Pop sensation Taylor Swift brought her Eras Tour to some of the biggest and most iconic sports stadiums in the world over the past several months in one of the biggest and most ambitious concert tours in history, and now we know the insane logistics and the cost of such a production.
Citing information given to U.S. Customs and Border Protection from Taylor Swift’s production company Firefly Productions, an X user by the name of Liz put together a rundown of the scale and the cost of the Eras Tour, and it’s absolutely insane.
“The Eras Tour production weighs in at a whopping 1,697,440 lbs, taking up around 19,200 sq ft worth of containers on a 964ft cargo vessel, the NYK Romulus,” Liz said in a post on X, the social media website that was formerly known as Twitter.
As you might imagine, this involved many, many items.
“There’s 2,206 separately tagged items spread across 60 XL (40ft) shipping containers,” a follow-up post said. “2 containers were labelled with wardrobe & dry cleaning (so maybe the Rep suit doesn’t smell that bad after all), while another 3 were labelled as props. There’s also containers for the lighting, cameras & video, pyro, merch, cabin, and Folkmore trees.”
Obviously, travel for such a massive operation takes quite some time.
“Following the final show in London on Aug 20, The Eras Tour crew disassembled and packed the production into containers within a few days. It left the UK on Aug 27 and after a few short stops around Europe, it travelled approx. 4,800 miles and arrived Sep 19 in FLORIDA!!!” another post read.
As for the cost of such a production, it’s also absolutely insane.
“The Eras Tour shipment was declared at a total value of $15,398,920 USD – inclusive of freight and insurance. While we don’t have the precise shipping and insurance costs, using the industry standards for a shipment of this size, it usually costs around $80k for freight and $76.5k for insurance,” the thread of post continued.
“So according to Taylor’s own company – Firefly Productions – and her freight contractor, The Eras Tour production equipment, stage, lighting, costumes, instruments and assumably everything else you see when she’s on stage, costs more than $15,000,000 USD.”
Obviously, this is some insane news, and it led to a lot of reactions on social media.
“Taylor Swift is a freaking legend,” a fan wrote on X.
“When the tour is over I want a book or documentary on allll the logistics. When did they manage to learn choreography for a whole new era mid tour? How many hotel rooms did the tour occupy when they traveled? How’d they ship it all?” another fan wrote.
“This is actually so cool, logistically,” another fan said.
“This is so fascinating,” another fan added.
“This is very interesting! $15M + is crazy,” another fan wrote.
Clearly, a lot goes into such a massive production.
