Those cities that Graham Skellern mentioned in his editorial, like Hamilton, Nelson and Hastings, all have concert halls that can take larger crowds than Baycourt. Gosh, even Ashburton has recently opened a fantastic entertainment centre.
And it wasn't just Baycourt that failed to build for the future. Look at the harbour bridge. No thought was given to the future when it was constructed as a two-lane crossing.
Years later, and at a great deal more cost to the city, we had to build another crossing alongside. Crazy. And we even got rid of tolls on the bridge.
But back to our city and the events the locals appear not to support. Of the 4500 people who attended the Earth, Wind and Fire concert at the Domain only 1125 were local.
There could have been a number of reasons for the crowd numbers being under the budgeted level of 6000, one of which could have been the act. They are a brilliant band, but certainly they would appeal to a few rather than the masses.
If it were Rod Stewart or Billy Joel it would have been a different story. You only have to look at how quickly the tickets sold for the Rod Stewart concert at the Mission estate.
They were gone in a matter of a few hours, and he had only played at that venue a few years before.
Without a doubt, more mainstream acts are going to bring the crowds and sell out venues. The Mills Reef Stars Under the Stars concert is another example of getting very good local support, but it does come at a cost. The bigger the name the more expensive it is for a promoter to run the show.
The other reason for lack of support could be money.
We have this reputation as $10 Tauranga and God forbid locals have to fork out $90 to $100 to go to see a band that they are not big fans of is a big ask.
There is also the matter of choice at the moment.
There are just so many events on that all require a reasonable amount of money to go and see, so a choice is required.
At the moment, The Jersey Boys musical is on at the Civic Theatre in Auckland. The show is on until June 17th and I know many locals are making the trip north to see it and believe me, it's worth it. It's like Graham Skellern said in his editorial, it's the complete package of the trip out of town, a night in the big city and a special show.
We definitely now have some top notch facilities in our city, like the TECT Arena at Baypark and the exciting and long overdue news last week that they have started work on the cricket oval at Blake Park to bring that up to international standard. So maybe there is some light at the end of the tunnel, but we do need to support these events.
This weekend, Hamilton becomes the centre of the universe with the Australian V8 Supercars saying farewell to the street circuit. It's not going because of lack of support over the years that it was run there. Every year more than 100,000 people turned up to watch the action and this weekend I am sure the crowd numbers will be huge. It's going because of the costs in setting a street circuit to race on. Those costs are huge, unfortunately. Legislation like the Resource Management Act does not make it easy for promoters of any event in this country.
