Dayo Showemimo, the media consultant, has weighed in on the growing debate around concert ticket prices in Nigeria.
In an interview with TheCable Lifestyle, Showemimo said while Nigerian fans are Afrobeats most essential audience, they are the least valued financially, driving top artistes to prioritize overseas tours.
Showemimo explained that this financial imbalance is at the heart of the current debate over soaring concert ticket prices in Nigeria.
He pointed to the stark disparity in streaming payouts, where royalties from platforms like Spotify and YouTube for Nigerian streams are far lower than those from Europe or America. This, he said, makes international tours more lucrative for artistes.
“If you pay attention to the industry, you would argue that the Nigerian music audience are the most important in the world when it comes to the Afrobeats movement,” he said.
“Nigerian fans are the most important in the world but unfortunately we are not the most valuable financially and that is reflected in how much YouTube, Spotify pay you if you gets streams from Nigeria compared to when you get streams from Europe or America.
“Nigerian artistes prefer to tour in Europe, America because it is more valuable financially and more rewarding.
“Most of these diaspora fans, most of whom will come to Nigeria are used to buying regular tickets from about €50 to €120 and if you convert that to naira, it is pretty much what is reflecting in the ticket prices we are seeing now.”
He explained that the pricing, however, clashes with longstanding local expectations. According to him, Nigerian audiences have historically paid far less, with regular tickets costing between N5,000 and N10,000.
Showemimo argued that these prices are no longer sustainable.
“Now the Nigerian fans are used to having regular tickets for about N5k, N10k but everyone is forgetting that fuel, electricity, transportation and even the artiste fee is now expensive,” he said.
“So there is no way anyone would do as how of N5k, N10k would break even. That is why you see that even brands struggle to sponsor events because they have all done it in the past and they have all lost money.”
Showemimo added that the exorbitant booking fees for top-tier artistes have made staging major concerts in Nigeria a high-risk venture.
While acknowledging the economic realities forcing prices up, he concluded that the approach to pricing has lacked sensitivity. He called for greater awareness from artistes regarding the plight of the average Nigerian.
“That also explains the reason why your top ten artistes do not perform in Nigeria anymore, when last did you catch them doing events in Lagos? Because look at what their rate card is saying? $200,000 per event, who is paying that in Lagos? Nobody,” he added.
“The only thing I think should have happened is that it should have been a bit subsidised. Our artistes should understand what the minimum wage in Nigeria is saying. The minimum wage is barely N70,000 and if you are lucky, you are earning above that.
“To go and see for instance Davido, you would spend on tickets, transportation, feeding. Is it affordable? So that is why I said the artistes themselves should have been fairer in the pricing.”
See the full interview below:
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