“Who can afford to go to multiple shows?” says the anonymous tour manager. “Two tickets to a show, you’re talking probably about $200 with fees and everything. You go to a meal around the show, you’re talking at least $100 or $200 for a nice dinner. Then you got parking and babysitters, then you add the VIP stuff to that and you want to make it a special night, you’re talking $500 to $1,000 a night for a couple to go out. It’s capitalism at its best.”
It seems silly to believe every artist with a label can go on an arena tour. In my city arena shows used to be reserved for the biggest of the big. Now no touring bands will play smaller venues and simultaneously perplexed why fans won’t show up at $200 a seat. Meanwhile the medium venues are either hosting the same local bands repeatedly, or closing.
What a conundrum.
Big arenas are heavily subsidized by the municipality. They support a constellation of vendors and consultants and advertisers, all vested in its success. They create their own kind of economic gravity that draws the industry in around it. And when they can’t bring in customers to justify their existence, they accrue enormous amounts of debt and trigger regional downturns in their collapse.
This should never happen and they should have never existed if that was the only way they would have been built.
I don’t care how wrong my country believes I am, municipal/state/federal aid/tax advantages should never go to any for private profit enterprise, ever, let alone multi billion dollar sport franchises, whats next, subsidizing big oil companies? Lol yeah, this is a dark fucking time-line.
If the city/county/state can afford such things, help people from the bottom up. House the homeless. Fix your shit schools instead of selling them out to the charter school scam. Oh and “it will foster revenue so it’s a good deal!” Is always a lie because it’s never certain yet is always portrayed as such, it doesn’t always work out, and it creates massive failures when the house of cards eventually fall and those dependant on that state sponsored lie also fail as you said.
Cities/counties/states shouldn’t be gambling with their citizens money to potentially, tangentially benefit them while further enriching those with too much directly as a sure thing. But of course the rigged market capitalism true believer officials get bribed either way in some of form or another, so it won’t stop till the track (society) collapses from its profound, private profit driven neglect.
You still see plenty of small shops in my area.