Start of Taylor Swift’s French tour: Arnaud Meersseman, CEO of AEG Presents France (the second-largest concert promoter in the world) and Taylor Swift’s French tour organizer, is already on his feet.
Count on her to make Europe dance as much as she draws tears: American mega-star Taylor Swift kicks off her record-breaking tour across the Old Continent on Thursday in Paris, before heading to Lyon, Madrid, London, and Munich. “The Eras Tour,” which began in March 2023 in the United States, became last year the first tour in history to sell over a billion dollars in tickets. A figure that is expected to more than double by its conclusion in Canada in December.
“After days of rehearsals, we’re in the starting blocks,” assures Arnaud Meersseman on France Inter, who is the CEO of AEG Presents France and Taylor Swift’s French tour organizer. This tour is synonymous with “astronomical figures,” he says. “She’s an extraordinary artist: we’ve sold almost 250,000 tickets between the four dates and the two Lyon dates,” with a team around the star of nearly 600 people, he says. Arnaud Meersseman does not want to disclose the scale of the stage unveiled on Thursday night or the cost of the concert.
“A slightly modified show” due to the release of the new album Taylor Swift hasn’t performed much in France. “She played at the Zenith in 2011 and at the Olympia in 2019. She hasn’t performed in France since she reached these heights, so we’re discovering the show,” assures the tour organizer, who claims to have received instructions from the American and South American tour teams. “We’re going to discover a slightly modified show because she has released a new album, so I think she’s going to integrate new songs,” says Arnaud Meersseman.
According to him, the setup for this tour started nearly two years ago. The tour organizer recounts having to deal with the Olympics in France. “There are no available Stade de France or La Défense Arena, so the tour was slightly adjusted. She postponed the start of her tour a bit to include Paris and to be able to perform at La Défense Arena,” he says.
“We could have filled twelve or fourteen La Défense Arenas” This meticulously planned show of 3 hours and 20 minutes, with several parts, costume changes, is a true performance. “An artist who performs for 3 hours and 30 minutes each night, four nights in a row without a break, I’ve never seen that in my entire career,” he says. “I think we could have filled twelve or fourteen La Défense Arenas easily with Taylor Swift and two or three stadiums in Lyon,” assures Arnaud Meersseman. “She reaches a level that combines music, media presence, politics, and then there’s this snowball effect: the more we talk about her, the bigger she gets, and the bigger she gets, the more we talk about her. I’ve never seen an artist reach these levels,” he says. This tour is very profitable, the tour organizer judges.
