Why Paul McCartney has joined the list of musicians bypassing Adelaide
PAUL McCartney won’t tour, neither will hometown girl Sia. Just what is wrong with Adelaide and can it be fixed before the city becomes a ghost town for music acts?
ADELAIDE is in danger of becoming a ghost town when it comes to concert tours of Australia.
South Australians are not happy that Sir Paul McCartney will literally fly over them when he tours here in December.
Even Adelaide’s biggest export, Sia, isn’t doing a hometown show when she tours at the end of the year.
Coldplay and Eminem have skipped Adelaide on past tours, angering local fans.
Now, some promoters are routing tours to Canberra, Newcastle, the Gold Coast or even Hobart rather than risking a low-selling show in Adelaide.
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For music promoters, the City of Churches is the most difficult market in Australia — for several reasons.
The Adelaide Entertainment Centre, when hosting a rock band such as Matchbox Twenty with a basic stage set up at one end of the venue, and general admission standing on the floor, maxes out at 9000 to 9500 capacity — making it the smallest arena of its type in the country. Most such venues in other cities hold an average of at least 12,000.
Veteran promoter Paul Dainty sees that as the key issue.
“That’s why they’re missing out on a lot of shows,” Dainty told News Corp Australia.
“For a lot of the major tours, tier one tours with huge production and 23 trucks to transport it around the country and a lot of people working on it, by the time you put that show in an 8000 seat venue it’s just not enough to make the numbers work.
“You just don’t make money going to an arena that size.”
Dainty is bringing Queen and Adam Lambert to Adelaide next year (for the first time since the mid ’80s) for two shows at the Entertainment Centre. Both are selling well.
While Sia is playing large outdoor shows in Sydney and Melbourne, promoter Michael Chugg couldn’t make a hometown concert work.
“While Adelaide fans are incredibly passionate and vocal, it has been proven time and time again that some tours aren’t commercially viable in the market,” Susan Heymann, MD at Chugg Entertainment said.
“Unfortunately, Sia’s upcoming tour falls into this category.”
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Not all major tours bypass Adelaide.
The right show at the right time in the right venue can work a treat.
Ed Sheeran will play a sold out show to 56,000 fans at Adelaide Oval next March.
The chart-topping Brit skipped Adelaide on his last tour — which has turned out to be handy, as promoters say the key to success in Adelaide is not saturating the market.
Sheeran’s concert will be the biggest show promoter Michael Gudinski has ever staged in Adelaide, beating the Rolling Stones show in 2014 when the veteran rockers christened the newly-renovated venue. (Adele’s in the round show, promoted by Live Nation, set the attendance record at Adelaide Oval with 70,000 earlier this year.)
The Stones gig, part-sponsored by the state government, gave SA a tourism bump when the concert was announced a few weeks before the rest of the band’s Australian dates.
“Adelaide’s changed a lot with the Adelaide Oval having such an influence on the city,” Gudinski said.
However, Adelaide Oval has Test cricket matches scheduled during Paul McCartney’s December tour window — sport venue turf is literally hallowed ground and tens of thousands of music fans stomping over it can prove to be a major problem.
Financially for McCartney and his backers, it also makes more sense to do a second Melbourne or Sydney show, where the concert infrastructure is already assembled, rather than add in further expensive travelling in a market where a sell out is far from guaranteed.
“It was a matter of timing and logistics,” Gudinski said of McCartney skipping Adelaide.
“He doesn’t like being away for long periods, that’s why it took so long to confirm the tour.
“At one point there was no Perth show either.”
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NO HALF MEASURES
There are more factors at play.
Adelaide has the highest unemployment rate in the country — which surely eats into disposable income.
Promoters say what works best in the city is musical acts that appeal to a young or older demographic, with anything in-between a major risk.
“In Adelaide there seems to be no half measures,” Gudinski said.
“You either sell it out or you’re in trouble. It can be very risky to play there.
“Sales-wise, a lot of people have been hurt. There was a saying for a long time that the trucks drive past Adelaide on the way to Perth.”
