Celebrity
Fans Are Following Taylor Swift To Europe After Finding Eras Tour Tickets Less Costly There
LONDON — Thousands of die-hard Taylor Swift fans who missed her U.S. concert tour last year or didn’t want to pay high prices to see her again discovered an unusual solution: fly to Europe.
The pop artist is ready to begin the 18-city European leg of her record-breaking Eras Tour in Paris on Thursday, and planeloads of Swifties will follow Miss Americana across the water in the coming weeks. The arena where Swift performs reported that Americans purchased 20% of the tickets for her four sold-out gigs. The next leg of the tour, Stockholm, is expected to draw approximately 10,000 concertgoers from the United States.
A concert may seem like a weird reason to visit a distant nation, especially because fans can watch the Eras Tour documentary from home on Disney+. However, Expedia, an online travel website, claims that Swift’s fans’ continent-hopping is part of a bigger trend known as “tour tourism,” after noticing a tendency during Beyoncé’s Renaissance world tour.
Some North American fans who intend to fly overseas for Swift’s Eras Tour said they justified the cost by noting that tighter limitations on ticket costs and resales in Europe made Swift perform abroad no more expensive—aand possibly cheaper — than seeing her closer to home.
AP – VOR News Image
Fans Are Following Taylor Swift To Europe After Finding Eras Tour Tickets Less Costly There
“They said, ‘Wait a minute, I can either spend $1,500 to go see my favorite artist in Miami, or I can take that $1,500 and buy a concert ticket, a round-trip plane ticket, and three nights in a hotel room,” Melanie Fish, an Expedia representative and travel specialist, said.
Jennifer Warren, 43, of St. Catharines, a community in Ontario’s Niagara region, has had this experience. She and her 11-year-old son adore Swift but needed help finding reasonably priced tickets in the United States. Undeterred, Warren and her husband decided to arrange a European holiday based on where she could obtain tickets. The location turned out to be Hamburg, Germany.
“You get out, you get to see the world, and you get to see your favorite artist or performer all at once, so there are a lot of benefits,” said Warren, director of research and innovation at a mutual insurance firm.
The three VIP tickets she got near the stage eras tour— “I would call it brute-force dumb luck” — were 600 euros ($646) each. Swift then announced six November tour dates in Toronto, within driving distance of Warren’s house. “Absolute nose-bleed seats” are already selling for 3,000 Canadian dollars ($2,194) on secondary resale sites such as Viagogo, Warren added.
AP – VOR News Image
Fans Are Following Taylor Swift To Europe After Finding Eras Tour Tickets Less Costly There
Hardcore fans following their favorite musician or band on tour is not a recent phenomenon. “Groupie” first appeared in the late 1960s as a somewhat pejorative term for devoted rock band fans. Deadheads hit the road in the 1970s to follow the Grateful Dead from city to city.
More recently, according to Fish, music festivals such as Coachella in California and Glastonbury in England, as well as musical residencies in Las Vegas by Elton John, Lady Gaga, and Adele, have drawn visitors to places they might not have visited otherwise.
Since the coronavirus outbreak, travel and entertainment specialists have reported a pent-up consumer demand for “experiences” rather than tangible items. Some believe that music fans’ readiness to widen their fandom horizons is part of a larger societal adjustment.
“It does seem like it’s more than a structural shift, maybe a personality transformation we all went through,” said Natalia Lechmanova, the Mastercard Economics Institute’s top Europe economist.
As Swift travels around Europe, Lechmanova anticipates restaurants and hotels to experience the same increase that Mastercard saw within a 2.5-mile (4-kilometer) radius of performance venues in the cities she visited in 2023. According to the economist, the strong strength of the US dollar against the euro may also boost retail spending on apparel, collectibles, beauty items, and materials for the friendship bracelets fans exchange during the Eras Tour.
Former college roommates Lizzy Hale, 34, of Los Angeles, and Mitch Goulding, 33, of Austin, Texas, already had tickets to see the Eras Tour in L.A. last summer when they decided to try to obtain them for Paris, London, and Edinburgh, Scotland. They saw a concert trip to Europe as a replacement for a trip they planned to celebrate Goulding’s birthday in May 2020 but had to cancel due to the pandemic.
Goulding got VIP seats to one of Swift’s three Stockholm gigs. He, Hale, and two other pals planned a ten-day tour that included stops in Amsterdam and Copenhagen.
