Salone Show Promoters are yet to recover over Le 1.5 billion from Nigerian artistes in 2020

Freetown | 22nd November 2020 | Vertex Media

By Ibrahim Sorious Samura

Earlier this year, tons of musical shows featuring both local and foreign artists were scheduled to take place between March and April 2020, but as fate has it, COVID-19 intercepted. Media/publicity campaigns for these shows were heating up across the country.

Prominent Nigerian music stars have already been booked to perform in Freetown between earlier this year before the COVID-19 outbreak. They included Burna Boy, Teni and Kizz Daniel and Lola Rae, all paid to have performed in Sierra Leone. Other local shows scheduled for the same period included Kao Denero’s ‘Kiss The Throne’ album launch, Yung Sal’s ‘Bad Man Party’, the New Skool Awards, and host of other music tours or events by musicians, comedians, and more. Unfortunately for these show promoters, the government of Sierra Leone placed a ban on public gathering in March this year, as threats of the Corona virus were looming across the world. Hence, investments into these shows became ‘null and void’ and they ran into huge financial loss for the time being.

Many expected a quick recovery from this pandemic before the end-of-year festive season, but it seems unclear whether things will return back to normal so soon. This uncertainty has led to the early cancellation of the iconic ‘ECOFEST’, an annual music festival that features entertainment acts from various African countries, and was expected to be staged around November 2020 by KME.

The earlier scheduled shows ran into huge loss, from booking of artists to marking, to branding, to guests performances and more. The ‘Kiss The Throne’ album release alone had already exhausted about 70% of its Le 180 budget in branding, marketing and more, before the show was cancelled less than a week to the event date. It was scheduled for March 21st at the Siaka Stevens Stadium in Freetown.

Apart from other expenses, bookings paid to Nigerian artistes was over $150,000 (Le 1,500,000,000) as follows:

Lake Productions reportedly paid $40,000 to bring Nigeria’s afro pop singer Kizz Daniel, but the cost rose to about $60,000 after the inclusion of Lola Rae, another Nigerian female singer. The show was also scheduled for April 14th at the Siaka Stevens Stadium in Freetown.

1Africa 1Vision was also reportedly booked leading Nigerian and African singer Burna Boy for a whooping fee of $70,000. This show was also slated for April 4th at the Siaka Stevens Stadium in Freetown.

Reems Entertainment also attempted to pair their star rapper Empress Pee with Nigeria’s female dancehall heavyweight – Teni in a concert for April 3rd at Radisson Blu Garden in Freetown. A reported fee of $25,000 was paid by Reems.

With all these investments, excluding marketing, branding, guests performance fees and other expenses, the show organisers are yet to recover a single penny.It’s believed that over 90% was already paid to these artists.

Luckily for Zedzee Multimedia, they had already staged their show in February this year before the ban on gathering. They brought in Nigerian soul and Afro pop singer Simi at the Siaka Stevens Stadium.

Unlike the Football sector that received over $1 million as COVID-19 relief funds from FIFA and CAF, nothing of such is forthcoming to the entertainment industry, save for a promise made by President Bio few months ago to provide COVID-19 relief funds to the industry.

As things stand currently, the show promoters stand to loose from their investments. Let’s say covid go away and other dates are booked, will these artists still be popular to have sold out events in Freetown?

What will be the fate of entertainment who lost their investments during to COVID-19? Will the government fulfill its promise for a relief fund? Well, it’s a matter of wait and see.