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Post by HOMETIME on Feb 23, 2024 18:29:50 GMT
Good question, jas! I would have thought the next tranche would be released by now. Maybe they'll do it around one of the anniversaries - 50th anniversary of Waterloo, or 2nd anniversary of the Voyage show? The Voyage page on Insta has posted this little video and mini interview with Frida from when she was at the show. She is looking absolutely sensational and energetic. Adorable! www.instagram.com/reel/C3sxeEZNHZH/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link
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jas
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Post by jas on Feb 24, 2024 3:10:06 GMT
Good question, jas ! I would have thought the next tranche would be released by now. Maybe they'll do it around one of the anniversaries - 50th anniversary of Waterloo, or 2nd anniversary of the Voyage show? The Voyage page on Insta has posted this little video and mini interview with Frida from when she was at the show. She is looking absolutely sensational and energetic. Adorable! www.instagram.com/reel/C3sxeEZNHZH/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_linkI saw that, doesnt she just looking amazing? Well it looks like the answer came sooner then i thought, looks like tickets are now on sale to January 5th... Mmm decisions decisions
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Post by Alan on Feb 24, 2024 10:29:08 GMT
Just watched the footage of Frida at Voyage. That was lovely, almost brought a tear to my eye. Out of all four of them, Frida seems to be the one with the most affection for their legacy. There’s no sense of her doing it out of obligation, everything she does for ABBA is with love and affection (I’m not saying the other three don’t, but with Frida there seems so much warmth).
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Post by bjorenny on Feb 24, 2024 10:53:34 GMT
I agree, Alan. If Benny or Björn watch it again, especially with Ludwig, it may be just for enjoyment, but feels like it's more likely business-motivated. That is fine, but with Frida (and hopefully Agnetha again eventually) it does feel like it is solely for pleasure, and in return gives us fans a massive treat with even the smallest interaction.
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Post by skiing55 on Feb 24, 2024 14:23:24 GMT
Tickets on sale now until the 5th of January 2025
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Post by HOMETIME on Feb 24, 2024 19:17:57 GMT
That seems a curiously short period?
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jas
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Post by jas on Feb 25, 2024 21:45:11 GMT
That seems a curiously short period? Yes i thought that too. I`m trying to determine if we come back to UK for Christmas, or wait to see if there's any news of it starting in Australia. I love holidaying in the UK, but our dollar is quite bad against the pound and we only get 50p to the $ so it works out to be an expensive holiday.
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Post by HOMETIME on Feb 27, 2024 9:35:13 GMT
I hear you! My trip from Dublin did a bit of damage to my wallet - I can only imagine what a trip like yours could do.
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Post by jj on Mar 13, 2024 6:12:36 GMT
Relative to other countries, annual tourist visits to Australia are quite low.
In the year ending September 2023, there were 6.1 million trips to Australia.
The main reasons for tourist visits to Australia are as follows:
1. Visiting friends and relatives with 2.3 million trips. (NB: *trips, NOT individual people, therefore some of these trips include the same person that might visit Australia more than once per year.)
Mostly British and New Zealanders visit their relatives in Australia, as most people who emigrated to Australia are from Britain and New Zealand. British people visiting their relatives in Australia would mostly be people over 50, I would guess. British people don't need to travel to Australia to see Voyage.
2. Holiday travel with 2.3 million trips.
These 2.3 million tourists are people who visit Australia solely for the purpose of pure tourism. These 2.3 million tourists include all nationalities, such as Chinese and other Asian countries' citizens
3. Business travel with 681,000 trips.
4. Education with 406,000 trips.
These are mostly foreign students from Asian countries who come to Australia to study at Universities and colleges. Some of these students return to their home country and come back to Australia more than once each year, so these 406,000 entries do not necessarily represent individual numbers, but also include multiple entries into Australia by the same individuals. E.g., if 20,000 students return to their countries twice in a year, that represents 40,000 trips, or 10% of that crude number of 406,000 "trips".
So how does Australia compare to other countries regarding annual tourist numbers?
Here's the top 10 countries with the most foreign tourists in 2022:
1. France 79.4 million tourists
2. Spain 71.7 million tourists
3. USA 50.9 million tourists 4. Turkey 50.5 million tourists 5. Italy 49.8 million tourists 6. Mexico 38.3 million tourists 7. UK 30.7 million tourists 8. Germany 28.5 million tourists 9. Greece 27.8 million tourists 10. Austria 26.2 million tourists
way down the rankings:
xx. Australia 6.1 million tourists
I would expect that most Chinese tourists to Australia would be the new, moneyed middle class over 60 years of age, considering that younger Chinese people don't have as much disposable income to enable them to travel overseas. I wager that older Chinese people wouldn't know about ABBA, or care about seeing an ABBA show whilst in Australia, preferring instead to be bused around to visit the Sydney Opera House and then out to a petting farm to cuddle a Koala and pat a kangaroo. And then they'd get straight back on a plane to China after their carefully managed, Chinese government-official supervised, one week all-expenses covered cheap tour.
