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Between Saturday, May 16 and Friday, June 5, pop star Harry Styles will give ten concerts in the Johan Cruijff Arena. With about 700,000 visitors epxtected, Amsterdam expects a major economic boost.
Ticket sales and the number of foreign visitors have been somewhat disappointing: on resale platforms, tickets are sometimes offered for half the original price and 80 percent of buyers appear to be from the Netherlands. Still, the former One Direction member's concert series will not hurt the local economy.
The real economic value is not in the tickets alone. Revenue from ticket sales (averaging about 200 euros each) goes mostly to the artist and international organizers. Concertgoers also book one or more nights in a hotel and head into the city for shopping and a bite to eat in restaurants.
According to Martijn Mulder, researcher on live music at Erasmus University, research shows that a tour like this of Harry Styles has an economic effect with multiplier of five to six: for every euro a fan spends on a ticket, they spend 5 to 6 euros on things like food and transportation. With an average ticket price of 200 euros, ten sold-out shows generate some 700 million euros for the city of Amsterdam.
Residency model
The residency model, where the artist stays in one place and fans travel to him or her, is gaining popularity. "The artist used to travel to the audience, now the fans travel to the artist," says economist Walther Ploos at the Volkskrant. Those fans also want to meet each other. "You see them hanging out days in advance, singing songs, doing fun things."
The model, often with changing prices at different times, does encounter its limits. Harry Styles' concert series is not selling out. A spokesman for resale platform TicketSwap reports in newspapers that most buyers are from the Netherlands (80 percent) and Belgium (10 percent): "That could indicate that the will to travel far for this concert series is less than expected."
For Amsterdam, it does count that hundreds of thousands of foreign visitors are getting to know the city and may return later for another visit. Music tourists, however, do not bring in as much money as convention-goers: they stay in more luxurious hotels and spend more money when they visit restaurants.
Picture: © picture alliance / NurPhoto | Image Press Agency