Adelaideans also have a reputation for taking their sweet time before buying tickets — making promoters very nervous.
There’s been a long history of Adelaide fans opting to wait for a chance to secure a cheap ticket to a show at the last minute. Now the rise of discount ticket site LastTix has given them a legitimate reason to wait.
Initially the site was where theatre shows would turn to sell — or dump — tickets at seriously reduced rates.
It’s now being used by some music promoters — Adelaide concerts are a regular fixture — tapping into residents’ ingrained ‘wait and see’ mentality.
Chris O’Brien, who was one of the key players behind the Soundwave Festival and is now head of touring at the country’s major heavy rock and metal promoter Destroy All Lines, said the LastTix mentality has become a major issue.
“There’s a general apathy of people thinking they can wait to the very last minute and buy tickets and they’ll be OK,” O’Brien said.
“That’s been born out of some promoters discounting tickets to shows.
“That is one thing we refuse to do as a company; we don’t want to train our market to think if they hold out there’ll be cheap tickets.
“That thinking has had a bigger impact than people might think, not just in Adelaide.
“It’s had a huge impact on us. A lot of our fans email us or ask on Facebook to see if the tickets are going to be sold cheaper.
“Unless a show sells out in the first few days you find people are now waiting to the last minute because if you’ve seen shows at 50 per cent or 60 per cent off, why wouldn’t you wait?
“For some promoters it’s part of their budget, if it doesn’t do well they can still make money on the tour by discounting tickets on the back end.
“If a tour doesn’t sell out immediately now, people wait. That’s why you get those secondary ticketing companies coming through offering major discounts.
“I get daily updates from companies like LastTix; there’s dozens of different offers from comedy to blues to jazz to rock to theatre. That’s a huge issue for the touring market.”
Soundwave struggled after 2013 in Adelaide, eventually axing shows in the city.
O’Brien says local Adelaide radio is geared towards older listeners and there aren’t enough live venues supporting local bands.
“If kids don’t grow up loving live music that makes it incredibly difficult for promoters to take bands there.”
Adelaide venues the Thebarton Theatre and the Gov host live shows, with HQ currently being upgraded in size and due reopen in September.
Often Adelaide fans will start petitions or bombard promoters or bands when tours bypass their town — something that’s happened with everyone from Culture Club to McCartney in recent years.
A petition to get Culture Club to Adelaide last year worked, although their Entertainment Centre show didn’t quite sell out.
“Sometimes it’s a storm in a teacup,” O’Brien said.
“The internet is the loudest place on earth. You might have 200 people complaining on Facebook and also directly to the band because a tour isn’t going to Adelaide. You get managers and agents calling you up, and my argument is even if all those 200 people bought tickets it still isn’t enough to warrant going to Adelaide.
“There’s no guarantees they’ll buy tickets anyway. The proof has to be in the ticket sales. It’s as simple as economics get.
“Adelaide shows tend to open very slowly, and as it limps along you think, ‘Is it going to come home? Do I need to spend more money on marketing?’ And even if you do, the sales don’t necessarily pick up.”
Many bands who have had Adelaide stops booked in the past have suddenly had “unforeseen circumstances” and axed SA shows from the tour.
In 2014 Elvis Costello cut his Adelaide show, admitting to poor ticket sales for the 2000-seat Thebarton Theatre.
An extra Melbourne show was announced to take its place, which sold out.
WORRIED ABOUT ADELE
Michael Coppel, who promoted shows in Adelaides for decades before joining touring giant Live Nation, admits he wasn’t even sure Adele would sell out her Adelaide Oval show earlier this year — she went on to set the record for tickets sold at the venue.
“Commercially Adelaide is a city you always have a bit of trepidation about,” Coppel said. “When we went there with Adele I was nervous.
“I was worried we’d get to 30,000 tickets sold in a 70,000 venue and it’d stop dead, that would have been a disaster.
“But it sold through in the end and it was a great show.
“But often in Adelaide you don’t get the commercial return. If you’ve got a limited amount of shows you can do on a tour, you have decide where they go.