I don't know how far down Australia is in the rankings for international tourism with its 6.1 million annual foreign tourist "trips", but it's safe to say that many Asian countries, like Thailand, Japan, India, China and Indonesia (and for Indonesia, think "mostly Bali") rank much higher than Australia in annual foreign tourist visits.
Australia is one of the longest distances to travel to for most foreign countries' citizens, requiring an expensive air ticket to get there and an expensive stay unless staying with relatives, as most UK tourists to Australia seem to do.
Compared to most countries, Australia has less attractions, and most of these attractions are not easy to access, given the massive size of the country.
Conclusion:
It seems extremely unlikely that Australia's 6.1 million annual overseas tourists (many of these being over the age of 60, plus many of these same being UK citizens visiting relatives who emigrated to Australia) and its middling population size of 26 million could sustain the Voyage show for very long - let alone as a profitable concern - unless Voyage's production and running costs were drastically reduced.
Sources for the above stats:
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Post by tagaytay on Mar 13, 2024 6:53:51 GMT
thanks for the lesson JJ. its nice to read this forum and come out smarter after! Of the top 10 the countries I have not visited are Spain Turkey Greece and Mexico. and I have no immediate plans of visiting unless my work takes me there. London I only started visiting 2022 because of Voyage. I have not visited Australia but maybe I will if they bring Voyage there.
In the Asia Oceania area, Japan had 25M tourists last year, Singapore had 13.6M. so maybe those countries would be a safer financial bet.
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Post by HOMETIME on Mar 13, 2024 8:11:51 GMT
Wow, jj! Thanks for that. Have to agree with tagaytay that Japan looks like a far more sensible bet. I'm sure there may be other factors and other data folded into the decision-making process, but you have to wonder whether relocating/bilocating at all makes business sense. Could a North American run be cost effective either?
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Post by jj on Mar 13, 2024 11:57:23 GMT
Regarding the USA and the Voyage shows, I'm not too optimistic Las Vegas, New York or Los Angeles would be such great venues.
Let's start with Las Vegas, which is a city mostly visited by American tourists, I think, because it's almost become part and parcel of what America, and even being American, means to them. It's a fun city (one of only five or six of the most famous American cities) where you spend a couple of nights gambling a little and having drinks, eating out and maybe take in a live show while you're there. It's a small, quirky desert city made famous by celebrities in the 1950s and 60s, like Elvis and the Brat Pack and other crooners who perform there night after night, signing year-long contracts, some of which have now stretched into decades. These singers are part of the woodwork, part of what Las Vegas represents in the popular mind. There's this iconic thing about Las Vegas and its somewhat lurid and tacky neon lit culture that continues to lure Americans and indeed foreign tourists. It's a bucket-list kind of destination. A "You gotta go there at least once before you die" place. You don't go there for museums or art galleries (New York, Chicago, Los Angeles cater to that) or beautiful landscapes (e.g., Yosemite National Park). It's a glitzy nightspot so rooted in how people see this side of American culture that many foreign tourists go there too. (Lufthansa even have direct flights from Munich nowadays!) It's a cultural artifact in itself, one of the many facets of America's image both at home and abroad. A must-see.
I'm sure catching a show by a famous American singer (and I'm stretching that definition to include Canadian artists) figures prominently in a lot of foreign tourists' idea of "must dos" when in Vegas. To see a famous Swedish group, though? A group that appears as electronic avatars, not actually live? Maybe not my first choice if I were American and on my first trip there. I know if I went to Las Vegas, I'd want to make my stay there live up to the mythical idea I've created in my own mind, a totally 100% American experience and keep the whole stay there as wonderfully tacky as Las Vegas is famous for being. I'd want my experience to stay in keeping with what Las Vegas means as a truly American cultural icon. Why would I want to see digital representations of the Swedish band ABBA in Las Vegas, when instead I could sip cocktails while a truly iconic piece of Americana the likes of Wayne Newton, sings live right in front of me, in the flesh, crooning "Danke schoen" for me and my friends, or for me and my girlfriend (who's tarted herself up for the occasion in a hilariously over-the-top glitzy dress and pink boa just to add to the total immersive experience)? Give me ABBA in London or some other European city instead. They don't fit well at all into the Las Vegas mythos. Celine Dion may not fit into it completely, but moreso than ABBA does.
And for domestic (American) tourists, in Las Vegas or any other US city, there's this other thing to consider: ABBA's visual imprint is branded into European and Australian brains over a decades-long constant media presence, especially those people who actually lived then, seeing ABBA evolving from 1974 to 1981 via constant updates on television and in magazines. Europeans have been saturated with ABBA, explicitly as well as subliminally, over the past 50 years. ABBA as a fixture in our culture has existed for a very long time. Not so for Americans. Americans weren't constantly bombarded with ABBA as we were. In fact, they were hardly visible most of their career. The average British person of a certain age is likely to know what song is being referred to just seeing a still from the video of "Take a Chance on Me" or "The Winner Takes it All". Most Americans of the same age probably would not know. Some American fans have said they hardly ever saw ABBA during their career, and not known they had a new album for many months after they were released. It seems to me that ABBA, even when they had a rare song enter the top Billboard Top 10, were, by comparison to Europe and Australia, mostly invisible in America during their career. Imagery and pictures from ABBA's two world tours are embedded in the popular mind of maybe a few generations of Europeans and Australians. Not so for Americans.
