Taylor Swift fever reached unsuspected levels, reaching Southeast Asia this week and unleashing an international conflict between three countries: Thailand, the Philippines and Singapore.
Everything happened after the latter supposedly paid a million-dollar subsidy to maintain an exclusivity agreement with Taylor, becoming the only country in Southeast Asia where ‘The Eras Tour’, the singer’s spectacular international tour, was presented.
The Anti-hero singer is currently in Singapore, and since the weekend she has offered three of the six concerts scheduled until March 9 at the National Stadium.
In accordance with TMZthe situation has inflamed the governments of Thailand and the Philippines, where the singer’s long-awaited tour, which has a repertoire of 45 songs and lasts more than four hours, did not arrive.
Joey Salceda, a member of the House of Representatives of the Philippines, has demanded that his country’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs protest the alleged million-dollar subsidy to maintain the exclusivity agreement between Taylor Swift and Singapore. For Salceda, the city-state “is not being a good neighboring country. “It is a very painful betrayal.”
For his part, Thai Prime Minister Srettha Thavisin stated that the concert promoters told him that the Singaporean authorities offered up to $3 million per concert to have Swift’s exclusivity in Southeast Asia.
Regarding these accusations, Singapore’s Minister of Culture, Edwin Ton, admitted that, in effect, his country paid to have exclusivity on the tour.
“In the case of Taylor Swift, we moved quickly to bring her show to Singapore (…) We saw the opportunity to make this a uniquely Singaporean experience and it has made sense,” he told Parliament this Monday.
However, he also stated that the benefits of having the show in his territory exceed the cost of having it, although he did not mention specific figures.
“There has been some speculation on the internet about the size of the subsidy, but the benefits (from the impact of Swift passing through the island) are significant and exceed (the amount),” he told Parliament.
“(The information) is not precise and in no case (the amount) is as high as has been said, but due to confidentiality reasons we cannot reveal the transfer or its conditions,” added Tong, without referring in particular to the comments of their neighboring countries.
The American singer has sold out all the available tickets in Singapore, where she will offer her last show on March 9, selling more than 300,000 tickets for the concerts. The city-state also organizes light and water shows to mark the artist’s visit, according to the newspaper The Straits Times.
#Thailand #Philippines #conflict #Singapore #Taylor #Swift
