AMC theaters braced for the population of Swiftys who would be knocking down the door for her newest concert film from this summer’s gargantuan tour, The Eras Tour. Swift’s concert became in such demand that the Ticketmaster service crashed, and a whole controversy was brought to the attention of the U.S. Senate. After these events, AMC took precautions in the event that they would face a similar outpouring of interest in the screenings of the movie. The theater chain claims “it has shored up its ticket server capacity to handle traffic at more than five times the current record for most tickets sold in an hour.”
Not only did the precautions pay off, but it helped navigate the new record set for first-day presales for a film that AMC would be screening. Deadline has reported that sales for Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour tickets have overtaken the record set by Spider-man: No Way Home, which brought in $16.9 million when it first became available. The Eras Tour brought in $26 million in the first 24 hours of ticket sales for the movie set to open on October 13. According to AMC, the record had already been shattered within the first three hours.
The theater chain released a statement when the film’s cinema run was announced, “AMC is also aware that no ticketing system in history seems to have been able to accommodate the soaring demand from Taylor Swift fans when tickets are first placed on sale. Guests wanting to be the first to buy their tickets online may experience delays, longer-than-usual ticket- purchase waiting-room times and possible outages. AMC is committed to ensuring any delays or outages are addressed as quickly as possible.”
The passionate response for not only the concert, but the concert film, is a phenomenon that leaves distributors in awe. One distributing boss joked that marketing is not a necessity for this particular event, “They don’t need that. All AMC needs is Taylor Swift posting about the movie on social media to her fans.” While figures haven’t been revealed for other chains, it is being assumed that the businesses will be looking at the turn out as an opportunity to parlay loyalty program sign-ups. Another distribution executive remarked, “Based on these pre-sales, exhibs are going to be all in.”