Taylor Swift’s London Shows Set Records for Fan Mobile Data Usage
You know it if you’ve been to one of Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour shows: when you’re in the stadium panting, singing, cheering, crying, and clapping, you feel like you’re part of something special, historic… unprecedented, even. It’s no wonder that when the global superstar wrapped up the European leg of her tour, she celebrated breaking records across the continent.
In London, Swift became the first solo artist to play eight shows at Wembley Stadium during the same tour. As I was at the show on Saturday night, just feet from the stage, I had no idea she would break a new record in my presence. Her Eras Tour show that night saw the most mobile data ever used for a standalone show at Wembley.
As is so often the case with Swift, she broke a record she herself had set (back in June). And to put it in perspective, the 5.58TB that fans consumed would be enough to stream her entire music catalog 4,500 times, which would last more than a decade. That makes Swift the most popular artist to ever play the UK’s national stadium, according to data usage. Seven of the top 10 most popular events, again based on mobile data, held at Wembley are Eras Tour shows – and that includes sporting events.
Wembley is the largest sporting venue in the UK and the second largest in Europe. Its normal capacity is around 90,000, but with a pitch that has seen around 92,000 people per Eras Tour show at the stadium. However, many more thousands of people watched from home, thanks to a number of generous Swifties who livestreamed from their phones and posted real-time photos and updates on social media.
If you’re wondering what most people used their phones for during the show, EE told CNET that Instagram was the most popular app, accounting for 16% of total data usage, followed by Snapchat (11%), TikTok (8%) and Facebook (8%).
Two of my favorite moments from the show – Swift’s piano performance of Champagne Problems and her performance of August, in which she swirls through a palette of sunset colors like a wood nymph – saw the biggest spikes in data usage.
Before the Eras Tour, Harry Styles was the artist who generated the most data usage among fans at Wembley in 2023, with data usage during one of his concerts reaching 4.49TB. But Swift’s last five shows have all broken that record, with the following breakdown:
- August 15 – 5.16 TB
- Aug 16 – 5.18 TB
- Aug 17 – 5,584 TB
- Aug 19 – 4.6 TB
- August 20 – 5,581 TB
In total, over a million fans consumed more than 65TB during Swift’s UK shows, demonstrating the insatiable appetite for content about and around the Eras Tour. Following the grand finale of the European leg this week, Swift will return to play more shows in the US in October, before wrapping up the tour in Canada in December.
In the meantime, if you ever need Taylor, don’t forget that you can always watch The Eras Tour on Disney Plus.
