A Deal For The Eras: Capital One Charges In With Massive Taylor Swift Partnership

So gargantuan and earth-shattering that it was, Taylor Swift’s most recent tour became mononymic, known simply to most of the world as “Eras.”

Officially, however, the $2-billion-grossing world-spanning tour was “Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour, presented by Capital One.”

It was the centerpiece of a multi-year partnership between the megastar and the Richmond, Virginia-based bank holding corporation and credit card provider that began in 2019 and worth a reported $8 million for the singer. At first, the deal seemed like a pretty standard fare celebrity brand partnership: Swift starred in commercials for the then-new Savor card, appearing as various frazzled customer-service workers.

It was Capital One’s effort to tackle a relatively new regulatory framework faced by all credit card providers. In 2009, Congress passed the Credit CARD Act, which barred card companies from using things like on-campus pizza giveaways to lure college age debtors. Credit card companies had to find another way to find young customers. 

Enter Swift, with her famously devoted fanbase made up of a constantly refreshing supply of young adults.  By any metric, hitching its wagon to Swift was a smart play for Capital One, now the third-largest provider of credit cards with market share near 10%. But the partnership wasn’t merely a grip-and-grin, smile-for-the-camera kind of deal. When Swift announced “Eras,” the tour’s name sponsor offered what proved to be a very valuable commodity indeed: pre-sale access.

Capital One cardholders — similar to a long-standing incentive offered by AmEx and Citi – were given a code for the tantalizing prospect of an early chance at “Eras” tickets. The on-sale bonanza that launched congressional investigations shows just how important that code could be. More proof: Taylor Swift subreddits were full of people offering as much as $100 for the codes ahead of the presale.

The company won’t say how many sign-ups could be attributed directly to Swift, but we do know this: in its quarterly earnings for the period of the “Eras” on-sale showed a 17% surge year-over-year in credit volume, well ahead of other quarters.