Will Taylor Swift’s Melbourne show really be her biggest concert attendance ever?
When the Eras tour moved through 17 states in the US last year, Taylor Swift toppled attendance records almost everywhere she went. She played in enormous sporting stadiums and arenas to anywhere between about 50,000 to 70,000 people (her biggest show on the Eras tour so far was in Pittsburgh, with 73,117 people).
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But it’s likely that Swift is about to set a new personal record in Australia, where she will perform to her biggest audience ever. The Melbourne Cricket Ground, where she will be performing on 16, 17 and 18 February, is predicting 260,000 people over three nights – an average of 86,000 a night.
The MCG can fit far more than 86,000 people – its official capacity is 100,024, and Ed Sheeran played to a record crowd of 109,500 people in a single night there last year.
The reason for the sizeable difference between Sheeran and what is predicted for Swift comes down to the size of her enormous stage on the Eras tour. Her stage is actually three separate parts that change shape through hydraulics, along with a long ramp – estimated to be about 80 metres long by the MCG – that juts into the standing area.
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Swift’s stage will be positioned at the city end of the MCG, which means some stands will be blocked from being used by concertgoers. But Sheeran’s unique circular revolving stage was placed in the middle of the turf, which meant all of the seats could be used.
The MCG show will each host more than what is predicted at Sydney’s Accor Stadium, where she played her previous biggest concert ever (about 76,000 people in 2015 on her 1989 tour). Accor is anticipating 300,000 at her four shows in Sydney, which works out to be 75,000 people a night.
This means the MCG will set a new record for attendance at a single Swift show that may not be toppled even in Europe when she heads there later this year.
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Most of the venues she’s playing in Europe have an official capacity of about 50,000-85,000 before her stage is factored in. The only show that may pose a challenge to the MCG is one of her eight shows in Wembley Stadium in London in June and August; the stadium can officially house up to 90,000 seated and another 25,000 standing.
But Wembley’s actual capacity varies with the artist and their stage. To give a sense of what Swift might achieve in London, the Weeknd set a record for a concert with an end-stage set-up (where the audience is only in front of the stage) last year with 87,000 people. But Adele (who tends to perform with little more than a piano) performed to 98,000 in Wembley in a single night in 2017. Given the size of Swift’s stage, it is likely that, even after her final shows in the US and Canada in November and December this year, the MCG will remain her biggest ever show.