Skip to main content

Advertisement

Advertisement

Britney Spears concert facing poor showing

SINGAPORE – Pop princess Britney Spears is due to perform here in three weeks, but apparently not many want a piece of her.

Britney Spears performs during her concert in Tokyo on June 3. Singapore will be her seventh stop in her tour. Photo: AP

Britney Spears performs during her concert in Tokyo on June 3. Singapore will be her seventh stop in her tour. Photo: AP

SINGAPORE – Pop princess Britney Spears is due to perform here in three weeks, but apparently not many want a piece of her.

Tickets sales for the June 30 Britney Live in Singapore concert appear to be moving slowly. The cheapest ticket for the concert is $188 for a restricted view, and the most expensive tickets go for $568.

A check by TODAY as at 8.30pm on Friday (June 9) on the SportsHub Ticketing website showed that most of the Category 1 ($568), Category 2 (SS$468) are still mostly available, as are the restricted view tickets in Category 4 (S$468) and Category 5 (S$368).

Only the Category 6 (S$188, restricted view) and Category 7 (S$268) tickets are sold out, while the “nosebleed” Category 3 (S$368) tickets have several “limited availability” sections.

Could the poor sales have to do with the high ticket prices?

In comparison, other popular artistes’ performing at the Indoor Stadium are selling tickets at up to half the price of a Spears ticket.

(The floor plan for Britney Spears' concert.)

Tickets to Taiwanese singer-songwriter A-mei’s concert on June 9 and June 10 are priced from S$98 to S$288, while Chinese singer-songwriter G.E.M.’s August concert is priced from S$128 to S$248.

English sing-songwriter Ed Sheeran’s concerts in November are sold out. Ticket prices range from S$108 to S$248 and were snapped up within 40 minutes for the first show and tickets for his second show were reportedly gone within three hours.

Film producer Karen Khoo-Toohey, 41, was planning on going to Spears’ concert with two friends. "When we saw the ticket prices, it was an immediate ‘no’. I wouldn’t pay S$500 to get the ticket,” said Khoo-Toohey, who is a regular concert-goer, including Guns N’ Roses and Coldplay’s 2017 concerts and will also going for Ed Sheeran’s concert in November.

Although a Spears fan, Khoo-Toohey is not willing to pay the “expensive” price to watch the pop princess in concert here. “She’s not Rolling Stones,” she said, “and even David Bowie’s (concert in 2004) wasn’t so expensive”.

Moreover, she added “her tickets are the same price as 2014’s The Rolling Stones concerts, and they are icons in the music industry.”

The cheapest ticket for the Rolling Stones 2014 concert was priced at S$250 and S$550 for the most expensive. VIP tickets went for S$700.

Civil Servant Priscilla Wee, 29, felt that besides the expensive cost, the floorplan layout could be another deal breaker for fans.

A ticket costing S$188 for Category 6 has a restricted view, and so do tickets in Categories 4 and 5. This means, Wee said, fans have to fork out quite a bit of cash to get a view of Spears.

“I wouldn’t mind going for the cheapest ticket. But the layout is really disappointing. It’s not logical to buy a ticket at $188, for a seat that is really lousy in comparison to other concerts’ tickets,” said Wee, who did not get a ticket.

Self-proclaimed die-hard fan Muhammad Zaki Bin Ja’afar, 28, was “shocked” at the ticket prices, but relented and bought a ticket anyway.

The administrative specialist said: “I was shocked at first but as a die-hard Britney fan, why not? I’ve waited 18 years for this miracle to happen,” Zaki said.

He got his ticket as soon as ticket sales opened. “I was on standby to get the ticket since 10am on the day the tickets go on sale on May 18. And I got the ticket within 5 mins,” said Zaki who bought a Category 1 ticket and will be going to the concert with two friends.

Concert promoter IME Singapore declined to comment when contacted.

Spears’ tour comes after she announced that she will be ending her Piece of Me Las Vegas residency at Planet Hollywood on Dec 31. Her show there has reportedly drawn 700,000 fans over four years, and the production has raked in US$100 million (S$140.48 million) in ticket sales.

Spears last came to Singapore almost 20 years ago in 1998 for a closed-door event. Singapore will be her seventh stop in her tour.

Read more of the latest in

Advertisement

Advertisement

Stay in the know. Anytime. Anywhere.

Subscribe to get daily news updates, insights and must reads delivered straight to your inbox.

By clicking subscribe, I agree for my personal data to be used to send me TODAY newsletters, promotional offers and for research and analysis.