The scheme of stars’ earnings from canceled concerts has been revealed

Only the organizers suffer

A coveted ticket to a concert of your favorite artist does not at all mean that on the appointed day the public will receive the holiday for which they paid. Cancellations continue to be a common occurrence during the touring season. Artists, organizers and spectators suffer from cancellations of events, but they all experience different inconveniences.

“Leningrad” did not perform at Luzhniki, “Beasts” postponed the stadium show in St. Petersburg, the KVN team “Kamyzyaki” with the participation of Comedy Club star Azamat Musagaliev canceled a tour of Kazakhstan, the famous American rapper Snoop Dogg is not going to Yerevan yet. These events certainly have their own special undercurrents, and they are united only by the disappointment of the public, as well as direct or indirect losses.

“The main sufferer is always the promoter,” said one of the major players in the touring market in a conversation with MK on the condition of anonymity. Sometimes the artist’s contract stipulates the return of the advance payment in the event of a valid reason for canceling the concert, but this is one percent out of a hundred. And even in this case, the artist does not suffer, but simply does not earn money. The promoter pays an advance to the artist, an advance to the venue, and even if he doesn’t do this, he spends it on advertising and ticket sales. Moreover, companies selling tickets take a percentage not only for the sale, but also for the return of tickets in case of a canceled concert.”

Concert cancellations seem to follow a certain pattern, but from a legal point of view everything is quite confusing. One hundred percent clarity exists only in case of epidemiological risks of mass events, or in case of an artist’s illness. Another thing is the unofficial reasons why most concerts have been canceled lately. A guest has every right not to worry if a show is canceled because the very idea of ​​a particular person performing confuses someone for some reason.

The factor called “reasons beyond the artist’s control” has its own, sometimes not so small, price. The contracts of everyone who can be mistaken for a star in a particular optician usually include advance payments. Sometimes it is thirty percent of the fee, sometimes fifty. According to rumors, the Leningrad group was paid one hundred percent, and according to various estimates we are talking about more than one hundred million rubles. The main issue is that the guest performer may not return this money if on the day of the concert he was ready to perform, but he was unexpectedly deprived of this opportunity for a very vague reason in the spirit of “whatever happened.”

Thus, the artist can even make money from the cancellation of the concert. In this situation, we can probably talk about a stellar conscience, and sometimes such fine tuning works. According to rumors, friends of the team tried to organize the “Kamyzyak” tour in Kazakhstan, so we cannot exclude the possibility of returning the advance in an effort not to spoil personal relationships. Of course, artists should not be demonized, some of them know what the rules of good manners are, but in general, star kindness is a very rare mineral. A promoter who has been treated unfairly has every right to be offended and forget this client, but for every offended person there is someone who will agree to give the offender a new concert.

The situation on the Russian touring market is most often seen in gloomy tones, but the lamentations of experts are not reflected in the increase in the number of people wishing to organize a tour or concert. “In this area, it is not customary to talk about bankruptcy, and no matter how bad it was, the organizers claim that everything went great,” says the MK source. — It’s true that newcomers don’t really understand how this business works. They say they sold the tickets and cut off the money. There are a lot of such young people with money and the desire to hold concerts, and the number is growing. Due to the pandemic, some promotion companies of course went bankrupt. However, after February 2022, there were fewer artists, and the organizers decided that in this situation the fees would be better, because the viewer’s ruble is conventionally divided not into ten, but into five. At some point, everyone was inspired by the sold-out stadiums, and people rushed into this business again. Although most of the sold-out stadiums are exaggerated.”

At the end of the warm season, it can be argued that the capital’s music bill was not much different from last year. The selection of large events can hardly be called impressive, but there were quite a few events at the club level. It is very difficult to check loud, including stadium, sell-outs, but even “inflated” success is much better than cancellation.

At a time when large operators are engaged in ticket sales, cancellation does not mean deception – for an organization that values ​​​​its reputation, it is much easier to return several million for a concert that did not take place than to turn into dishonest businessmen in the eyes of the public. But even if there is not the fastest, but still working scheme for refunding money for tickets, each cancellation pretty much irritates everyone who is on different sides of the scenes. Only those who cancel seem calm.