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The concert film, which chronicles Taylor Swift’s hugely successful tour, has already surpassed $100 million in advance sales, suggesting huge opening weekend sales when it premieres on Friday.
This stratospheric interest in “Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour” has grown despite a marketing campaign that contradicted the usual patterns of a mainstream Hollywood release. As of October 6, advertising tracking company iSpot found that the main television spot for the film had only aired 38 times on national linear television, with 17 of those occurring after Swift made her first appearance at a Kansas City Chiefs game to cheer on Beau , Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce. Of those 17 broadcasts, seven occurred either at a live game or on NFL Network. Capitol One’s “Multiple Taylors” ads have also featured a tagline for the Eras documentary since September 23 and have aired 15 times.
This TV exposure pales in comparison to The Super Mario Bros. Movie, whose TV commercial aired more than 8,000 times during the same period prior to release. Other major releases routinely rack up thousands of airings as studios continue to rely on the traditional shotgun technique of TV buying.
However, the NFL has acknowledged that it is “leaning into” the “tay-vis” phenomenon, and the most powerful force in the media business tends to get results when it throws its weight around. The New York Post reported last week that the league relied on its TV partners to offer free advertising inventory during its pregame broadcasts. Apparently, the league figured that by helping to clog up the Eras documentary, it would improve its chances of getting Swift as a halftime performer at next February’s Super Bowl.
While the League’s affection for Swift makes sense, it also conflicts with some factors surrounding the film’s release.
The first is that The Eras Tour’s distributor isn’t a traditional studio that buys dozens of television ads to promote its films during top-rated NFL games. Rather, it’s top theater chain AMC Entertainment, which outmaneuvered multiple bidders for the film despite not having extensive distribution experience. (AMC steadfastly declined to discuss its marketing approach, as did Swift’s team.)
There’s a pretty clear reason why AMC prevailed, including that it agreed to far less than the 20% service fee that studios typically charge, several film marketing veterans told Deadline. With hundreds of millions of social media followers, Swift has mastered the art of mobilizing her base. Much like Beyoncé, who will have her own concert film in December, Swift is essentially branching out beyond television, aside from one-off appearances like appearing on Saturday Night Live.
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“She doesn’t need the NFL,” a studio veteran told Deadline. “Her fan base is 55% American and her community has been talking about her and her tour for months. This film is a celebration of her.” Even more absurd is the theory that Swift invented romance solely as a means to sell movie tickets. With the pop star reportedly set to earn more than $1 billion in proceeds from the Eras tour, the idea that she will have to rely on movie ticket sales is a credibility drain. As gigantic as the film ends up being at the box office (and even a starting price of $60-70 million would instantly make it the biggest concert film of all time), it is extremely inexpensive compared to other theatrical releases in both production and production also in marketing. It’s also a fraction of the entire financial Taylorverse.
At a time of conflict over the motion picture market, when strikes changed the flow of new releases and existential questions remain, “Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour” was a balm. AMC may not be an experienced player on the distribution side, but it has a huge presence in theaters in the US and internationally, where promotion of the film is widespread both on screen and off. Earned media and social media are now making an astonishing rise.
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Of course, some marketing partners pushed television further, and football seemed like the most sensible home, especially given the Kelce phenomenon. According to iSpot, Capital One’s updated 2022 version of Swift’s message aired during at least five NFL games, as well as during NFL-related studio programming. It also aired nine times during college football games and during a Major League Baseball playoff broadcast.
As much excitement as Eras’ release is generating, a person familiar with NFL sales for a broadcast network that broadcasts the NFL tells Deadline that the phenomenon takes something away from the league’s beer-and-trucks advertising headquarters is. The audience for Swift and Beyoncé concert films “is not directly related” to marketers’ overall desire to showcase NFL fans, the source added.
“This male audience is marginalized for Taylor,” one marketer told Deadline. “They would never be the ones to push this movie.”