold out within minutes of becoming available, the fact that a huge influx of people is visiting each town or city on the concert date is a given.
Quantifying economic benefit
Footfall, being the most readily available metric, is frequently used as a measure of economic benefit of events for towns and cities. Nonetheless, results can vary hugely depending on both the location of the venue in relation to the city centre and the ability of the counting technology to accurately capture visitor activity.
One of the key drivers for tracking footfall has always been that it represents a proxy for spending – the old adage being that without footfall there can’t be spend – so the optimal approach must surely be to examine spending and identify the additional spending that is generated. By understanding this, towns and cities hosting events can derive a far more accurate ROI from the event. This makes explicit the overall revenue benefit versus costs in terms of additional staffing, security, street cleaning etc, together with a clear understanding of which sectors and areas of the city centre are the greatest beneficiaries.
Beauclair provides valuable evidence of spending in UK towns and cities. While the results of the impact of the concerts on overall spending are far from conclusive, the data is suggesting that two key factors are significant in evaluating the benefits on spending:
1) There is a relationship between the magnitude of gain and the proximity of the venue to the city centre; and
2)There are noticeable uplifts in certain categories of spending
Proximity of the venue to the city centre
Across three cities that hosted Taylor Swift concerts (Edinburgh, Cardiff and Liverpool)1 by far the greatest uplift in spending occurred in Cardiff, where the Principality Stadium lies within the heart of city centre.
Overall spending in Cardiff on the day of the concert was +26% higher than on the same day in the year before, whilst in Edinburgh – where the Murrayfield Stadium is a 30 minute walk from the city centre – overall spending over the concert days averaged +12% higher than the year before. In Liverpool – where Anfield is the furthest distance from the city centre (approximately 60 minutes walk time) – overall spending over the concert days averaged -1.7% lower than in 2023.
| % increase in overall £ spending from same days in 2023 | |
| Cardiff | +26.4% |
| Edinburgh | +11.9% |
| Liverpool | -1.7% |
| All three cities average | +3.2% |
Categories of spending
In addition to the significance of distance, the Beauclair data also indicates that there are noticeably greater uplifts in spending in certain sectors than others. Inevitably, the profile of spending will inevitably be influenced by the profile of the event audience, and therefore in this instance – with a young audience profile – the greatest beneficiaries of spending uplift across all three cities were the Tourism, Entertainment and General Retail sectors, whilst Food & Drink (hospitality) spending increased only very marginally or decreased.
| % increase in overall £ spending from same days in 2023 | ||||
| Cardiff | Edinburgh | Liverpool | All three cities average | |
| Entertainment | +53.4% | +8.9% | +40.6% | +44.5% |
| Fashion | +36.1% | +14.0% | -17.1% | -11.0% |
| Food & Drink | +2.6% | +7.3% | -4.0% | -1.2% |
| General Retail | +84.1% | +110.3% | +17.8% | +28.6% |
| Tourism | +902.1% | +308.4% | +42.1% | +102.0% |
| Transport | +7.5% | -14.6% | +18.5% | +9.6% |
| All sectors | +26.4% | +11.9% | -1.7% | +3.2% |
It is not possible to prove conclusively that 100% of the uplift in spending on the days of the Taylor Swift concerts was a direct consequence of that specific event and, a proportion of the spending uplift might well have occurred in the absence of the event taking place. However, the sheer magnitude of the increase in Tourism spending – which comprises airlines, holidays and hotels – on concert days in all three cities (+902.1% in Cardiff, +308.4% in Edinburgh and +42.1% in Liverpool) compared with the same days in 2023 is a clear indicator of the driving force of the event on spending.
The availability of spending data specifically for the high street means that UK towns and cities readily have the capability to evaluate the economic benefit of events and the ROI for the local economy. However, the key to success is ensuring that the range of stakeholders with a vested interest in placemaking utilise this data so that a town or city fully understands where the value of an event lands and is able to implement appropriate strategies to exploit its value to its fullest. In the absence of this, every event may well be more of a lost opportunity than a gain, demanding huge investment and delivering little in return.
1Edinburgh (Friday 7th to Sunday 9th June 2024) Cardiff (Tuesday 18th June 2024) Liverpool (Thursday 13th to Saturday 15th June 2024)
Photo by Stephen Mease on Unsplash
About Diane Wehrle
Diane Wehrle is Beauclair’s Brand Ambassador, delivering monthly insights on spending in UK towns and cities. Diane has over three decades of experience supporting high streets and retail destinations in understanding their performance, and focuses on transforming data into relevant and actionable insights to drive destination and business performance. Diane is regarded as one of the leading experts high streets and retail destinations and is a regular commentator on the performance of high streets and retail in the media.
About our Beauclair Data
Beauclair Data specialises in sourcing and analysing retail spend data for the benefit of town and city centres and creating positive social impact. We do this by delivering monthly insights for our public sector and local authority clients on retail transactions and customers in any retail areas across the UK. Our insights are based on a large sample of UK debit card spending. We then use sophisticated statistical techniques to ensure that Beauclair Data’s metrics are statistically representative.