If Taylor Swift had accepted the offer to become mayor of Tampa, Fla., for a day in April, Jane Castor, the city’s elected mayor, insists she wouldn’t have taken the time off to surf or wrestle alligators. What would she have done instead? “Follow her around,” Castor says, a week after Swift’s three Tampa shows.
So far on her sold-out Eras stadium tour, Swift has not responded to any of the host cities’ symbolic offers — Tampa declared her “honorary mayor” and gave her the key to the city; Glendale, Ariz., temporarily renamed itself Swift City; Arlington, Texas, named a street Taylor Swift Way; and Las Vegas lit up its 80-feet-tall Gateway Arches in colors representing all of her albums. Even still, the symbolic moves have concrete impact. Every time a city connects itself to Swift and her tens of thousands of local fans, traveling concertgoers and social-media army, it earns a boost in marketing and revenue.
“It’s a way for us to communicate positively with our residents and individuals nationwide,” Castor says by phone. “From an economic standpoint, we had 70,000 people at her show each night, and you look at the number of hotel rooms that are rented, the restaurants that saw the uptick in customers, the merchandise. Being able to reach out to her fans was a win-win.”
Each Eras host city that makes one of these Swift-honoring moves gets to hold a feel-good news conference, prompting local reporters to dutifully cover the announcement. “The opportunities are valuable just in having nice press mentions,” says Candy Lee, a Northwestern University journalism and integrated marketing communications professor. According to a 2021 Oxford Economics study commissioned by promoter Live Nation, every time out-of-towners spend $100 on concert tickets, they also spend $435 on local restaurants, transportation and retail; in 2019, that amounted to $32.6 billion in regional, non-concert spending.
These numbers were not lost on Tampa city officials, some of whom identify as Swifties and say they competed with other municipalities to bestow more honorary riches on the Eras tour. “Tampa was the only stop in Florida for Taylor Swift, so we were having a ton of visitors from all across the state,” says Angela Ramirez, Tampa’s communications strategist. “Taylor had such a huge economic impact. Tampa couldn’t drop the ball in presenting that cultural moment.”
Swift’s tour is not the first to inspire keys to the city and other designations. Just in the last year, Albuquerque’s metal-loving mayor gave a key to Soulfly, and Cincinnati’s mayor gave one to hip-hop star Common before his performance with the local symphony. In 2015, after Ed Sheeran sold out a local arena, he received a key to the city of Albany, N.Y.; in 2003, at Mariah Carey‘s Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center show, Tampa’s then-mayor presented her with the key between songs. “Those keys were super-special and really limited,” Ramirez says.
In Glendale, Sue Breding, the city’s communications director, a former TV reporter who interviewed Swift when the singer was 16, came up with the “Swift City” idea after reading about Las Vegas’ arches and Arlington’s street name. She sent a plan to her boss, the assistant city manager, who suggested she run it by State Farm Stadium officials, who’d just hosted the Super Bowl. They shared it with Swift’s tour representatives, who responded enthusiastically. After that, Breding and another Glendale employee wrote a proclamation for Mayor Jerry Weiers to deliver after a mayoral edit at a March 13 news conference Weiers and white-bearded city council members posed for press photos with colorful Swift City T-shirts.
And while Arizona Progress & Gazette sniffed that the Swift City hullabaloo was the mayor’s “painfully obvious attempt to pander to younger voters,” Weiers’ proclamation went viral on Instagram — one Indonesian publication’s report drew more than 3,100 likes. Which was the idea. “It does not directly benefit economically,” Breding says. “But it’s that bigger benefit of hearing the word ‘Glendale’ — maybe you’ll smile and remember some of that. And visit the surrounding restaurants.”
