You Won't Believe How Much Money Taylor Swift Has To Pay On Tour Insurance

Unless you have been living under a rock for the past decade, you probably have heard that Taylor Swift is one of the biggest pop artists in the world. Her music not only tops the charts, but she is able to sell out arenas with her tours, movie theaters with her concert documentary, and last year was crowned the richest female musician, per Forbes. Swift is a mega-star worth billions and even has her own private suite at the Chief's stadium, but she does have one thing in common with the rest of us: she, too, has to pay for insurance.

Sure, Swift has homes, cars, and other assets that need protection, but she also has coverage when it comes to going on tour. Her Eras Tour, in which Swift played a total of 149 dates across five global continents, ended late in 2024, earning her a total of $2,077,618,725 in ticket sales, according to the New York Times. While crossing the $2 billion mark is impressive, it does come with numerous costs and expenses, including tour insurance which ended up costing her quite a bit of money in the end.

If you are a Taylor Swift fan or happen to be friends or family with a self-proclaimed "Swifty" then you know how detailed her base is about knowing every facet of her life, art, and business. When it came to insurance costs for the Eras Tour, one fan, @solongliz, took to X to do the math, discovering that $15,398,920 was the total declared value for production gear shipped from Europe back to the United States.

All of Swift's gear — including stage, wardrobe, lighting, to name just a few — weighed approximately 1,697,440 pounds and had to fit in 19,200 square feet of shipping containers. Though exact insurance costs remain unknown, the Swifty posted that based on the industry standard for a 964 ft cargo vessel which the production used to ship the Eras Tour, insurance costs came to approximately $76.5K, while freight was even more expensive at roughly $80K. So while there are plenty of things insurance companies do not want to cover any more, Taylor Swift on tour is clearly not one of them.

Even though Taylor Swift has earned numerous awards for her music and sold more than 200 million records world wide, it was the Eras Tour that made her a billionaire. According to Celebrity Net Worth, Swift's net worth was estimated to be around $600 million prior to starting her tour in 2023. By May 2024, almost at the midpoint of the European portion of her tour, she crossed over into billionaire status and is now worth $1.5 billion.

This speaks to the fact that many musical artists do not make a lot of money on music platforms like Spotify or Apple Music. Instead, their real earnings come from selling tickets to see them perform live, along with the merchandise that fans can buy while seeing artists like Swift on tour. Just like any company, Taylor Swift is a brand and has employees who work for her that she pays to make ventures like the Eras Tour a success. Not one to hold back in terms of generosity, People reported that Swift gave performers and crews on Eras a total of $197 million in bonuses in addition to their regular salaries, meaning staff like Swift's truck drivers received nearly $100,000 as a bonus for working on her tour, proving the musician believes in karma, at least in monetary terms.