Hundreds of Irish concert-goers will travel to London this weekend for Beyoncé’s Renaissance Tour shows, leading to questions about why the 32-time Grammy award winner decided not to perform in Ireland.
Over the last couple of years, acts like Metallica, Abba, Muse, Coldplay, and Madonna have foregone Irish concert dates.
Here, we look at some of the reasons why your favourite artist might not want to perform here.
According to Alliance for Insurance Reform director Peter Boland, high insurance premiums are likely to be putting some major artists off of Ireland.
“Artists go where they can make a margin and Ireland has issues in terms of competitiveness,” he said.
He says promoters are unlikely to want to pay Ireland’s steep insurance premiums.
Exact quotes for public liability insurance at major Irish venues can be hard to come by, but earlier this year, music promoter Peter Aiken revealed that Ed Sheeran’s show at Boucher Playing Fields in Belfast cost €1,500 to insure.
By contrast, Sheeran’s show at Páirc Uí Chaoimh in Cork four days earlier cost Aiken around €65,000 to insure.
Peter Boland says that while both the number of personal injury claims and the average settlement amount has decreased over the last couple of years, customers are yet to see real reductions.
He said the Government needs to apply “as much pressure as possible” on insurers to deliver reductions and attract additional competition into the Irish market.
For the entertainment sector specifically, he says legislation with regard to the duty of care could “have a very significant positive impact”.
“If you’re a public-facing event or premises, as it stands, there is a very onerous level of responsibility on you when it comes to the safety of your visitors.”
Ireland, and Dublin in particular, has a good amount of medium-sized venues – the Galway Arts Festival Big Top, Cork Opera House, Vicar Street, the Olympia and others.
For bigger shows, we really only have SSE Arena in Belfast, which can cater for 11,000 people, and Dublin’s 3Arena, which can hold up to 13,000.
And the biggest acts command the biggest venues. The majority of our biggest venues are outdoor ones: Thomond Park, the RDS, the Aviva, Páirc Uí Chaoimh, and Croke Park, where our changeable weather becomes a consideration.
At GAA stadiums, there is also a question of availability – the season calendar means they are probably playing host to one or more matches each weekend from April to August, the peak of gig season.
The cost and availability of accommodation are also likely to be an issue.
When big gigs are on, hotel rooms are booked out well in advance, and those that are available tend to be dearer than usual.
And big artists bring big crews: There are performers, sound and light engineers, set designers, photographers, choreographers, roadies, and entourages to be accommodated.
Indeed, the Music and Entertainment Association of Ireland (MEAI) said recently that some international acts have struggled to find suitable accommodation for their sizable crews.
This week, festival promoter Melvin Benn said that despite the cost of staging large events in Ireland “going through the roof” in recent years, they are not prohibitive just yet.
But if things don’t change, the chances of you catching your favourite singer or band performing here may become less and less likely.