SYDNEY - With pop star Taylor Swift kicking off her Eras tour in Australia on Feb 16, Ms Genevieve Mylne will be among a legion of fans providing what is likely to be only a fleeting boost to the economy.
The 19-year-old student will spend around A$2,000 (S$1,760) on tickets, flights and accommodation to watch the show twice in Melbourne and at least once in Sydney.
“I definitely wouldn’t spend this much on any other concert,” said Ms Mylne, who has put aside her wages as a gymnastics coach for the spending splurge. “I don’t feel that strongly about any other artist.”
With seven shows across Australia’s two biggest cities from Feb 16 to 26, the tour could generate A$1.2 billion in economic value in Melbourne alone, according to the city’s Lord Mayor Sally Capp.
But with the country’s savings rate at the lowest since the end of 2007 and cost-of-living concerns making consumers pessimistic, economists say that is likely to be a temporary sugar hit.
“The Australian leg of the Eras tour should see a burst of spending on tickets, travel and hospitality, but that’s likely to come at a cost elsewhere in the economy,” said Mr James McIntyre at Bloomberg Economics. “With households under extreme pressure from higher rates, and the savings rate at a 16-year low, concert-related spending could crowd out purchases in other areas, especially in already weak discretionary sectors.”
The billionaire singer has made economic waves throughout her record-shattering global tour, in a phenomenon dubbed “Swiftonomics”.
Bloomberg Economics estimates the megastar, along with a tour from Beyonce and the “Barbenheimer” films, may have contributed as much as US$8.5 billion (S$11.5 billion) to the US economy in the third quarter of 2023.
The four sell-out concerts at Sydney’s Accor Stadium will be the “biggest series of major events that we’ve had” since the city hosted the Olympic Games in 2000, said Ms Kerrie Mather, chief executive of site operator Venues NSW.
About 35 per cent of the 320,000 fans in Sydney will be travelling from interstate or overseas, she added.
Accommodation Australia CEO Michael Johnson said concerts on such a scale are “huge demand drivers for hotels”.
He added that occupancy rates in Melbourne are 20 per cent higher than a year earlier, and 10 per cent higher in Sydney.
Such demand has seen the cost of flights and accommodation spike, with Reserve Bank of Australia governor Michele Bullock addressing the topic of “Taylor Swift inflation” in a media conference earlier in February.
“People are deciding what’s really important to them,” Ms Bullock said. “And clearly for a lot of people Taylor Swift is very important.”
She added that her children had “put money away” for tickets and “forewent other things in order to be able to afford Taylor Swift”.
Meanwhile, Ms Mylne is flying some 900km from Sydney to Melbourne for this weekend’s shows, armed with more than 80 homemade friendship bracelets to trade with other fans.
“I think this is like the most absurd concert experience I’ll ever have,” the psychology student said. The experience, “even if it means spending copious amounts of money, is worth it.” BLOOMBERG
