Swiftflation: star’s pulling power likely to push up prices

In Numbers: Swiftmania

500,000

The number of fans who reportedly registered to buy tickets for Taylor Swift’s upcoming Irish dates. The first of 165,000 tickets for her three Aviva shows next June go on sale on Friday, with the frenzy of demand likely to drive up resale ticket prices and further inflate accommodation rates. This “Swiftflation” is a phenomenon that has followed the pop star throughout her current Eras world tour.

2

The number of times Ticketmaster has already crumbled under demand for Taylor Swift tour tickets. Sales of tickets in France were put on pause this week as Ticketmaster faced queues of more than one million Swifties. The ticketing site also crashed last November, overwhelmed by demand from fans for US tour dates.

$1.4bn

An estimate of how much Swift’s 131 concert world tour will gross. Music industry publication Pollstar has predicted that the tour will come close to the “astonishing” figure by the time it wraps up next August, which would make Taylor Swift the first artist to cross the $1 billion (€890 million) threshold.

Getting to Know: Bolsonaro’s latest business venture

Not even a ban on seeking re-election could dampen the party mood for former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro, who is now flogging a self-themed birthday pack on his online store.

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Complete with party hats, cake decorations and a banner of Bolsonaro smiling next to the slogan “It’s party time, alright?”, the populist party-kit will set you back just 149.99 reais, or under €28.

If that doesn’t tickle your fancy, Bolsonaro Store has a range of other notebooks, beer mugs, stickers and calendars carrying the ousted candidate’s catchphrase: “Brazil above everything! God above all!”

Image of the Week

A candy-pink Tardis touched down in London on Wednesday in anticipation of the UK premiere of Barbie. Greta Gerwig’s pink-saturated film, starring Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling, is anticipated to take in $80 million or more on its opening weekend. This is double the box office projections for Christopher Nolan’s three-hour epic Oppenheimer, starring Cillian Murphy, which is set to hit cinema screens on the same day (July 21st).

Doll maker Mattel is betting big with the $100 million film, which is the first release in chief executive Ynon Kreiz’s new “IP strategy”, hoping to revive the now 64-year-old Barbie brand and drive toy sales.

The list: Turning Threads

Threads, Mark Zuckerberg’s answer to Twitter, has racked up a record number of new users since launching last week as reformed tweeters seek new avenues to share their sparks of wit and genius.

1. “Shaping the future of the internet”: Meta first introduced Threads last week as an innovative new way to share text updates and join public conversations. After joining Threads using an existing Instagram account, users might find certain parallels between the platform’s minimalist feed and character limit, and that of a certain Musk-owned rival.

2. Soaring sign-ups: Mark Zuckerberg himself has admitted his surprise at the demand for Meta’s microblogging platform. Threads amassed 100 million sign-ups by Monday, just five days after its launch. It has surpassed ChatGPT as the fastest-growing online platform to hit that milestone.

3. Meanwhile in Muskville: Public disclosures before Elon Musk took over the platform showed that Twitter had almost 240 million monetisable daily active users as of July last year; data from web analytics companies indicates usage has dropped since then.

4. Holding out on cashing in: There are no ads on the Threads app, and Zuckerberg has said Meta will only consider monetisation once a clear path to one billion users is in sight.

5. Keeping things “friendly”: Instagram head Adam Mosseri has said Threads is not trying to replace the more adversarial Twitter, but is rather the “friendly” option for lighthearted discussion of things such as sports, music and fashion.