Taylor Swift's Generous Bonuses: How Much Did She Give Her Dancers on the Eras Tour?

Taylor Swift continues to make headlines with her remarkable generosity toward tour staff, a detail highlighted in her new docuseries, The End of an Era.

The second episode of the Disney+ series, which premiered on December 12, features Swift preparing personalized bonuses for her dancers. The Grammy winner revealed that she handwrote a note for each employee and took "a couple weeks" to seal each envelope with wax.

“Bonus day is so important, because setting a precedent with The Eras Tour is really important to me,” she said. “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. It’s fun to write the notes. It’s fun to think about everybody’s lives that they’re gonna go back to… making that worthwhile for them is really — it feels like Christmas morning when you finally get to say thank you.”

While the exact figures remain censored in the docuseries, various reports suggest that Swift doled out tens of millions of dollars throughout the nearly two-year tour.

Here's everything we know about her Eras Tour bonuses.

Although it's unclear how much Swift pocketed from the tour, the 149-date spectacle grossed over $2 billion in ticket sales, according to The New York Times. This amount, confirmed by Swift’s production company, excludes merchandise sales and the box-office earnings from her film, Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour, which grossed $261 million worldwide, as reported by Box Office Mojo.

The tour's monumental success reportedly pushed Swift to billionaire status, with Forbes estimating her worth at $1.6 billion by 2025.

In December, Swift playfully told Stephen Colbert that she used her Eras Tour earnings to buy back her music masters, revealing a hefty $360 million payment to venture capital firm Shamrock Holdings.

While specific salary figures for Swift's dancers aren't available, the Dancers Alliance provides preferred industry rates. This includes $465 for eight hours of rehearsal and a minimum of $2,730 per week on tour.

Ben Clark, a banjo player who collaborated with Swift in her early career, noted that she has consistently compensated her performers well. “As a new artist, to offer salary is very rare,” he explained. “It’s almost unheard of, but that’s how they ran their business and that’s how they took care of us band members.”

In a touching scene from The End of the Era, dancer Kameron Saunders reads his bonus letter, where the amount is redacted. However, the happiness shown by the dancers is apparent as many break into tears upon receiving the news. Saunders laughs as he reads, “Dearest Kam, we’ve traveled the world like we set out to do…here’s [redacted] dollars just to say thanks. Love, Taylor.”

Production assistant Max Holmes jokingly remarked, “I’m gonna pass out” after learning about his bonus.

Fans on social media are abuzz, with some guessing that the bonus could be around $750,000, while others speculate it to be $130,000, a nod to Swift’s lucky number, 13.

After the first North American leg of the tour wrapped up in August 2023, Swift gifted each of her nearly 50-member trucking crew $100,000. Michael Scherkenbach, founder of the Shomotion trucking company, called this sizable amount “unbelievable,” given that the usual bonus is typically between $5,000 and $10,000.

Scherkenbach described the moment the drivers received their bonuses: “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!’”

According to The End of an Era, Swift awarded bonuses to every dancer, musician and crew member at the conclusion of each tour leg. With five primary legs of the tour — North America, South America, Asia/Australia, Europe, and a second North American leg — reports indicated Swift had already distributed over $55 million in bonuses by the tour’s end in 2023.

While the full number of crew members is unclear, estimates suggest around 1,000 individuals contributed to bringing The Eras Tour to life, including 15 dancers, 50 truck drivers, six musicians, and four backup vocalists. One scene in the docuseries shows the crew needing at least one large duffel bag to transport all the bonus envelopes.

In December 2024, People confirmed that Swift disbursed a staggering total of $197 million in bonuses, including to truck drivers, caterers, instrument techs, merch teams, lighting specialists and more.