A case in point, he said, was House of Blues' decision to put jazz singer Diana Krall at Coors Amphitheatre this summer after she sold out two dates at the 2,000-seat Paramount Theater the previous year.
Source: http://www.denverpost.com/Stories/0,141 ... 41,00.html
The Denver Post
Music fans closing doors on "sheds"
Smaller venues top amphitheaters in summer concerts
By Ricardo Baca
Denver Post Pop Music Critic
Sunday, October 03, 2004 -
It's getting late in Colorado's temperamental outdoor concert season, something made obvious Saturday night as Red Rocks hosted its last gig of the year with Blues Traveler and Michael Franti & Spearhead.
Even bolder, House of Blues Concerts' last big outdoor hurrah of 2004 comes when Lil Jon & the Eastside Boyz invade Coors Amphitheatre on Oct. 14 for Crunktoberfest.
Red Rocks and Coors are Colorado's two most important amphitheaters, with the latter holding 16,800, almost twice as much as the legendary Red Rocks. This is noted only because when evaluating the summer concert season of 2004, the amphitheater is the story.
While business was up earlier this year at clubs, theaters and arenas, according to midyear stats released by industry magazine Pollstar, business dropped dramatically at the nation's amphitheaters.
The numbers tell a scary story for large amphitheaters and their owners. The total tickets sold for the nation's top 50 clubs was up 400,000 while top theaters saw an impressive increase of 840,000 and the top arenas jumped 800,000. Meanwhile the top 50 amphitheaters, nicknamed "sheds" in the industry, reported a decrease of 1.1 million tickets - a 35 percent dip.
Startling statistics
"Clearly, something is happening to the public's perception of the amphitheater experience," read the 2004 midyear business analysis, which called the trend "the most startling statistics" within the report and was careful to point out that "the heart of the shed season has yet to play out, but it appears that outdoor venues are going to take the brunt of the downturn we are seeing in sales."
Red Rocks, "the finest outdoor amphitheater in the world," according to Clear Channel Entertainment's local honcho Chuck Morris, didn't feel the pain. Both Clear Channel and House of Blues had stellar summers there with sellouts ranging from John Mayer to The Dead, A Perfect Circle to the Beastie Boys, which only took 46 minutes to sell out, according to Morris.
Things didn't go as swimmingly at Coors Amphitheatre, formerly Fiddler's Green, but the venue still ditched the troubling national trend with help from Tim McGraw, Linkin Park and OutKast's Big Boi, who headlined this summer's sold-out KS-107.5 Summer Jam. After Crunktoberfest, House of Blues is expecting the shed's numbers to be similar to those it racked up last summer.
"Our business was flat this summer," said Jim McCue, chief of House of Blues Concerts in Denver. "We hoped for growth, and we didn't grow."
Although the Pollstar report notes that the public's perception of the amphitheater experience is changing, House of Blues disagrees. "The amphitheater experience is still one that people look forward to," said Justin Levy, the company's local marketing director.
Bigger not always better
Doug Kauffman is one of the owners at Nobody in Particular Presents, which books the Bluebird, Ogden and Gothic theaters and the wildly successful outdoor Denver Botanic Gardens Concert Series. He thinks the large amphitheater experience has been waning for a while.
A case in point, he said, was House of Blues' decision to put jazz singer Diana Krall at Coors Amphitheatre this summer after she sold out two dates at the 2,000-seat Paramount Theater the previous year.
"In the end, it just doesn't work. If she can sell 4,000 tickets in a theater, then you're better suited to do just that rather than take it to a much larger scope and try doing the same thing in an 18,000-seat place," Kauffman said.
"And the experience for the audience is much different, too. It doesn't translate on that level, and you're not going to get the same results as you will selling out two nights in a place that's packed."
Kauffman said large shows in general - be it at the Pepsi Center or Coors Amphitheatre - are big risks he avoided this summer. The plan apparently paid off.
"Where you see the real deficit is on the very large shows," said Kauffman. "These large companies, meaning Clear Channel and House of Blues, are going to have to rethink their whole game plan. If their business model works on a large scale, it's through the roof.
"But if it doesn't, then whoever's backing up your business, whether it's investment banking in New York or a radio conglomerate in Texas, they're going to start asking questions when they see the balance sheets."
Sweating the small stuff
While House of Blues deals with its "flat" summer, Clear Channel and Nobody in Particular, neither of which book an amphitheater larger than Red Rocks, are coming out of the summer beaming. "We stayed out of the fray," said Kauffman, whose company endured a brutal summer in 2003.
And what is the fray?
"The really big shows that tanked. Sticking with the smaller stuff and not taking huge risks across the board is the way to go," he said. "These other companies have now forced themselves into taking on these big, risky propositions, and that's their bed so they can lay in it. I like where we're at, and I wouldn't trade it."
"I don't want to do Fleetwood Mac or Kiss or any of these bands that have played this market repeatedly and do less and less business every time. It's a losing proposition, ultimately."
Clear Channel Entertainment is coming off another strong year at Red Rocks. Its "boutique amphitheater," Universal Lending Pavilion, located in the unscenic parking lot of the Pepsi Center but convenient to downtown Denver, saw an increase of nearly 25 percent in ticket sales in its third summer.
"In a year in which it's been well-noted that the music touring business is extremely down, we've had a remarkably good year in Denver," Morris said. "We didn't break any records this year, but considering the light of the business, we're very blessed and fortunate."
Pop music critic Ricardo Baca can be reached at 303-820-1394 or rbaca@denverpost.com .
The point is, I like smaller venues and the crowds who attend. It probably weeds out the die hards from the bandwagoners too!