Taylor Swift has made headlines over the years for her generous bonuses to tour employees, which are highlighted in her new docuseries, The End of an Era.
The second episode of the Disney+ show, which premiered Friday, December 12, shows Swift preparing bonuses for her dancers. The Grammy winner explained that she handwrote every note to each employee and sealed each envelope with wax, which took her “a couple weeks” to do.
“Bonus day is so important, because setting a precedent with The Eras Tour is really important to me, because people who work on the road, if the tour grosses more, they get more of a bonus, and these people just work so hard and they are the best at what they do,” she said. “It’s fun to write the notes. It’s fun to think about everybody’s lives that they’re gonna go back to and the time off they’re gonna have and the kids they haven’t seen because they’ve been away for months, and just making that worthwhile for them is really — it feels like Christmas morning when you finally get to say thank you.”
While the docuseries censors the amount of money Swift gave her dancers, various reports have said she handed out tens of millions of dollars over the course of the nearly two-year tour. Keep scrolling for everything we know about Swift’s Eras Tour bonuses:
How Much Did Taylor Swift Make From ‘The Eras Tour’?
While it’s unclear how much Swift herself pocketed from the tour, the 149-date event grossed more than $2 billion in ticket sales, per The New York Times. That figure, shared with the outlet by Swift’s production company, does not include merch sales, profits from the Eras Tour book or the box-office take from her 2023 film, Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour. (The film grossed $261 million worldwide, per Box Office Mojo.)
Last year, Forbes reported that the tour’s record-breaking success pushed Swift over the line to billionaire status. As of 2025, the outlet reports that she is worth $1.6 billion.
Earlier this week, Swift quipped to Stephen Colbert that she used her Eras Tour earnings to buy back her masters. Per Billboard, she paid $360 million to buy the recordings from venture capital firm Shamrock Holdings.
How Much Did Taylor Swift Pay Her Dancers on ‘The Eras Tour’?
Exact figures aren’t available for her dancers’ salaries, but the organization Dancers Alliance offers a list of preferred rates for the industry, listing $465 for eight hours of rehearsal (with time and a half for anything over) and a minimum of $2,730 per week on tour.
Ben Clark, a banjo player who worked with Swift early in her career, claimed last year that the superstar has always paid her fellow performers well, explaining that she paid her musicians a salary. “As a new artist, to offer salary is very rare,” he said in 2024. “It’s almost unheard of, but that’s how they ran their business and that’s how they took care of us band members.”
After he left her band, he claimed he was the “highest-paid band guy in Nashville,” adding, “There were artists — George Strait, whoever you want to name it — that have had bands for 30 years that weren’t making as much money as Taylor was paying us.”
How Much Was the Bonus Dancers Got on ‘The Eras Tour’?
When Swift’s dancer Kameron Saunders reads the bonus letter in The End of the Era, the producers censor the amount of money he receives, but it’s clear the dancers are pleased by the number, as many of them start crying. Saunders, for his part, lets out a little laugh after he reads the amount.
“Dearest Kam, we’ve traveled the world like we set out to do,” Saunders begins, reading the poem Swift wrote in the cards. “We’ve dazzled the crowds but we’ve missed family too. My full gratitude doesn’t come from a bank, but here’s [redacted] dollars just to say thanks. Love, Taylor.”
In another scene, production assistant Max Holmes is so overwhelmed by the bonus that he jokes, “I’m gonna pass out.”
In the replies of a viral tweet about the scene, fans are doing their best to try to guess what Saunders said, with some convinced they heard him start to say $750,000 and others thinking she gave them $130,000 (since her lucky number is 13).
How Much Did Taylor Swift Pay Her ‘Eras Tour’ Truck Drivers?
After the first North American leg of the tour wrapped in August 2023, Swift gave each of her nearly 50-member trucking crew $100,000 each. “The typical amount is $5,000 to $10,000 each. So, this large amount is unbelievable,” Michael Scherkenbach, founder and CEO of the Shomotion trucking company, told CNN at the time. (Shomotion was one of two trucking companies used by the tour.)
Scherkenbach added that the check was a “life-changing” amount for the truckers. “The drivers didn’t want to be overly rude and look at it,” he added of the moment they received their bonus envelopes. “But one looked and thought it said $1,000, another driver saw it as $10,000 and then the third said, ‘Well, this has to be a joke!’”
How Many ‘Eras Tour’ Bonuses Did Taylor Swift Give Out?
According to The End of an Era, Swift gave bonuses to “every dancer, musician and crew member” at the end of each leg of the tour. There were five main legs of the tour: North America, South America, Asia/Australia, Europe and a second North American leg. After the first leg wrapped up in 2023, People reported that she’d already given out more than $55 million in bonuses.
While an exact number of crew members isn’t known, some reports have suggested that around 1,000 people were involved in putting The Eras Tour together, including 15 dancers, 50 truck drivers, six musicians and four backup vocalists. One scene in the docuseries shows that it takes at least one large duffel bag to carry all the envelopes containing the bonuses.
In December 2024, People confirmed that Swift gave out a total of $197 million in bonuses to everyone who worked on the tour, including “truck drivers, caterers, instrument techs, merch team, lighting, sound, production staff and assistants, carpenters, dancers, band, security, choreographers, pyrotechnics, riggers, hair, make-up, wardrobe, physical therapists and video team.”
