Ten of the 36 originally scheduled shows for this first-in-11-years Lilith were canceled for lack of sales. Some of the biggest and doubtless most expensive acts originally announced as participants - from Kelly Clarkson to Queen Latifah - dropped out of the rotating lineups. Here, nu-soul sensation Janelle Monae mysteriously fell off the program at the 11th hour.
By my nose count, fewer than 5,000 people were floating around the 25,000-capacity, riverside venue July 28. Most were planted, initially, in the really cheap lawn seats costing just $10, if you timed your purchase right.
Also pointing to the weakness of the concert business this summer have been a rash of cancellations of entire tours (Christina Aguilera, Limp Bizkit, Simon & Garfunkel) and select dates by the likes of the Jonas Brothers, Rihanna, this year's "American Idol" crew, and that ostensibly "super" country-rock crossover bill of the Eagles, Dixie Chicks and Keith Urban, which blew off stadium dates here at Citizens Bank Park on June 14 and in Hershey the following night.
An especially gloomy, doomy picture of the usually recessionproof concert business was painted recently by the Wall Street Journal, analyzing the downturn in sales by Live Nation, the world's most dominant concert promoter and order processor through its recently acquired Ticketmaster division. As a publicly traded company, Live Nation has to spill its collective guts every quarter.
The numbers revealed, most recently on Thursday, have not been pretty, with a net loss for the concert division of $34.6 million for the last quarter, ticket sales down 12.6 percent, and projected adjusted operating income for the entire year looking to be down about 10 percent from 2009.
