What’s Going on with the Eras Tour in Asia?

How and why Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour stops in Singapore sparked heated reactions.

View the Substack version of this piece here!

In Thailand…
During a mid-February forum in Bangkok, Thailand Prime Minister Srettha Thavisin accused Singapore of striking an exclusive deal with Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour.

• The deal allegedly meant the tour’s only dates in Southeast Asia would be in Singapore.
• Swift performed six shows in Singapore in early March of this year. Massive demand for the shows had been clear, with reportedly one million people in a digital queue for tickets right as they were about to go on sale.

How exclusive the agreement was remains in dispute…

• Singapore’s government has confirmed that the team behind the Eras Tour was given “certain incentives” from a government fund to perform there, but the particulars remain undisclosed.
• Estimates on the size of the deal have ranged from two to three million dollars (USD), which is nothing compared to the $225-$300M (USD) injection into Singapore’s economy that Bloomberg predicted the tour would generate!

Thavisin called the deal “clever” and said he “would have brought the shows to Thailand” had he known about the deal earlier.

• A few days prior to those public comments, Thavisin met with executives from the live event company AEG to talk about possible “tax incentives and other attractive measures to attract mega concerts and world-class festivals to Thailand,” according to the Bangkok Post.

Additional Context Behind Thailand’s Hopes for a Taylor Swift Concert

Taylor Swift’s Red Tour was scheduled to stop at an arena in Thailand but was called off in the wake of the May 2014 coup.

• Last July, Move Forward Party member Pita Limjaroenrat invited Swift to bring the Eras Tour to Thailand, tweeting that he was a “big fan” and that “Thailand [was] back on track to be fully democratic after [she] had to cancel last time due to the coup. The Thai people have spoken via the election… we all look forward to welcoming [her] to this beautiful nation of ours!”
  

In the Philippines…
Joey Salceda, a house chairman in the Philippines, requested an explanation from the Department of Foreign Affairs about Singapore’s alleged exclusivity deal.

• He said that a deal like this “isn’t what good neighbors do.”
  
• Salceda insists the boost to Singapore’s local economy was not worth gaining at the expense of the rest of Southeast Asia.
  
• Salceda said he wants an official condemnation of Singapore’s decision on the record, for the Philippines to send a message to both Singapore and his own colleagues in government. He wants to incentivize fellow government officials to more aggressively pursue deals like Singapore’s: “We need to up our game. That is what agencies like the Tourism Promotions Board were made for.” 
  

Meanwhile, Singapore remains happy with the deal, and Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong called it “a very successful arrangement.”

• In an apparent response to the comment that the deal is not “what good neighbors do,” he said, “I don’t see that [arrangement] as being unfriendly.”
  
• He pointed out that Australia’s government made similar deals for Swift’s tour stops in Sydney and Melbourne, although he did not elaborate.
  
• He went on to say, “Sometimes one country makes a deal, sometimes another country does. I don’t explicitly say ‘[Y]ou will come here only on [the] condition that you’ll not go to other places.’”
  

Elsewhere in Asia…
Hong Kong leader John Lee expressed eagerness to try a similar exclusivity deal in the future, saying that, “Amid Hong Kong’s fierce competition with other cities that have been striving to improve themselves, we have to be relentless in our efforts to lure mega events.”

• Hong Kong’s interest in boosting tourism via mega-celebrity appearances will likely continue, especially to make up for the disappointing results of hosting soccer player Lionel Messi’s exhibition match.
  

Indonesia has explicitly called its plan to boost tourism a “Swiftonomics” plan!

• Deputy Minister of State-Owned Enterprises Kartika Wirjoatmodjo confirmed that Indonesia’s annual tourism fund of over $127 million (USD) is set to be implemented by the end of 2024.
  

He said, “This fund will become a source for various events, such as the F1 Power Boat… Hopefully, it can be a new catalyst… so that Indonesia will have more world-class ecotourism and cultural events.”

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