Hallenstadion in Zurich, Switzerland, wows audiences with its lighting and production value.
As we wrap up 2014 in our December print magazine, Venues Today is offering a little preview of what's to come in VT Pulse. Following are three facility managers' stories and opinions on how they have achieved success in 2014.
Guests walk up the iconic south stairs to enter shows at Royal Albert Hall in London. (Photo by Marcus Ginns)
Building Young London Audiences
Though the venue is 142 years old, Royal Albert Hall is focusing on bringing in younger audiences with unique and interactive offerings as well as tried and true favorites. With about 86-percent occupancy, the facility keeps busy with a solid audience. Recently, the venue has focused on creating events that appeal to the next generation.
Royal Albert Hall works with its performers and artists to create programs and workshops for students that have been very successful.
“We try to tie up a night or two in between performances or some other time we can do a workshop whenever fits their artistic program,” said Chris Cotton, the venue’s chief executive. “It builds an audience to come now, after the performance, and certainly builds an audience for the future.”
The facility has also seen success hosting films accompanied by a live orchestra performing the score, as well as sing-along events, most recently with the hit movie “Frozen,” Nov. 17. Ticket prices ranged from about $22-$45, which Cotton said isn’t that far off from going to the cinema. Royal Albert Hall hosts about eight film events each year.
This year, Royal Albert Hall hosted Cirque du Soleil's Quidam.
In addition to the unique events, the facility has about six months of the year accounted for with perennial favorites Cirque du Soleil for about two months, a month of Christmas shows, BBC Proms Festival for two months during the summer, and ballet and opera collectively for a month.
Though Cirque du Soleil has been coming to the facility for about 18 years, when Royal Albert Hall first brought the entity to the United Kingdom, it’s still a resounding success each year. In 2014, Cirque du Soleil Quidam grossed nearly $15.9 million with 62 performances.
“If you look at ticket sales every year, at least 40 percent of the audience have never been to Cirque before, so we’re constantly bringing in new audiences,” added Cotton. The facility hosts about 400 total shows each year.
He believes audiences and artists will continue to be attracted to Royal Albert Hall for its history, prestige and intimacy. Though it holds a maximum of about 5,200 people, Cotton said the hall provides a great connection between artist and audience.
“That’s why, if you’re on your way up you want to play Royal Albert Hall because, apart from being one of the oldest venues in the world, it has a great feeling,” Cotton said. “And if you’ve made your name, you want to keep your name by playing Royal Albert Hall because it helps you keep that connection to your audience.”
The Tuning Fork adds a personal touch at Vector Arena in Auckland, New Zealand.
Vector Arena Opens Lounge Space For Connection
Stuart Clumpas still isn’t quite used to the large, less personal world of arenas. The Scotland transplant and director of Vector Arena in Auckland, New Zealand, used to run festivals and small facilities in Scotland.
“Quite simply, I really missed the small gig,” he said. “I love the interface of dealing with the artist directly.”
The arena boss satisfied his longing by opening a 375-capacity venue and bar space, the Tuning Fork, in the arena’s lobby.
“One day I stood on a table of the bar, looked at it and said, ‘I think I can make this a good place for gigs,’” Clumpas added. He invested more than $200,000 to ‘rock n’ roll’ up the bar, which he described as previously resembling a hotel lobby. The Tuning Fork received a state-of-the-art sound system, new carpeting and a renovated backstage area, as well as draping around the front of house and the addition of rock memorabilia like tour posters and set lists.
Clumpas has been only seriously focused on booking The Tuning Fork since the New Year, and sees the little space as more of a passion project and PR move than a profitable venture.
“It doesn’t make us any money I don’t think, but I don’t care,” he says. “It gives us a sense of integrity in the local area so we’re not just somewhere that does the big shows, but also really a place for the people.”
The Tuning Fork certainly keeps the lights on and the facility busy, with five shows in July alone, including a performance by Marlon Williams and Melody Pool that grossed nearly $5,000. In August, Live Nation promoted A Great Big World at the Tuning Fork, with a gross of more than $4,700.
So far, the Tuning Fork’s largest grosses have come from Pokey LaFarge, March 19, with a gross of nearly $11,000, and a QPAM-promoted Jason Isbell date, April 12, which grossed nearly $13,000 the same day that Billy Connolly played the arena. Overall, the new addition contributed more than $66,000 to the overall gross at Vector Arena for 2014 Top Stops.
If nothing else, the Tuning Fork provides a place for Clumpas’ Americana passion and gets people in the door.
“People come to the small gigs, and maybe will feel more comfortable and excited coming to the big gigs, so that’s what it’s all about,” he added.
Hallenstadion hosts Masters of Dirt April 30.
Hallenstadion’s Challenging Season
At Hallenstadion in Zurich, Switzerland, it was a good year, just not an extraordinary year. Sold-out shows for Robbie Wiliams and Justin Timberlake at the 13,000-seat arena were accompanied by disappointments like a Kylie Minogue concert that was attended by only 4,000 people, making for a very up and down season but still earning them a number one spot in Venues Today’s Year End Top Stops.
“In my opinion, we have an extreme overload of live entertainment in the small country of Switzerland,” said Felix Frei, CEO of Hallenstadion, “and I could see and feel that this started to hit different promoters and concerts.”
Hallenstadion employed a new open-house strategy with their promoters this year in an effort to combat the oversaturation of shows. Before, they had an exclusive partnership with a top Swiss promoter, which Frei called “risky” in the present state of the market. Now they work with 10-12 different promoters to bring in shows and are already benefiting from the change and plan to continue it in the coming year.
High ticket prices also present a challenge to Hallenstadion, with high margins being added to prices so that an average show could have a minimum ticket price of $100. For popular concerts, that number can more than double, with tickets costing audiences $200 to $300. Frei said Switzerland is an expensive country, and people generally earn more in comparison, but the prices are getting too high even for Swiss budgets to handle.
“It’s a strong market and people are earning a lot of money in general but there’s still a limit, and I feel this limit is already reached now,” said Frie. “So I believe that some shows haven’t been sellouts by far only because of the high ticket prices.”
If both these things don’t begin to change and balance out, Frei believes it will hit venues and promoters hard and that they might even see some promoters start to go bankrupt as a result.
In spite of these difficulties, Frei is looking forward to one of their final sold-out events of the year at Hallenstadion, Match for Africa, in aid of the Roger Federer Foundation. After hosting the event five years ago, the Dec. 21 exhibition tennis match between the two Swiss stars Roger Federer and Stan Wawrinka is a popular event for Swiss audiences who do not get to attend many tennis matches, and for Hallenstadion which is not normally a tennis arena.
Interviewed for this story: Stuart Clumpas, +64 9 358 1250; Chris Cotton, 020 7589 3203; Felix Frei, +41 44 316 7777