Let me start by categorically states that, “No event planner anywhere in the world can guarantee an audience, no matter the publicity put in place as a result of the too many variables involved.”
Live concerts and festivals are increasingly elaborate productions, generating enormous amounts of revenue. The ECOFEST and Madeng festival are clear manifestations of such events. However, accidents, cancellations and delays can seriously pose challenges to these events.
For instance, The 2022 ECOFEST event received mixed reactions from Sierra Leoneans in terms of attendance, despite the efforts put in by the organizers.
Entertainment Business has its risks and organizers cannot guarantee they will fill an arena to a certain capacity unless they buy the audience.
Performing arts are an integral part of any event. An event organizer has multiple priorities, but, hiring artists or performers is almost always the biggest one. Artists and performers add glamour to an event and hook the audience to attend. They are the ones who make the event memorable and attending it worthwhile.
Organizers of a show may have everything but artists may still fail to show up due to various reasons. Let us discuss a few challenges.
Limited talent pool
An event organizer keeps looking out for new and good talent for their events. The nature of the artist management industry makes this process hectic for them.
An event organizer has to remain in touch with multiple artist managers to access a decent pool of artists. This becomes even more difficult when you are not a seasoned event organizer and someone to perform at either a personal or a corporate event.
Expectation management
Event organizers have to keep in mind the profile of their audience while choosing the artists they are hiring. All artists have their influences and inspirations, which directly reflects in their art. The views or the message of what they are trying to perform, might not go well with the wrong audience profile. So, it becomes very important for event organizers to hire the right kinds of sets according to their expected audience expectations. These kinds of insights, which might help an organizer choose the right artist, are very rarely available in the market.
Unstructured payment
There is no way an organizer can know that what he is paying for hiring an artist is the right amount. There is no standardization in the payment and artist managers often do not quote the right amount.
This problem becomes even worse when an organizer has to hire multiple artists on a limited budget. Getting the right solution in such cases becomes very difficult for the organizers.
Lack of professionalism
In the developing stages, artists lack the right management skills and don’t have enough resources to hire the right management. This becomes a huge problem for organizers. They at times have to face unprofessional behaviour after hiring artists for their events. Although, there have been multiple cases where artists have faced issues such as stuck payments and rude behaviour. Still, the organizers as a whole face a lot of issues due to a lack of professionalism in artist management.