Taylor Swift’s Eras tour helps fuel UK consumer spending on live music to record £6.7bn high

UK consumer spending on live music events reached a record-breaking total of £6.68bn in 2024, up 9.5% on the previous year, fuelled in part by Taylor Swift’s blockbuster Eras tour.

The report from Live (Live music Industry Venues and Entertainment), the recently formed body advocating for the British music industry’s interests before government, signals a full-bodied return from the effects of Covid-19. The figures are 28.2% higher than in 2022, when live music more or less resumed after the pandemic, and more than £2bn more than in 2019, the last fully functioning year for live music prior to the shutdown.

But with grassroots venues across the UK still closing down at an increasing rate – one in four late-night venues, including clubs, have closed since 2020, with closures accelerating this year – and emerging artists struggling to make a living, the report noted that stadiums and arenas were the major beneficiaries of the increase, thanks to high-profile gigs by the likes of Swift, Dua Lipa and Charli xcx.

Live analysed 55,000 gigs, concerts, festivals and events, and found that mainstream pop gigs accounted for 32.1% of consumer spend across the top 2,000 concerts of the year, a year-on-year increase of 4.7 percentage points. It flagged that the grassroots crisis extends beyond venues and artists to include promoters and festivals.

Live music expenditure also remained heavily concentrated in the capital, with London accounting for 28.9% of all 2024 outlay, although Manchester experienced a bump thanks to the opening of the new Co-op Live arena. The UK’s festivals and concerts attracted more than 23.5 million music tourists in 2024.

Concerts took a 75.3% share of live music spending, up almost two percentage points since 2023. The smaller share for festivals reflects the difficulties faced by that sector amid high-cost inflation – and the challenge to compete with major single-day concerts by the likes of Swift and Bruce Springsteen that force consumers to make decisions over how to prioritise their budget for live music. Live backed the widespread industry recommendation that the government should introduce tax relief to enable festivals to survive.

“There is a clear role for government, given that its stewardship of the economy will determine our trading environment and audience confidence,” said Live chief executive Jon Collins.

The live music sector employed more than 234,000 people in the UK in 2024, a 2.2% year-on-year increase – albeit one with low job security: 78.8% of these workers are casual or freelance. Short-notice cancellation of events put these fragile livelihoods at risk: 48% of respondents reported having jobs cancelled at less than a week’s notice.

Live was established in 2024 to support the work of the Music Venue Trust and to help develop a funding programme in which arena and stadium shows with a capacity of more than 5,000 could voluntarily add a £1 levy to ticket prices, creating a fund to support grassroots music venues. In July, the Royal Albert Hall in London became the first arena to commit to the programme.

“With trustees now appointed and commitments already secured from a number of high-profile artists performing stadium and arena shows throughout 2025 and 2026 the Live Trust is confident it can soon begin offering financial support where it is needed,” the report said.

It defines its mission to “empower” the UK music industry as one of kickstarting economic growth, breaking down barriers to opportunity, making the industry safer – targeting worker precarity, harassment and terrorist attempts on live music events – and focusing on environmental sustainability.