“You know, Melbourne, Sydney, Auckland and Brisbane are great markets, but Adelaide can be difficult, so do you really want to make the tour national or just do East Coast?
“If you don’t do Adelaide, you often don’t do Perth because you haven’t got the stop over to pay some of the costs of getting across.
“It can be a very frustrating market. When you run out of steam in ticket sales it’s really hard to get it moving again.
“When things sell out instantly, like I’ve had with Matchbox Twenty in the past, I actually have to ask them to check the figures to make sure they’re correct!”
There are other options in South Australia, including outdoor shows in weather-friendly months.
Paul Dainty has outdoor shows booked in Botanic Park for both Lionel Richie and Cat Stevens later this year — artists who fit nicely into that older demographic.
Earlier this year Dainty sold 34,000 tickets for Guns N’ Roses at Adelaide Oval.
A Day on the Green have been using three picturesque wineries in South Australia for their outdoor concerts since 2003.
This week they announced an SA winery bill with John Farnham, Mondo Rock, Kate Ceberano, the Badloves and Russell Morris for November.
ADOTG co-founder Mick Newton said a mix of quantity and quality has been key.
“People just don’t seem to go out in Adelaide that much. But they also have a lot of stuff going on in February and March: Womadelaide, Fringe, Clipsal 500, the Garden of Unearthly Delights. A lot of people focus on those homegrown events.
“We don’t do too many A Day on the Green shows there each year, that’s important. When we have done too many it hasn’t worked. We have lost money over there, but it has (largely) been pretty kind to us.
“But South Australia doesn’t compare well to the rest of Australia, it’s always the weakest market. There’s only been a few shows where we’ve reached 10,000 capacity.
“But we’re a national brand, we’ll always play Adelaide.”
Duane McDonald’s Red Hot Summer Tour is another success story for South Australia.
He admits he has had more success with shows in regional areas than in the city.
At one John Farnham concert in Mannum, near the Murray River, 6000 tickets were sold in an area with a population of just 12,000 people.
Some artists enjoy the intimacy of the Adelaide Entertainment Centre, even if their accountants may not.
Taylor Swift’s 1989 tour played the venue, one of the smallest on the pop superstar’s entire world tour.
Bruce Springsteen particularly loves the venue, specifically requesting to play there.
“It’s a bit small for him,” promoter Michael Gudinski said.
“It doesn’t make financial sense, but he loved it so much he wanted to go back there. It was one of his favourite venues, he even sold the seats behind him.”
Dainty says the SA Government needs to get involved if the state wants to remain a fixture on the touring circuit.
“Adelaide is growing, it almost needs another arena with 11,000 or 12,000 seats. I hear there’s rumblings around the Government in South Australia, they’re going to have to think about building a bigger arena or extending the existing one.”
But it’s too late for Chris O’Brien — after a string of low selling heavy rock shows he is now re-routing most of his tours away from Adelaide
“I’m pulling 70 per cent of our tours in the last 12 months from going to Adelaide, concentrating on the east coast. I’ve pulled a lot out of Perth as well,” he said.
“On one recent tour I had Adelaide in the budget then pulled it out and did Canberra instead and ended up doing huge numbers in Canberra.
“I’m going to start looking into secondary markets compared to Adelaide — maybe Newcastle or Canberra, Hobart, the Gold Coast or even the Northern Territory.
“You just can’t afford as a promoter to hope the East Coast shows will prop up Adelaide anymore.
“You want to go to territories where people are starved for music and will support it.
“From my perspective as a promoter, if those markets are hungry and they want to support those tours it’s a bit of a no brainer for us.
“We’ll happily put shows there instead of Adelaide.
“It’s not that we don’t want to see shows in Adelaide, but if you keep putting shows there and they don’t sell well, but everywhere else does, it just comes down to pure economics.”
As for people in Adelaide who want to see Paul McCartney or Sia this year ... unfortunately it’s a case of, if they won’t come to you, you’ll have to go to them.
