Courtney Goodman admits she only became a Taylor Swift fan — or “Swiftie” — last summer when her 10-year-old daughter, Amelia, would sing along to the record-breaking singer-songwriter’s music every chance she could.
On Mother’s Day weekend, the 44-year-old from Roscoe Village jetted off with Amelia for a jam-packed 48 hours in Paris, culminating in the duo seeing Swift in concert for the first time.
The price tag: a total of $5,000, including the flights, hotel and concert tickets.
When she bought the tickets, her family said, “This is pretty crazy, Courtney,” she said.
“I said, ‘Yeah, it’s crazy, but why not?’ Let’s just do it.”
Perhaps even crazier, Goodman and Amelia are not alone.
As Swift kicked off the 51-night European leg of her international stadium tour in May, fans in the United States are living a Swiftie’s dream, flying halfway across the world for cheaper tickets to see the pop star.
Partly due to stricter rules on reselling and limits for markups above face value, tickets in Europe tend to be thousands of dollars cheaper than her sold-out North American shows. That means the total cost of flights, hotels and food, a trip to Europe could cost less than one ticket to a Swift concert in the United States.
Take a trip to an Amsterdam concert, for example.
According to Expedia, a ticket to one of Swift’s three shows in July costs as low as $500, and a two-night air and hotel package in the city runs around $1,000.
In comparison, as of Friday, the cheapest nosebleed seats to one of Swift’s concerts in Indianapolis this November are going for more than $2,000 on resale sites.
Goodman’s Paris concert tickets were $1,000 each, half the going rate for tickets to remaining U.S. shows, which resume in October.
The average ticket price for one of Swift’s U.S. shows last year was $1,088, coming in second only to Adele, who had an average ticket price of $1,243, according to CNBC.
However, there could be more pressure on the upcoming U.S. dates since last week, when Swift announced “The Eras Tour” would officially end in December. There are only 15 remaining shows in North America, six in the United States and nine in Canada.
In the U.S., Ticketmaster is under increased scrutiny over its handling of ticket distribution and clashes with artists and fans.
Most recently, the Justice Department sued the company and its owner, Live Nation, accusing them of holding an illegal monopoly over live events and unfairly pricing out fans.
But in many European countries, fans have benefited from tighter restrictions on scalpers and lower ticket demand, justifying fans such as Courtney and Amelia flying across the pond to see Swift perform.
Last year, Swift graced Chicago with three nights at Soldier Field, drawing thousands of Swifties to the Windy City. Months prior to the shows, fans spent hours affixed to their laptops to buy tickets in the stadium; some said they waited as long as eight hours as ticket sites crashed due to high demand.
A surge in visitors — and with it, economic revenue — followed Swift to Chicago, generating a record weekend for the city’s hotels. As many as 60,000 Swifties in town per night helped the city reach its hotel occupancy record, with nearly 97% of rooms occupied, according to data released last year by Choose Chicago, the city’s tourism organization.
Last summer, Melissa Sanchez, a legal assistant from Cicero, splurged on Eras tour tickets in Chicago, paying $5,500 for a seat in the sixth row alongside her cousin.
“We wanted to go, and we didn’t know if she was going to have more dates,” said Sanchez, 47.
When Swift’s European concert dates went on sale, Sanchez bought tickets for three shows: Stockholm, London and Dublin. All three of her European tickets combined cost less than her $5,500 ticket in Chicago, she said.
Three times as many Americans are traveling internationally for live concerts this summer compared to last year, according to a summer tour report by international online ticket marketplace StubHub.
Swift appears to be fueling the trend, with Stubhub calling Swift the most in-demand artist for the summer after coming off a record year as their highest-searched artist in 2023.
During her three-hour shows, Swift plays songs from all but one of her 11 studio albums, each divided into its own act — or “era” — complete with outfit changes and complex stage visuals.
The singer also chooses surprise songs at each show from her nearly two-decade career, with fans on social media guessing which ones she’ll play and creating online games to track almost every element of the show.
The slight variety in shows means hard-core fans try to go to multiple shows. Once Sanchez was in Stockholm for the three-night leg in May, she secured a last-minute ticket for a second night for only around $450.
Prescilla Malayter, 40, could not buy tickets for the Chicago concerts last year and the upcoming Indianapolis shows after she didn’t get a presale code, which gives fans first access to face-value tickets and VIP packages. Initially, her travel budget allowed for to attend a show in Canada, but after comparing high Canadian prices to cheaper ones in Europe, she set her sights on Stockholm.
Malayter, who lives in Munster, Indiana, had accumulated enough flight credit to cover the airfare for the trip. Sweden seemed to be the perfect destination to meet her two high school friends, who live in the Philippines and, like her, are huge Swifties.
Malayter spent $350 on her concert ticket and to her surprise, had a hard time selling an extra ticket after someone backed out of the trip, which, in her view demonstrated the dramatic difference in ticket demand, she said.
Even with the loss on the extra ticket, she said she spent hundreds of dollars less than if she’d waited for the Indianapolis show, a three-hour drive from her house.
“We Americans have such a warped sense of what’s affordable and anything under $1,000 can be justified” for a ticket in the United States, Malayter said.
With her trip costing a little over $1,000 total, not only did she save a lot of money, but Malayter said the cheaper tickets to the concert justified traveling to Europe for three days to see her friends, she said.
A new album released earlier this year also further ignited U.S.-based fans’ excitement for this summer’s international shows.
In April, hundreds flocked to downtown Chicago to scan a QR code mural plastered on a wall in River North that gave clues about Swift’s 11th studio album, “The Tortured Poets Department,” which was released later that month. In Paris, Goodman said she and her daughter were among the first audiences to hear several of Swift’s new songs live.
Swifties have also found a surprising community with other U.S. fans traveling to European shows.
Sanchez, who became a Swiftie in 2012 after the release of “Red” is part of a Facebook group that swapped tips and tickets as they planned to travel to Swift’s shows in Sweden. Her flight home to Chicago included almost 50 people who had traveled to “The Eras Tour,” she said.
After returning from the show in Paris, Courtney Goodman said she told her family about her “epic” experience at the concert. Now, everyone wants in.
“We’re going to try,” she said of attending another show in one of two cities in Germany later this summer. “I don’t know if it’s going to happen, but we’re going to try.”
