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.

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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.

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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.

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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)

Houston — Nine of the ten wrongful death claims brought following a deadly crowd surge at the 2021 Astroworld music festival have been resolved, including one that was scheduled to go to trial this week, an attorney said Wednesday.

The family of Madison Dubiski, a 23-year-old Houston resident who was one of ten people killed during a crowd crush at rapper Travis Scott’s concert on November 5, 2021, had scheduled the jury selection to start on Tuesday.

However, Neal Manne, an attorney representing Live Nation, the festival’s promoter and one of those being sued alongside Scott, stated at a court hearing Wednesday that just one wrongful death claim remained active, while the other nine had been resolved, including the one brought by Dubiski’s family.

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9 Of 10 Wrongful Death Suits Over Astroworld Concert Crowd Surge Have Been Settled, Lawyer Says

During the court session, Noah Wexler, an attorney for Dubiski’s family, acknowledged that their case “is resolved in its entirety.”

The terms of the settlements were kept hidden, and attorneys declined to speak during the court session due to a gag order.

The family of 9-year-old Ezra Blount, the youngest child murdered at the concert, has filed the only wrongful death case that is still outstanding. Attorneys in the action were scheduled to meet next week to consider when Blount’s family’s lawsuit could go to trial.

“This case is ready for trial,” Scott West, an attorney for Blount’s family, stated in court.However, Manne stated that he and the lawyers representing the other defendants being sued were unprepared.

State District Judge Kristen Hawkins said she wanted to consider the Blount case at next week’s session, as well as prospective trials linked to the injury cases filed following the fatal concert.

Hawkins stated that if the Blount family’s lawsuit is unresolved, she intends to schedule it as the next trial rather than an injury case.

More than 4,000 litigants filed hundreds of lawsuits following the concert. Manne stated that over 2,400 injury cases remain pending.

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9 Of 10 Wrongful Death Suits Over Astroworld Concert Crowd Surge Have Been Settled, Lawyer Says

The notification that nearly all of the wrongful death lawsuits had been settled came after Dubiski’s trial was postponed last week. Apple Inc., which live-streamed Scott’s concert and was one of more than 20 defendants sued by Dubiski’s family, filed an appeal after a court denied its plea to be excluded from the case. The appeals court granted Apple a stay in the case.

In the days following the trial stay, Dubiski’s family’s attorneys reached an agreement with all of the defendants in the case, including Apple, Scott, and Live Nation, the world’s largest live entertainment organization.

At least four wrongful death claims had already been resolved and announced in court documents. However, Wednesday marked the first time lawyers in the dispute provided an update, stating that nine of the ten wrongful death lawsuits had been resolved.

In court filings, the attorneys for Dubiski’s family and the numerous other plaintiffs have argued that inadequate planning and a disregard for the venue’s capacity and safety were to blame for the concert’s fatalities and hundreds of injuries.

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9 Of 10 Wrongful Death Suits Over Astroworld Concert Crowd Surge Have Been Settled, Lawyer Says

The victims, aged 9 to 27, died from compression asphyxia, which an expert compared to being crushed by a car.

Scott, Live Nation, and the others who have been sued have refuted these allegations, stating that safety is their priority. They claimed what happened could not have been predicted.

Following a police inquiry, a grand jury declined to charge Scott and five others with the festival last year.

SOURCE – (AP)

Jim Parsons and Mayim Bialik will reprise their roles as Dr. Sheldon Cooper and Dr.Amy Farrah Fowler in the Young Sheldon series finale, airing Thursday, May 16 (CBS, 8/7c) — which will be exactly five years since The Big Bang Theory signed off in 2019.

Parsons, an executive producer on Young Sheldon, has narrated all seven seasons, while Bialik has reprised Amy and co-narrated two episodes. But this is the first time that anyone from Big Bang will appear in person on-screen on the wildly successful spinoff.

So, what might these photos tell us? For one, we pick up with Sheldon and Amy years after the events of Big Bang — but that doesn’t come as much of a surprise: Young Sheldon, which stars Iain Armitage as the future theoretical physicist, is told from the perspective of a more mature Sheldon, who is older than the version that Parsons last played in 2019.

Through his narration, we’ve learned that Sheldon and Amy go on to have multiple children — including a son named after Sheldon’s best friend, Leonard Hofstadter.

In Big Bang’s last episode, Sheldon and Amy won the Nobel Prize in physics for discovering super asymmetry. Sheldon’s prize is framed and hung up on his office wall, while a photo snapped shortly after Sheldon and Amy accepted their Nobel prize sits on the shelf below, along with a family photo featuring Young Sheldon’s George Sr., Mary, Georgie, Missy and Meemaw.

In another photo, Amy is holding a Flash coffee mug. Behind her, we spot the atomic model that once stood in Apt. 4A — the same atomic model that Leonard and Sheldon spent nearly 140 hours rebuilding before they left for Stockholm. There’s also a Rubik’s Cube-inspired coaster on Sheldon’s desk, not unlike the tissue box that sat on the end table in Leonard and Sheldon’s place.

A third photo shows a smiling Sheldon looking closer at his laptop screen. Is it possible he’s writing his life’s story, which we’ve been told over seven seasons of Young Sheldon? That’s our Big Bang theory!

Young Sheldon will be followed by a second Big Bang offshoot, Georgie & Mandy’s First Marriage, centered on Sheldon’s older brother Georgie (played by Montana Jordan) and his new wife Mandy (Emily Osment), which is slated to air on CBS, Thursdays at 8/7c, this fall.

Series co-creator Chuck Lorre is also working on a third Big Bang Theory series — a top-secret project “derived from” the CBS mega-hit that is earmarked for streaming service Max.

Source: Yahoo News