Small concert halls have noticed a “catastrophic” drop in attendance since the announcement of the government’s COVID-19 plan B, with some of them “closing permanently,” a music charity said.
The Music Venue Trust said concert attendance fell 23% in one week, with more than 140,000 no-shows from ticket holders, resulting in a 27% drop in gross revenue.
According to an investigation through the organisation at local sites, the sector faces losses of around £2 million, and is now calling on Culture Secretary Nadine Dorries to create a “delimited stabilisation fund”.
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This comes after the government announced the Plan B resolution on December 8 in reaction to coronavirus cases and the spread of the new variant of Omicron, with COVID passes now in place in England.
Beverley Whitrick, chief strategy officer at MVT, said: “This is the busiest time of year for popular concert venues, accounting for more than 20% of their annual profits raised during the holiday season. “
“Rapid declines in attendance at this time of year pose an exponential risk to the entire industry, and losses of this magnitude can be sustained without putting a bunch of concert halls into crisis mode and risking permanent closure.
“A ‘no show’ is not just a loss of revenue from price tickets, it is a loss of bars and excessive costs. “
Advance-priced ticket sales also fell 27%, the charity found, while around 61% of sites also said they had to cancel at least once in the week of Dec. 6-13, with the main cause being an artist or member of an excursion. positive for COVID (35. 6%).
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The effects were collected from a survey through the Music Venues Alliance, a network of 918 concert halls in the UK, of which 284 responded.
MVT chief executive Mark Davyd said: “It feels like we’re back precisely where we were in March 2020, when confusing messages from the government created a ‘stealth lock’ – it supposedly puts you capable of opening but a hemorrhage of cash at a rate that will inevitably lead to permanent shutdowns unless the government temporarily acts to save it. “
A spokesperson for the Department of Digital, Culture, Media and Sport said culture, heritage and arts sectors had won “unprecedented” support for the pandemic through the Culture Recovery Fund.
“So far, more than £1. 3 billion has been allocated to around 5,000 organisations and individual sites,” the DCMS spokesperson said. And it will help organizations until spring 2022. program under active review and the most productive way to adapt it to the wishes of the sector. “