The future operators of Tasmania’s proposed Macquarie Point stadium are already in talks with major international concert promoters about bringing “exclusive” events to the state.
Stadiums Tasmania’s James Avery told a parliamentary committee on Tuesday that discussions are underway with Live Nation, TEG and Frontier Touring about which artist should open the venue.
“Artists, international artists want to come to Tasmania. We haven’t had the facilities to be able to showcase them or be able to make it stack up from an economical point of view,” he said.
“This would obviously change that. The confidence that it’s instilled in the market from a concert promotion perspective is leading us to have conversations about getting some artists down here in the lead-up to the venue being open as well.”
The committee heard the multi-purpose stadium aims to host 334 events across 337 days each year, including 34 live sport and entertainment events and 40 major conferences.
Avery said they are targeting “exclusive” Australian concerts to draw visitors from interstate and overseas.
“If you can get an artist coming from overseas to play one concert in Australia and that happens to be at our venue, your ability to attract interstate travellers and also from New Zealand and some other locations outside of Australia increases significantly,” he said.
“And that’s been a focus of our discussions with concert promoters.”
“So we need to get the balance right to ensure that as many Tasmanians as possible can enjoy these types of events, particularly because they could be new types of events to the state.”
“But clearly, the visitation economy and the tourism economy that underpins the modelling is critical as well.”
“So that’s part of our challenge, but we feel confident we’ll be able to strike the right balance to ensure that we can meet both needs.”
In August last year, the boss of one of the world’s largest entertainment promoters said the proposed stadium would “surprise everybody” with its ability to attract major acts to Tasmania.
TEG Group chief executive Geoff Jones – who was overseeing the Iron Maiden tour at the time – said the band could have drawn a “really good crowd” of up to 15,000 people to Macquarie Point.
“My experience – and the experience a lot of us have in the industry – [is that] cities like Hobart or Launceston or Newcastle or Geelong or [the] Gold Coast, all these sorts of places, when you bring quality content to them, people want to go and see that quality content,” Jones said.
“I think the new stadium when it’s built in Hobart will be exactly that sort of scenario. People will want to come to it. Promoters will want to bring content there.”
