"Area venues buck national trend
By Chad Kile
The Oklahoman

Summer’s a bummer for the concert industry, dealing with fewer tours and lower ticket sales on a national level, but the fallout has skipped Oklahoma City venues.
High costs associated with bringing major artists to venues make moderate-size facilities such as the Ford Center and Zoo Amphitheater more enticing for artists and promoters, said Stan Soocher, a music business professor from the University of Colorado at Denver.

“The smaller the venue, the more likely that the venue will be sold out,” he said.

At the Ford Center, which is managed privately for the city, attendance levels have averaged 10,600 this year compared with 10,465 in 2003, said Gary Desjardins, general manager for the facility.

Because recognizable names do well at small venues such as the zoo, ticket sales are up by about 20 percent over last year, said Howard Pollack, manager and promoter of the amphitheater.

“Oklahoma City seems to be an anomaly,” he said. “Oklahoma City seems to be doing fairly well in comparison to the rest of the country.”

Soocher said providing a balanced combination of tours during the season is important for attracting audiences, which is what didn’t happen this year across the country as a whole.

“Soft summers come and go; this is not the first soft summer,” he said. “Each summer is a brand new summer market, so it’s always a question of packaging the right shows.”

The top 50 tours in the country have seen ticket sales drop by about 2 percent this year, Desjardins said.

In Oklahoma, though, there are fewer expensive shows this year, and instead more moderately priced acts are coming to the area, helping to keep audience numbers level with last year, he said.

“We’re getting most of the major tours that are out on tour right now,” Desjardins said about acts coming to The Ford Center. “Not all of them, - (we) don’t expect to necessarily get all of them - but we’re certainly getting more than our fair share. Oklahoma City has a very good reputation in the industry right now, which is good.”

The Ford Center is ranked 25th nationally in concert ticket sales, according to Pollstar, a concert-industry trade publication

More consumer-friendly prices are reducing gross sales, however, which declined by about $2 million for the first six months in 2004.

Ford Center concert ticket prices this year range from $23 to $98. Prices were higher in the first two years the center was open, when some of the country’s top concert tours - including Paul McCartney, the Rolling Stones, the Eagles, Billy Joel, Elton John and the Dixie Chicks - made stops at Ford Center.

Even so, Desjardins said the decrease isn’t alarming.

“We had more of the moderately priced tickets than some of those ones that skewed much higher, and that’s the only reason for us not grossing as much.”

To account for this year’s jump in ticket sales at the zoo, Pollack credits about $500,000 in improvements that the facility has undergone over the past two seasons.

Closing in on summer’s end, depressed concert ticket sales on a national level make more of a difference as the industry depends on concerts to bolster fiscal success in the age of Internet-downloads, Soocher said.

“In this kind of atmosphere that we’re in today with the music business, a soft concert summer hurts more than it did a few years ago when we had higher record (album) sales.”

Consumers seem to be accepting expensive ticket prices, but are probably attending fewer concerts overall as a result, Soocher said.

Ticket prices, set by delicate balancing maneuvers between artists and promoters, are indicative of the high risks involved in producing concerts. Artists often require expensive guarantees for their performances, putting the strain on promoters to attract audiences to a show, Desjardins said.

“There are times when the artist is dictating what the ticket price is,” he said. “The promoters are the ones who are guaranteeing the money to the artist and are on the hook as to whether or not they can make any money.”

In the end, a tour’s success will depend on consumers and their tastes - which in entertainment, like many other sectors, are volatile, Soocher said. "