No ‘Eras Tour’ in Phl a blessing in disguise?
Had the Philippines been included in The Eras Tour, no international promoter would have bothered to offer to bring to the country this year two foreign acts to be held this March though negotiated in 2023: the new Asian run of Miss Saigon and Ed Sheeran’s latest concert with mathematical symbols as titles
It looks like we should be glad Taylor Swift (and her promoter Anschutz Entertainment Group, popularly known simply as AEG) could not bother to do a concert here in the country anymore, unlike when she was younger in 2011 and 2014 and not the global phenomenon she has become these past few years.
If she and AEG would bother, it would have been announced very early last year yet so Pinoys and citizens of other nations could buy tickets fast to prove that we are a profitable market.
If we had been included in her The Eras Tour, maybe no live acts, foreign and local, would have been scheduled in the country this year.
Promoters and producers would sensibly suspect that potential viewers of shows scheduled in 2024 would start saving their money as early as they can in 2023 to afford a Swift concert in the Philippines the following year.
Seeing the prices of tickets in Singapore and Tokyo (the only other Asian country where Swift brought her The Eras Tour), if the Philippines was included, the lowest-priced ticket could be P20,000.
The Straits Times reported on Saturday (24 February) that negotiations to bring Swift to Singapore began in early 2023. A team flew to Los Angeles to meet leaders from the sports and entertainment world, just as Swift was about to start her massive tour in the United States. No international dates and venues were confirmed then.
A few months later, the Singapore team started working with AEG to bring Swift in for a six-night run of The Eras Tour in March 2024. Singapore is the only Southeast Asia stop on the global concert tour, and tickets for all six shows from 2 to 9 March have sold out by January 2024.
Keith Magnus, chairman of Kallang Alive Sport Management, the corporate entity managing the Sports Hub (which includes the Singapore National Stadium, venue of The Eras Tour) said KASM had initiated the idea to bring Swift's tour to Singapore and had led the discussions.
"Once the discussion had progressed and we saw the opportunity of holding an only-in-Singapore event, we then thought it made sense to take a whole-of-government approach and brought in other relevant agencies to really have Team Singapore bringing in Team Taylor," he told the newspaper.