“As someone who enjoys both traveling and music, finding a way to combine the two is really special,” said Hale, expecting her first child.
The local economic impact of what the zeitgeist has dubbed “Swiftonomics” and the “Swift lift” can be significant. It’s no surprise that Singapore’s government signed an exclusive deal with Swift to make the city-state her lone tour stop in Southeast Asia earlier this year, sparking regional envy.
European governments have yet to acknowledge that their countries were not among the 12 chosen for the Eras Tour’s Europe leg, while some fans are surprised that Gelsenkirchen, a city with a population of around 264,000, is one of three German places that made the list
Airbnb announced Tuesday that searches on its site for the U.K. cities where Swift will perform in June and August — Edinburgh, Liverpool, Cardiff, and London — jumped by an average of 337% since tickets went on sale last summer.
Not to be outdone in identifying trends, the property rentals firm identified the demand as an example of “passion tourism,” or travel “driven by concerts, sports, and other cultural events.”
According to Stockholm Chamber of Commerce Chief Economist Carl Bergqvist, 120,000 visitors from 130 countries, including 10,000 from the United States, are scheduled to visit Sweden’s capital this month. Stockholm is the only Scandinavian destination on Swift’s tour, and airlines have increased flights from nearby Denmark, Finland, and Norway to bring fans to the May 17-19 gigs, he said.
Even though rates for the tour dates have soared, the city’s 40,000 hotel rooms are all booked, according to Bergqvist. He said that concertgoers are likely to spend roughly 500 million Swedish kroner, or more than $46 million, on the local economy during their stay, excluding the cost of Swift tickets and travel to Sweden.
“So this is going to be huge for the tourism sector in Sweden and Stockholm in particular,” said Bergqvist.
Nightclubs, restaurants, and bars are taking advantage of the opportunity to pander to fans by hosting Taylor Swift-themed activities such as karaoke, quizzes, and after-concert dance parties.
Caroline Matlock, 29, of Houston, saw Swift more than a year ago on the Eras Tour in Texas. She’s now making additional friendship bracelets and trying to learn a few Swedish words in preparation for the three-and-a-half-hour presentation in Stockholm. Swift’s friend proposed seeing her in Europe, and Matlock initially needed convincing.
“I said, ‘I only want to travel if it’s a nation I’ve never been to. “I’ve seen Taylor Swift,” she explained.
Their itinerary includes visits to Scandinavian destinations such as Oslo and Gothenburg. The event is the trip’s final night, and Matlock looks forward to meeting Swifties from other countries. “Americans tend to have a very obsessive culture, especially Taylor Swift-related, so I’m curious if the crowd will be more toned-down.”
It remains to be seen whether the music tourism trend will last as long and as strong as Swift’s and Beyoncé’s and whether it will spread to Billie Eilish, Usher, and other artists who have world tours planned for next year. Expedia’s Fish believes that other well-known singers performing in Europe this summer will demonstrate that planning a foreign trip around a concert is becoming popular.
AP – VOR News Image
Fans Are Following Taylor Swift To Europe After Finding Eras Tour Tickets Less Costly There
Kat Morga, a travel consultant in Nashville, is still determining. Morga watched Swift perform in Nashville last year and assisted two clients with school-aged children in booking European family holidays this summer, which included seeing Swift in concert. However, she believes that the complexity of navigating ticket purchases through language hurdles, currency conversions, international banking restrictions, and the danger of cancellations will limit the popularity of regular gig vacations.
“I think this is an anomaly,” Morga stated. “People aren’t going to spend $20,000 on a lavish family trip just because Taylor Swift is there. She’s a unique individual. “She’s unique.”
Glenn Fogel, CEO of Booking Holdings, owns Booking.com, Priceline.com, agoda.com, Kayak, and OpenTable, is even less excited about concert tours as a tourist promoter. The Swift Effect creates a “little blip” when the superstar visits smaller destinations, but for the global travel sector, “one star touring around does not make a difference,” he explained.
“It may only shift it somewhat. A person planned a week-long vacation in the Caribbean. Instead, that individual says, ‘Let’s go to the Taylor Swift thing,'” Fogel explained. “It does not increase it. “It just moves it from here to there.”
SOURCE – (AP)
Kate Middleton updated her first project since her cancer diagnosis. The Princess of Wales, 42, announced her treatment in an emotional speech in March. After London abdominal surgery, the Express says she has taken time off public duty.
