Taylor Swift performs onstage for the opening night of “Taylor Swift | The Eras Tour” at State Farm Stadium on March 17, 2023, in Glendale, Arizona. (John Medina | Getty Images)
Gov. Jeff Landry won’t be attending Taylor Swift’s much-hyped Eras Tour stop in New Orleans at the end of the month. But other members of Louisiana’s first family plan to take advantage of the governor’s suites in the Superdome for the shows.
“No, I’m not going to Taylor Swift. No, no, no,” Landry said in an interview after a press conference Tuesday. “I don’t know if the first lady is. The first son, I know, is going, and of course the first nieces and the first nephews.”
The governor said his wife, Sharon Landry, is in charge of distributing the concert tickets, and she was trying to spread them around to as many people as possible.
“I’m sure it’s a pretty demanding box,” the governor said. “You can quote me on this: I’m not in charge of the tickets.”
Swift is scheduled to perform three shows, Oct. 25-27. All three concerts have been sold out since the first day tickets went on sale in August 2023.
The cheapest seats initially available were just under $50. But with the concerts less than a month away, tickets are now going for well over $1,000 on resale websites.
Swift is the first music act ever to headline three consecutive nights in the Superdome and the only one to ever sell more than 150,000 tickets in the venue, according to The Times-Picayune.
Her tour is one of the most popular of the century. Last year, it became the first ever to gross over $1 billion worldwide, according to the Associated Press.
As governor, Landry has access to an unusually large number of tickets to the Swift concerts and other events at the Superdome.
In 2019, former Gov. John Bel Edwards’ staff said the governor’s suites in the Superdome had a combined capacity of 61 seats, but the stadium has undergone renovations recently. It’s unclear what the exact capacity of the governor’s two boxes are following the project.
Assuming it remains around 60, Landry would have about 180 Eras Tour tickets to distribute over the three nights.
The state of Louisiana owns the Superdome, and the free suite access has been a decades-long perk for governors. But in-demand events can be a source of controversy.
Edwards’ staff claimed they couldn’t determine who used the suites for a sold-out Beyoncé concert in 2023.
In 2008, Gov. Bobby Jindal gave his staff, their families and a handful of legislators free tickets to a Hannah Montana concert at the New Orleans Arena, while Jindal was pushing new ethics laws through the Louisiana Legislature. At the time, Jindal was chastising other state officials for cronyism and the concert handouts rubbed some of his critics the wrong way.
When it comes to the Eras Tour, politics might also be a touchy subject.
Landry, a Republican, is firmly behind former President Donald Trump in the election happening a few days after the Eras Tour leaves New Orleans. Swift has said publicly she will vote for Vice President Kamala Harris in that race.