When Madonna was compelled to reschedule her 84-date Celebration Tour on Wednesday after she was stricken with a bacterial an infection and hospitalized within the ICU, concern instantly turned to the pop celebrity’s well being (fortunately, she’s anticipated to make a full restoration). However for business watchers, the postponement additionally raises an fascinating query: Simply how a lot does it value to reschedule a tour of that magnitude?
It’s inconceivable to provide you with a stable quantity given all the shifting components concerned in a tour of this scale, significantly with out gaining access to any insurance coverage insurance policies or contracts with venues and distributors. However suspending that giant of a tour simply over two weeks in need of the July 15 opener on the Rogers Enviornment in Vancouver, Canada — after which rescheduling it — will nonetheless quantity to an enormous endeavor requiring hours of telephone calls, disruptions to folks’s lives and loads of sunk prices for venues, present crew members, ticket patrons and Madonna herself.
Stay Nation and Madonna’s touring staff have already spent hundreds of thousands on tools and infrastructure. Whereas a lot of the present is custom-built and designed, there are many manufacturing items — from audio system to staging — which can be rented from main backline firms. The tour has additionally chartered buses and vehicles and rented venues, that are expenditures that require deposits with various prices relying on demand and availability.
Stay Nation and the Madonna tour must pay a few of these deposits, particularly for these high-demand gadgets that may’t be redirected towards different excursions. In some instances, they may even be on the hook for venue deposits for canceled exhibits, though most venues will waive the associated fee to take care of a great relationship with Stay Nation, which brings many arenas most of their touring content material.
The biggest group impacted by the postponement would be the roughly 1.2 million followers who bought tickets for the tour, representing a whole bunch of hundreds of thousands of {dollars} in income. Some followers booked airline tickets, lodge rooms and rental properties across the tour, and a few of these purchases will probably be deemed non-refundable. These followers must make new plans after the rescheduled Madonna dates are introduced, doubtless someday within the subsequent few weeks. Those that can’t attend may be capable of get a refund, relying on what Madonna’s staff decides, or promote their tickets on both a fan-to-fan alternate for face worth or on a ticket resale website like StubHub or Vivid Seats.
The biggest human prices will probably be borne by a a lot smaller group: the women and men working as roadies, touring professionals and assist workers for the tour. With simply over two weeks to go earlier than opening, most positions on the tour have been crammed, and plenty of have began work constructing units, enhancing content material and rehearsing. As unbiased contractors, rescheduling the tour means their pay will probably be interrupted too, doubtlessly leaving a whole bunch of individuals unemployed after they had deliberate to be working. Whereas many, relying on the state, will obtain a small severance and qualify for restricted unemployment advantages, the disruption attributable to the postponement will nearly actually imply that many touring professionals won’t generate the earnings that they had budgeted for this 12 months and can now need to spend the months they thought that they had safe employment on the lookout for new work.
Luckily, as a result of the live performance enterprise is at the moment so sturdy on the highest stage, there are extra work alternatives in touring now than ever earlier than, and a few crew members will be capable of instantly discover substitute gigs. Others, nonetheless, must wait months till the rescheduled Madonna tour launches.
For the touring operation itself, the prices of the postponement might simply add as much as hundreds of thousands of {dollars}. However the Celebration Tour has been so profitable — greater than 600,000 tickets had been bought the primary day tickets went on sale — that it’ll nonetheless quantity to an enormous monetary windfall for Stay Nation and Madonna when the tour ultimately hits the highway. That doesn’t imply it’ll be simple for everybody getting there
