Updated August 20, 2024 at 18:31 PM ET
Some Taylor Swift fans are out thousands of dollars from her canceled Vienna concerts — yet there isn't much bad blood.
Swift abruptly canceled three concerts earlier this month over threats of a terrorist attack. The last-minute cancellations affected more than 150,000 fans — many of whom had flown thousands of miles, and spent thousands of dollars, to travel from the United States and other countries.
It started out as a way for many Swifties to snag a bargain. Tickets to the blockbuster Eras tour were generally a lot cheaper in Europe than in the United States, where they’re still reselling for thousands of dollars each. So some fans — including this reporter — decided to buy the cheaper tickets and splurge on traveling to Europe for a concert.
It’s not just tickets; there's hotels, flights & more
That made a lot of financial sense ... up until the Vienna concerts evaporated. The concert organizers have said they will refund the tickets. But for many travelers, who had already landed in Vienna by the time the concerts were canceled, those refunds won’t make up for all the associated travel costs, including international flights and peak-tourist-season hotels.
Given the enormous popularity of the Eras tour, and the superstar appeal of Swift, some fans went all-out to see her abroad. Dan and Lynda Dickerson, retired first responders from Rochester, N.Y., arrived in Vienna hours before the concerts were canceled. For Dan, she's “the Elvis of this generation," so they splurged on the experience, buying first-class airfare and spending about $10,000 just on travel costs.
“It’s not the ticket costs, it’s everything above that,” he told me. “But I understand. I’d rather have it get canceled than walk into something and have someone get hurt.”
We spoke in downtown Vienna, at one of the spontaneous Taylor Swift singalongs that broke out throughout the city that weekend. The Dickersons said they were still glad to be there, to celebrate and commiserate with other Swifties.
“We’re missing the concert, but this is also something we wouldn’t be able to reproduce,” Lynda told me.
'We just want the experience'
Swift hasn’t said anything publicly about Vienna, disappointing fans who want some acknowledgment of what they missed out on. But even their dismay is a testament to the fierce loyalty that has become part of Swift’s economic superpower.
Business experts don’t expect Swift to experience any long-term backlash from canceling the concerts. Terrorist threats are a pretty iron-clad reason: “This is something where she was clearly not at fault in any way,” says Brittany Hodak, author of Creating Superfans: How to Turn Your Customers into Lifelong Advocates.
And most Swifties I spoke with in Vienna were more upset about the opportunity cost than their financial losses.
“The only thing that we would want is an opportunity to get tickets somewhere else,” said Mary Ashmead, a Dallas-based surgeon who had cashed in frequent flier points and spent an additional $6,000 — not including the concert-ticket costs — to take her family of four to Vienna.
On the morning of the second scheduled Swift concert, Vienna was full of disappointed Swifties. Many of them filled the seats of a morning horse show at the Spanish Riding School, where Ashmead watched her 10-year-old daughter trade friendship bracelets with a couple of women from Oregon.
“We just want the experience,” she told me. “We just want to go and be with all the Swifties and sing our hearts out.”
Swift has nurtured her fans, who are an economic powerhouse
Swift’s extraordinary business impact continues to break records: The Eras tour generated an estimated $5 billion in consumer spending in North America alone last year. Swift herself earns some $14 million from a single concert, Variety reported earlier this summer. (She herself isn't likely to feel much financial pain from the canceled concerts: Her insurers will take that hit, according to Reuters.)
Individual cities also reap enormous benefits when Swift comes to sing: For example, London’s government estimates that its economy is growing by almost $400 million from her eight concerts there.
Vienna also managed to get a tourism boost this month, in part because Swift canceled her concerts after many fans had already arrived in the city. Hotels still saw huge year-over-year growth in their average daily room rates and revenue per room, according to data provider CoStar.
“The hotels did okay — and the restaurants probably did better the nights of the concerts, because people needed something else to do,” says Jan Freitag, CoStar’s national director of hospitality analytics.
Which means that the financial burden of the canceled concerts falls largely on Swift’s fans. They’re economic powerhouses in their own right, and ones that Swift has put a lot of effort into nurturing.
“We're beyond fandom at this point, right? These are people who subscribe to an identity,” says Dr. Marcus Collins, a marketing professor at the University of Michigan who’s had some personal experience maintaining the relationship between a superstar musician and her devoted followers: He used to run digital strategy for Beyoncé.
Collins also doesn’t expect to see any long-lasting consequences to Swift’s reputation — or to her business — from how she’s handled the canceled Vienna concerts.
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