Taylor Swift’s Toronto Shows Leveraged by Bankers, Baseball Team

(Bloomberg) -When Taylor Swift comes to town, local economies spring to life as hotels fill up, public transit heaves and traffic grinds to a halt, sometimes on streets recently renamed in her honor.

As the pop star’s Toronto dates kick off Thursday, the city’s finance sector is using tickets to woo clients and lift staff morale, while two of Canada’s largest public companies hope to capitalize on the visit for long after she departs in a trail of glitter.

The Eras Tour is not your average concert and Swift is not your average artist. The worldwide series of stadium shows — which kicked off in March 2023 — vaulted the entertainer to billionaire status and added US$4.3 billion to US gross domestic product last year, according to estimates from Bloomberg News and Bloomberg Economics.

Canada wasn’t originally part of the tour. In July 2023, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau tweeted at Swift, referencing three of her songs and inviting her to the country. The following month, she announced six shows over 10 days in Toronto — the same number of shows as Los Angeles and Singapore, her longest stints on this tour. She’ll also be in Vancouver for three nights to wrap up the tour in December.

Seats are the hottest currency in Canada’s financial capital, with resale tickets going for as much as 10 times face value in the week before the first Toronto show. Investment banks, hedge funds and corporate law firms alike booked out boxes for multiple dates and are bestowing tickets on grateful clients, young staffers and senior executives, people familiar with the matter told Bloomberg News.

Telecom company Rogers Communications Inc., the presenting sponsor of the Eras Tour in Canada, used its T-Swift ties to relaunch its brand. The firm restyled itself “Canada’s communications and entertainment company” in July with a commercial featuring actor John Krasinski lip syncing to “Shake It Off (Taylor’s Version).”

Rogers has received more than 1 million entries to Swift-related contests, chief brand and communications officer Terrie Tweddle said. It plans to give away more than C$560,000 ($399,110) worth of concert tickets to customers by the end of the tour and has donated hundreds of tickets to charity.

Boosting the Blue Jays

Rogers also owns the venue for the Toronto stops, the Rogers Centre, as well as the Toronto Blue Jays baseball team, which made the playoffs three times in the past five years but disappointed in 2024. The team ended the season with a losing record and attendance at the recently renovated stadium slipped.

So Rogers is leveraging the Swift concerts to boost the baseball club’s revenue in the years to come. For example, the team reached out to all 2024 season ticket holders in the 200 level — which offers mid-stadium views in comfortable seats — with a proposal: Renew for the next two years for the chance to purchase Eras Tour tickets.

The total cost for one fan who previously declined to renew his season tickets would be about C$16,000 for a pair of seats for two years of baseball, plus C$1,000 to C$2,400 for two box-seat Swift tickets, according to an email sent by the Blue Jays that was seen by Bloomberg News.

Rogers directed questions about the Blue Jays to the team, which declined to comment.

Royal Bank of Canada, an official sponsor of the Eras Tour in Canada, has used its role as ticket access partner to generate interest in its travel rewards program. The lender offered members of Avion Rewards the chance to register in advance for tickets when they first went on sale in August 2023, a move that came after it expanded access to the program to all Canadians, regardless of where they bank. RBC declined to be interviewed for this story.

Traffic Worries

For the city of Toronto, the concert is an opportunity to test its infrastructure and planning apparatus before the FIFA World Cup soccer tournament in 2026.

Canada’s most populous city, already infamous for its traffic snarls and public transit disruptions, will close several roads around the Rogers Centre during the concerts, one of which has been temporarily renamed “Taylor Swift Way.” (Rogers paid for the street signs.) And there will be a “noticeable increase in police presence” in and outside of the Rogers Centre, the Toronto Police Service said.

The Eras Tour will show the city which traffic control and public safety measures to deploy when it hosts six World Cup matches, said Pat Tobin, general manager of economic development and culture at the city.

“We know there’s lots of good reasons to invest to put on a great show and that’s what the city is doing, but we know that is going to come at a cost that exceeds the revenue we’re going to make” during the Swift shows, he said in an interview.

A “Taylgate ‘24” pre-concert event, a Swift-themed scavenger hunt and poetry readings will add to the total costs, for which the city did not provide an estimate.

Swift Stats

• The Toronto leg of the tour is expected to deliver C$282 million in economic impact and generate C$152 million in direct spending, according to estimates from tourism association Destination Toronto
• 500,000 visitors are expected over a two-week span, Toronto Police said
• Downtown hotel bookings for November increased by 83% over the same month last year, said Sara Anghel, chief executive officer of the Greater Toronto Hotel Association