Large indoor arena would be 'game changer' for Dubai concert scene (page 1 of 3)

The recent announcement that Jennifer Lopez will perform in Dubai in November is the latest coup for Dubai's concert industry, which has also recently played host to other well-known acts such as The Eagles and Usher. But the success that Dubai has achieved pales in comparison to the recent string of high-profile concerts hosted by its neighbour Abu Dhabi.

To get a better perspective on how Dubai's concert industry has evolved, the obstacles that it faces and the changes that would help boost the sector, AMEInfo.com spoke with Thomas Ovesen, COO of Done Events, the emirate's largest concert promoter.

How do you select the acts that you bring to Dubai?

It's difficult to know if we are giving people what they want or what we think they want. On one hand it's a mix of a gut feeling and the performer's position on the sales chart. But you can't always go by CD sales, because if you look at an artist like Rhianna, many of her fans might think they are too cool to buy CDs.

It also becomes a choice of either going middle of the road or targeting a niche segment. I think in the past we as promoters in Dubai were too focussed on catering only to Western expats. We were looking for mature audiences because we knew they wouldn't care if they were paying 250 dirhams or 350 dirhams since it wasn't very often that some event was happening.

So perhaps we misunderstood in the early days the power of appealing to younger audiences, but now we are definitely targeting the younger age group.

And we've gone for volume. We've acknowledged the fact that we can't play it safe and sit and cherry pick one or two events a year that make a big profit and try and live off that. It doesn't work because the team you need to execute these big events needs to be paid every month; you can't just hire them in occasionally. So you need the volume.

Is it difficult to convince acts to come to Dubai?

In the early days you would have to explain to a manager how far Dubai is from Iraq or Afghanistan, but that has changed and Dubai and Abu Dhabi are definitely on the map and people know that it is a safe tour destination.

Keep in mind, 99% of all western artists that play in the UAE get a higher fee for their performance here than they do anywhere else. One of the reasons why artists who come here expect to get a higher fee is because in Europe or North America they can move everything by truck and perform in Paris one night and Munich the next, so there are no loss-of-revenue days in between events. On the other hand, when you play Dubai you lose one or two days on either side for travel, plus you have to freight the equipment.

And to some extent over the past ten years we have been sustaining that expectation by competing with ourselves in Dubai and when you compete you obviously throw more money at the artist, and when the party was over in Dubai, it picked up again in Abu Dhabi. And so we have spoiled the international artist, and that combined with the extra cost that they do face means that we have a very high cost price. So if we continue as we are doing now we will reach a saturation point with regards to how many shows we can produce throughout the season.

What is the biggest challenge that the industry faces in Dubai?

Building a large indoor arena would be a game-changer for the industry. Not only would it extend the season into the hot months, but it would greatly reduce our costs and enable us to have more shows.