It was a weekend to remember for Taylor Swift fans and Lower Mainland merchants.
Over three nights, BC Place hosted 160,000 fans for the final dates of Swift’s record-shattering Eras Tour.
For the three days and many before, Taylor-themed events and menus took over Vancouver.
“The vibe was electric,” Braden Matthews with Earls Kitchen + Bar told Global News.
“I wasn’t a Swifty, I think, until this weekend. But I found myself singing along to every song. And then in terms of a wait list, they got quite long. But we actually opened the upstairs to Swifties that were waiting, which is typically an event space… We were playing the concert up there from the livestream. It was like, it was such a vibe.
“It was by far the busiest since the Olympics.”
Store owners told Global News that the shops were buzzing.
“They came wanting to spend as well,” Sean Mcgarva, owner of West of Woodward said.
“A lot of Americans, the dollar was a big factor. Those were the biggest spenders… the Americans.”
With more than $2 billion in ticket sales worldwide, the Eras Tour is the highest-grossing tour of all time.
It is estimated the economic impact on B.C. was around $160 million.
“Just numbers we’ve never seen before,” Rohaan Sethna with Destination Vancouver said.
“Approximately 82,000 hotel room nights is what the tour generated. Over 160,000 attendees across three different shows so it’s honestly staggering to see the impacts on the (economy) for sure.”
Sethna said they estimate about 70 per cent of attendees were from outside Vancouver.
“It’s great to see that visitation and it’s great that there were so many fantastic things to do for Taylor Swift fans.”
While there were some initial safety concerns, the Vancouver Police Department, which deployed more than 700 officers in the downtown area, said there was no bad blood over the weekend.
“Now that the weekend’s over, from a public safety perspective, we’re just thrilled with how positive and how safe it was,” Sgt. Steve Addison with the Vancouver police said.
“We had a number of kids who got separated from their parents and our officers were there to help reunite those kids with their parents.”
In a statement, Rogers Communications said Swift fans on the Rogers 5G network used over 11 terabytes (TB) of mobile data in just a few hours at BC Place, breaking the previous record at her concert in Toronto on Nov. 21 when fans used 7.4 TB of data on the Rogers 5G network.
The communication company said that fans at a single show used enough data to stream Taylor’s entire music catalog 9,450 times.
The data used on Dec. 8 is the equivalent of uploading 307,000 photos and 2,180 hours of video streaming, according to the statment. Based on data usage spikes, the most-shared moments of the show were when Taylor Swift came on stage and the start of the ‘Reputation’ era.