Kate stated in her address that pre-operative testing after surgery revealed her non-cancerous condition. For Mental Health Week, the Prince and Princess of Wales posted a short film trailer on their social media accounts.
The film emphasizes Britain’s farmers’ mental health issues and is her first project update since diagnosis.
Kate Middleton tweeted: “We’ve teamed up with Sam Stables from We Are Farming Minds and Farmer Will for a special film for #MentalHealthAwarenessWeek.
A conversation for #MentalHealthAwarenessWeek showing just how important the Duchy of Cornwall’s Mental Health Strategy is. Featuring Duchy tenant Sam Stables and Farmer Will Young.
TW: Suicide | https://t.co/YTwfDghRWq pic.twitter.com/JAOPXzG8dP
— The Prince and Princess of Wales (@KensingtonRoyal) May 17, 2024
“Spending a day together on Sam’s farm in Hereford they chatted about mental health in the farming community, finding support and the Duchy of Cornwall’s Mental Health Strategy.”
Although Kate doesn’t appear in the YouTube video, she and Prince William produced it. Before Kate’s illness, GB News reported that the project was underway. One fan thanked Kate and William for raising mental health awareness in the video comments.
Says: “Can’t even begin to say how much I love the awareness HRH The Prince and Princess of Wales brings to the issues surrounding mental health.”
Another said: “I love that you’re focusing on rural mental health! Well done.”
Prince William said Kate “doing well” – Getty Images
Prince William ” Kate Middleton is doing well”
When asked about his wife Kate Middleton during a royal engagement on Friday, Prince William replied she is “doing well.”
The Prince of Wales went to St. Mary’s Community Hospital on the Isles of Scilly in southwest England. Tracy Smith, an administrator at the hospital, offered the king a tour of the facilities. “May I ask how Princess Kate is doing?” she responded. To which William replied that Kate is “doing well.” When questioned about his children (George, Charlotte, and Louis), William remarked, “The children are very jealous that I am here…” Perhaps we can come later in the year.”
The rare news comes after the Princess of Wales, Kate Middleton revealed in a video message that she had been diagnosed with cancer following a scheduled abdominal operation. Kate stated in a video posted by Kensington Palace on March 22 that the news was a “huge shock.” She started “preventative chemotherapy” in late February, according to a Kensington Palace official.
“I am well and getting stronger every day,” Kate stated in the video message.
During the royal visit on Friday, hospital matron Lynda McHale presented Prince William with a card for his wife and father, King Charles III, who revealed his own diagnosis of an unidentified type of cancer in February and officially resumed public duties in late April.
GENEVA – On Monday, the Paralympic Games begin their 100-day journey to the opening ceremony in Paris in August, with Paul McCartney assisting.
The former Beatles’ “We All Stand Together” — the theme song from an award-winning animated short he created and produced 40 years ago — will be featured in a promotional film for the International Paralympic Committee
“Sir Paul really understands what we stand for as a movement, and he was extremely generous to us,” IPC president Andrew Parsons told The Associated Press. “He was not difficult to convince, it was something that came very naturally.”
AP – VOR News Image
Paul McCartney Song Starts Paralympics On 100-Day Countdown To Opening Ceremony In Paris
On August 28, 100 days from Monday, the Summer Paralympics opening ceremony will occur along a stretch of the Champs-Élysées and Place de la Concorde. Over the next 11 days, the 4,400 athletes will compete in places such as the Eiffel Tower and Versailles Palace in front of up to 2.7 million spectators.
“We probably have the most famous avenue in the world,” Parsons stated in a recent interview. “That is very exciting. The city is really supporting Paralympic athletes and athletes with impairments.”
“With our games, we talk a lot about inclusion, and this is a fantastic representation of that. That extremely inviting attitude is a great way to start our games.
A watershed moment for the Paralympic movement occurred in London in 2012 when the host country rose to the occasion with record ticket sales and a completely new approach to broadcasting by Britain’s Channel 4.
“Still the benchmark games of our movement,” added Parsons, whose native country of Brazil staged the 2016 edition in Rio de Janeiro.
AP – VOR new Image
Paul McCartney Song Starts Paralympics On 100-Day Countdown To Opening Ceremony In Paris
Channel 4 produced the “We’re the Superhumans” musical film to promote the Rio Paralympics. The film was a landmark in terms of its high production values and inspirational imagery.
