September 2, 2019 - Rita Ora in Zadar, a stunning tourism promotion success in a packed stadium, or an embarrassing and expensive failure? Just ask the Zadar taxpayer.
Full disclosure - I had no idea who Rita Ora was before the hype started ahead of her recent concert in Zadar. As I stopped listening to new music in 1985 with The Smiths, that is more a reflection on me than her.
But then I started hearing her name a LOT. Press releases, media invitations to the concert. It was disproportionate and a little annoying to get this constant barrage in my inbox. Obviously things were not going as well as the organisers had planned, I thought to myself, before thinking no more of Rita Ora.
Until the next press release/media invitation hit my inbox.
Several people messaged me about how the concert was a fiasco in the making, but as I was in Kuala Lumpur at the Medical Travel Media Awards at the time, I paid little attention to it.
And now that the concert has happened, I find that Rita Ora is taking up rather a lot of media space in the Croatian media, although the press releases have mercifully stopped. But it it not quite the media coverage that the London-born Kosovar pop star or the Zadar Tourist Board might have been looking for.
Or the Zadar taxpayer, which faces a bill of almost 100,000 euro (724,000 kuna) for the concert, which allegedly failed to live up to expectations in terms of popularity, ticket sales and revenue generation. The 724k figure comes from Denis Karlovic from Visnjik, the company tasked with pulling off the event. Ticket sales totalled 1,113,890 kuna, and income from sponsors and marketing came to 862,000 kuna, a total of1.975, according to Karlovic. Rita Ora's fee was 1.7 million kuna and other costs amounted to 1 million kuna, leaving the shortfall to be picked up by the taxpayer.
I looked into the story a little more, and it does begin to look a little curious. With such a huge outlay of money, one would have thought that one would have done a little due diligence, and with such a spectacular failure, one might expect someone to take responsibility (apart from the poor taxpayer taking financial responsibility), but this is The Beautiful Croatia, where such things do not happen.
There is a very interesting analysis of the whole story in Jutarnji List, and it seems that that Ora did not even perform the full hour contracted, her microphone malfunctioned during the third song but her voice was unaffected, and there were not as many backing dancers as promised.
But one of the main talking points concerns our old friend this summer, statistics. As you can see from the official Rita Ora Twitter account, she had a blast, playing to 60,000 fans, which is a little curious as the venue was apparently moved from an open-air venue to a concert arena with 9,000 seats, some of which could not be used as they were behind the stage.
But let's say that Rita's numbers were right, and there were indeed 60,000 fans packed into a stadium of 9,000. With ticket sales reported officially at 1,113,890, that would put the ticket price at 18.56 kuna each, or about 2.5 euro.
Except that even at that price, the concert was not sold out. Karlovic reports that there were 900 free tickets distributed (perhaps there was one for me in all those press releases) and reports say that only about 4,500 seats were actually sold. Some sources told me that tickets were even left on car windscreens at the last minute to try and fill the stadium.
Still, officially the night was a roaring success. In addition to Rita Ora telling the world that there were 60,000 people there (her social media reach will probably quickly establish this as fact), the man apparently behind the whole thing was Zadar Tourist Board director, Mario Paleka, was very satisfied with the whole thing:
This is a great and spectacular concert for which Zadar is ready.
As can be seen, it was an extremely high-quality production, and the performance of Rita Ora in Zadar is also a great tourism promotion not only for the city but of the whole of Croatia.
A great job has been done and I thank everyone who participated in it to make the concert a successful one. This is definitely the direction in which we continue to develop in tourism.
As previously written on TCN, Paleka is a political appointee with little experience in tourism before his appointment almost a year ago.
It would appear, one might suggest, that he perhaps has less experience in the economics of organising concerts.
But with the pop star telling the world about 60,000 people in a sold-out stadium which has just 9,000 seats, and the Zadar Tourism Board director telling the world that the evening was a great success, eveything is perfect in The Beautiful Croatia and this is how history will record this memorable night, right?
I am sure that the Croatian taxpayer is looking forward to seeing the Kings of Accidental Tourism answer Paleka's call to continue developing tourism with a strategy of charging them 100,000 euro for each failed concert. Another splendid initiative, and another symbol of life in The Beautiful Croatia - such a shiny exterior, a little less so when you look a little deeper.
One area where the statistics do not lie is the YouTube view count. With such a massive success, one would expect the concert to have been shared all over the world. Well...
Apart from the heavily promoted trailer (530,000 views), the next most popular result if you search for 'Rita Ora Zadar' has almost 16,000 views - her concert last year in Porec...
As for actual coverage of the concert, the most popular video has just 8,500 views. After that come videos from the Croatian media (hardly the target market for promoting Croatian tourism internationally), followed by one Leonardo Kolman, who has racked up an impressive 214 views so far. You can check out the full list here.
Great job, Zadar! And now tell us, who do you have lined up for next year and how much will it cost us, so that we can start saving now?
