Taylor Swift and the strange power of ‘Swiftonomics’
When Chris Galvin was searching for Taylor Swift tickets for his 13-year-old daughter, Lily, last summer, the best he could find was a pair for $2,000 plus a spot in a parking lot 10 minutes’ walk from the concert for nearly $500.
That was for the concert closest to their home – the Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara, a Silicon Valley city located in the San Francisco Bay Area – where Swift performed at the end of July.
Galvin hadn’t moved fast enough to find cheaper tickets. Before they had even become available to buy, the shows were so highly anticipated that the city announced in a news release that it would temporarily change its name to “Swiftie Clara”. Swift was even named Honorary Mayor during her visit.
After reaching out to his social media networks and shelling out $500 including fees, Galvin was able to secure two last-minute tickets to an early August performance at SoFi Stadium in Inglewood, a city in Los Angeles County more than 560km (350 miles) from his home.
Galvin surprised his daughter with the news that they were going to LA a few days before the event.
“The road trip, standing in line for merchandise, and the overall experience turned out to be a lot of fun,” he says. “I’ll never forget sharing that experience with her. It was so cool to see her singing, dancing and just in awe for her first real concert.”
Now a music tech executive, Galvin was a professional DJ in Southern California during the 1990s. Though Swift’s music isn’t similar to what he played at underground raves, he says the atmosphere at Swift’s SoFi Stadium show was reminiscent of the PLUR (peace, love, unity, respect) ethos of the old-school rave scene in Los Angeles.
“The positive vibe was incredible,” Galvin says. “Random Swifties would simply walk up to Lily, strike up a conversation, and ask if she wanted to trade [friendship] bracelets.”
His daughter made some lasting relationships, and mothers of young fans gave him several rave-reminiscent friendship bracelets, with phrases like “Swiftie Dad” spelled out in beads.
Friendship bracelets are a big thing among Swifties. Fans started trading friendship bracelets after she sang about them in You’re on Your Own, Kid on her 2022 album, Midnights: “Cause there were pages turned with the bridges burned / Everything you lose is a step you take / So make the friendship bracelets, take the moment and taste it / You’ve got no reason to be afraid.”
Swift mania
But what is now known as the Taylor Swift Effect runs far beyond a craze for friendship bracelets. The six shows she performed at SoFi, where Galvin and his daughter went to watch her, generated an estimated $320m in tourism revenues, taxes and extra jobs for Los Angeles County, according to a special report by the Center for Jobs.
The “Swiftonomics” effect has caused countries to vie for her attention. When the initial list of tour dates was published in June 2023 with no mention of Canada, Canadian Members of Parliament filed a complaint with the Speaker of the House of Commons calling it a “snub”. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau hurriedly issued an invitation and, a month later, six dates for Toronto and three for Vancouver were added to the list of international tour dates for 2024.
Swift has also received invitations from the president of Chile, the mayor of Budapest and the leader of an opposition party in Thailand. New Zealand’s finance minister, Grant Robertson, bowed out of the contest to attract Swift, saying he couldn’t afford to invest public money on a marketing campaign.
It’s little wonder that Swift was named Person of the Year for 2023 by Time Magazine.