“Many broadcasters come to us in their preparations in different parts of the world and they normally ask, ‘What is Channel 4 doing?'” Parsons stated. In that vein, the IPC trailer, inspired by McCartney’s “Rupert and the Frog Song” film, follows suit.
The Paris Paralympics will record 164 broadcasters worldwide, with 549 events across 22 sports.
Beyond the field of play, the Paralympics strive to change society, particularly in the host nation—and have previously achieved this.
In France and Paris, Parsons admitted that “there is still a lot of work to be done when it comes to people’s mindsets and perceptions of people with disabilities.”
“It has progressed since they received the games in 2017, but there is still a long way to go. “And it does not end with the closing ceremony.”
Two weeks after the Paralympics end on September 8, the United Nations conducts a global gathering that Parsons hopes will spark change.
AP – VOR News Image
Paul McCartney Song Starts Paralympics On 100-Day Countdown To Opening Ceremony In Paris
The UN will assess progress toward its 17 sustainable development objectives during the Summit of the Future, which will occur on September 22 and 23.
“We do believe our movement has, in terms of persons of disability, been a little bit left behind, if you compare to other human rights movements such as gender, sexual orientation, ethnicity,” Parsons stated. “They have become increasingly prominent in the major debates at the highest level.
“We believe that these (Paris) games will be able to really remind global leaders that there is 1.2 billion persons with disabilities out there that need to be included in those conversations.”
SOURCE – (AP)
According to the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office, Sean “Diddy” Combs will not face charges in connection with a 2016 video that appears to show him abusing then-girlfriend Cassie Ventura in a hotel.
“We find the images extremely disturbing and difficult to watch,” the office of Los Angeles District Attorney George Gascón posted on Instagram Friday (May 17). “If the conduct depicted occurred in 2016, unfortunately we would be unable to charge as the conduct would have occurred beyond the timeline where a crime of assault can be prosecuted.”
Combs appears to push Ventura to the ground near an elevator bank, kick her multiple times while she is on the ground, and pull her down a hallway in the footage, which CNN received on March 5, 2016.
According to the statement, law enforcement has not presented the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s office with “a case related to the attack depicted in the video against Mr. Combs, but we encourage anyone who has been a victim or witness to a crime to report it to law enforcement or reach out to our office for support from our Bureau of Victims Services.”
The video’s contents resemble an assault complaint Ventura made in a now-settled lawsuit against Diddy in November, in which she also claimed one incidence of rape and another of Combs forcing her to have sex with male sex workers while he masturbated.
“The gut-wrenching video has only confirmed Mr. Combs’ disturbing and predatory behavior,” said Ventura’s attorney, Douglas Wigdor, in a statement to Billboard. “Words cannot express the courage and fortitude that Ms. Ventura has shown in coming forward to bring this to light.”
Ventura and Combs had an on-and-off romance for 11 years until splitting in 2018. In the lawsuit, she claimed she met Combs in 2005, when she was 19 and he was 37. After signing with his Bad Boy Records company, Ventura alleged that Combs “lured” her into a sexual relationship in which he “asserted complete control” over her life.
Combs has faced four further sexual misconduct complaints after Ventura filed hers late last year. The entrepreneur resigned as chairman of his digital media business Revolt in November, and he reportedly sold his interest in the company in March. Also in March, federal officials raided Combs’ houses in Los Angeles and Miami “in connection” with a federal sex trafficking probe, CNN reported.
Combs has flatly denied all allegations of sexual assault leveled against him. “Let me be absolutely clear: I did not do any of the awful things being alleged,” he declared in a statement shared on social media on December 6. “I will fight for my name, my family and for the truth.”
Sean “Diddy” Combs
Sean “Diddy” Combs is a multi-talented mogul who has made his mark in music, fashion, and business. Born in Harlem, he began his career as a talent director at Uptown Records. Combs later created his own label, Bad Boy Records, which launched the careers of musicians such as The Notorious B.I.G. and Mary J. Blige.
His debut album, “No Way Out,” achieved multi-platinum success, cementing his reputation as a rapper and producer. Diddy expanded his business interests, launching the apparel line Sean John and investing in beverage businesses such as Ciroc and DeLeon. With an estimated net worth of $900 million, he is one of hip-hop’s wealthiest individuals.
Combs is a presence in Hollywood, appearing in films and television series while also influencing music and society. His commercial savvy, paired with his musical talents, have elevated him to the status of rap icon.
Source: Billboard
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