NEWS

Greece too far for Madonna

A lack of indoor concert venues, this country’s geographic position and the high cost of large productions are the main reasons why the major stars rarely come here. All the companies organizing concerts agree that it will be a long time before we see legendary groups like the Rolling Stones again, and highly unlikely that the large-scale productions put on by stars like Madonna or Kylie Minogue will ever be brought here. If these are hard enough to stage in summer, they would be even more difficult in winter. «There are no large venues, as the stadiums have all closed to be refurbished for the Olympics,» said Manolis Kilismanis of the production company Anosi. Geographically inconvenient «The main problem is Greece’s geographic position, as the cost of transporting the production is astronomic,» he added, as the stage sets and sound equipment for most of these shows fill dozens of trucks. Kilismanis also mentioned the inflated fees and expensive contracts that can easily amount to as much as 300,000 euros. «When you need to sell at least 50,000 tickets for one concert in order to break even, then there is no point in trying,» he said. According to Maria Karayiannaki of «Neo Revma,» the astronomical cost of these productions, and the small size of the Greek market mean that either the tickets have to be very expensive, or else the company has to lose money.

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