Vienna Concerts Cancelled | Swifties Head to London

(London) For Hervé Tram, being a Taylor Swift fan is not just about the music.

The 28-year-old computer network engineer from Paris considers himself part of a community, the so-called Swifties. So when the pop star’s concerts in Vienna were cancelled last week due to a terrorist threat, Tram did a good deed: he gave away two spare tickets for his upcoming London concerts to two people who had missed out on seeing their idol in the Austrian capital.

“That’s the power of this fan community,” Tram said. “We look out for each other.”

Taylor Swift fans, who flocked to stadiums around the world to see her 3 1/2-hour tour Eras and singing songs they know by heart, have been shaken in recent days.

First, a knife-wielding attacker murdered three girls during a Taylor Swift-themed dance class in northern England, sparking a week of anti-immigration protests across the UK after far-right activists spread false information about the suspect.

Then, the concerts in Vienna were cancelled due to the arrest of three extremists inspired by the Islamic State group. According to the authorities, they were planning to attack during the shows.

But none of that has dampened the enthusiasm of fans, who will gather at London’s Wembley Stadium from Thursday to Tuesday for the concerts that will close out the European leg of the Eras tour. Her fans want to wear Swift-inspired outfits, exchange handmade friendship bracelets and, of course, dance.

Meagan Berneaud, 30, is from Columbus, Ohio and has been a fan of Taylor Swift since she was 13.

The young woman had second thoughts about going to London after recent events reminded her of the two and a half hours she spent holed up in a 2016 terrorist attack at Ohio State University. But she decided to go, even creating a thread on X to connect fans who missed the Vienna concerts with people willing to sell or give away tickets to the London shows. It has had more than 3,000 views.

“I just have to tell myself not to live in fear,” she said. “I have to trust […] to law enforcement to do their best to protect us.”

Some fans who had planned to attend the show in Vienna were willing to overcome their anxieties to try to attend another show, encouraged by Swift’s song, Fearless.

Presila Koleva, 26, a design engineer from Cambridge, England, had been looking forward to seeing Swift in Vienna for more than a year. She bought a replica of a green dress Swift wears during the Folklore portion of the tour. Eras and made 30 bracelets to exchange with other people. She was heartbroken when the shows were cancelled.

But then she contacted Tram, who gave her one of his tickets. So the dress will be worn.

“There are good people who will do something good for someone they don’t know, just because they saw that they went through this really horrible situation,” she said.

“It could have ended so badly.”

High demand for tickets

The enthusiasm of Swift’s fans and a setlist that includes more than 40 songs from all phases of her career helped make the tour Eras The tour is the biggest moneymaker of all time, with more than $1 billion in ticket sales last year, according to Pollstar Boxoffice, which collects data on the music industry. The tour is expected to take that record to more than $2 billion before it wraps up later this year in Indianapolis.

Demand for London concerts shows no sign of slowing, with ticket prices reaching thousands of pounds at unregulated venues.

With Swift’s European tour ending and younger fans having flexible schedules, especially during the summer, recent events aren’t going to hurt demand for tickets to the London concerts, said Rafi Mohammed, a pricing strategist and founder of the Cambridge, Massachusetts-based consultancy Culture of Profit.

“On the contrary, you have three sold-out concerts in Vienna that have been cancelled. This, combined with the end of the tour, you will probably see additional demand,” he explained.

Security concerns

But security remains a concern nonetheless.

London’s Metropolitan Police Service has been reassuring, stressing that it has learned lessons from the 2017 attack on an Ariana Grande concert at Manchester Arena that killed 22 people and injured hundreds more.

Organisers have promised “extra ticket checks” at the 90,000-seater Wembley Stadium, banning spectators from bringing items larger than a small bag into the venue. Those without tickets will be turned away from the stadium.

“London is a big city. We’re used to hosting all these events,” said Tracy Halliwell, head of tourism for Visit London. “You’ll see a bigger police presence on the ground and that’s really just to make sure that everything is […] is going well.

For its part, Tram focuses on what fans can do, recalling how Parisians responded after the Bataclan attack in 2015 to show that terror would not win.

“We’ve seen hundreds of thousands of people come out into the streets to show they’re not afraid, and I think we’ll see that in London as well,” he said. “The fans will show they’re not afraid. And as Taylor said, we’re fearless.”