This lack of familiarity with the real, physical ABBA among the general public in the USA means that Americans will not have the same sense of wonder seeing the avatars that Europeans and Australians would experience "seeing" ABBA's likenesses appear before them via the magic of technology. Most Americans who went to the Voyage shows might be seeing ABBA, or in this case, digital images of them, for the first time. This hardly makes for an exciting show. Imagine having the option to see a very similar avatar show of a group you were not at all familiar with, visually speaking. Would you be interested in seeing such a show?
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Post by johnny on Mar 13, 2024 14:22:25 GMT
Thanks for that jj.
London was clearly the right choice.
The way I look at it is the population of an area, and the succcess of GOLD.
North/West Europe* 296 million pop 15 million GOLD approx
UK, Ireland, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Denmark, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, France, Belgium, Netherlands.
USA 332 million pop 11 million GOLD approx
Japan 127 million pop 0.7 million GOLD
Australia 26m pop 1.2 million GOLD
I don't think Australia or anywhere in Asia is viable.
The USA *could* be viable. I take the point ABBA weren't that big in the 70s but far more popular since 90s with GOLD and the Mamma Mia films.
Any relocation won't happen until all the £140 million production costs AND running costs have been recovered and a healthy profit made. It looks like London for the forseeable future.
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Post by johnny on Mar 13, 2024 14:55:22 GMT
^ I should add, tourists will only be a minority albeit a sizeable minority. If it does switch to the US I imagine most going would be Americans.
I recall reading at the start some 28% of Voyage concert goers were from outside the UK. I would imagine split between people from other parts of Europe and the US. Of course some Australians but because of the distance not so many.
A venue over reliant on foreign tourists is doomed.
Looking at ABBA's 2 biggest European markets.
UK 68 million population 6.3 million sales GOLD
Germany 83 million population 3.0 million sales GOLD approx.
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Post by ttbboo66 on Mar 13, 2024 17:02:31 GMT
The USA *could* be viable. I take the point ABBA weren't that big in the 70s but far more popular since 90s with GOLD and the Mamma Mia films. No, it couldn't. First of all, the US is such a vast, vast country. Where are you going to put it, so that it remains as accessible as it was London? Even if "Gold" has sold 11 million copies - bear in mind that your inflated estimate - it's not that impressive when you consider the countless other artists with albums with similar sales - [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_albums_in_the_United_States] - a lot of which are more recent and studio rather than compilation albums. ABBA are just one small fish in a very large ocean. And even with the success of Mamma Mia, a lot of Americans will tell you that Amanda Seyfried was the original singer of "Lay All Your Love On Me", etc. They just aren't that embedded into US culture like they are in Europe.
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Post by johnny on Mar 14, 2024 11:44:56 GMT
Like I said it *could* be viable. For sure, the US is geographically vast - and that's primarily why London was chosen - huge UK fanbase and near other European countries.
An American venue *could* be viable if costs weren't high and a bit of reality about how long the show could run.
My estimates for GOLD are not inflated.
In 2002, certified for 6 million. Only half tracked by Soundscan.
Soundscan/Luminate puts GOLD at just over 6.5m sales now. Add the 3 million they didn't count then that's 9.5m. We are just tallking pure sales. Add streaming equivalent and we get around 11 million. It has not had updated sales certification in 22 years.That doesn't mean it sold zero. Since then we had 2 Mamma films and GOLD sells every year.
GOLD is not a recent album of course but it has sold steadily over the years - especially in the US. The show is more of a Greatest Hits show, though of course some lesser known songs so studio albums aren't relevant
Boom!
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jas
New Member
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Post by jas on Mar 22, 2024 4:10:55 GMT
Relative to other countries, annual tourist visits to Australia are quite low.
In the year ending September 2023, there were 6.1 million trips to Australia.
The main reasons for tourist visits to Australia are as follows:
1. Visiting friends and relatives with 2.3 million trips. (NB: *trips, NOT individual people, therefore some of these trips include the same person that might visit Australia more than once per year.)
Mostly British and New Zealanders visit their relatives in Australia, as most people who emigrated to Australia are from Britain and New Zealand. British people visiting their relatives in Australia would mostly be people over 50, I would guess. British people don't need to travel to Australia to see Voyage.
2. Holiday travel with 2.3 million trips.
These 2.3 million tourists are people who visit Australia solely for the purpose of pure tourism. These 2.3 million tourists include all nationalities, such as Chinese and other Asian countries' citizens
3. Business travel with 681,000 trips.
4. Education with 406,000 trips.
These are mostly foreign students from Asian countries who come to Australia to study at Universities and colleges. Some of these students return to their home country and come back to Australia more than once each year, so these 406,000 entries do not necessarily represent individual numbers, but also include multiple entries into Australia by the same individuals. E.g., if 20,000 students return to their countries twice in a year, that represents 40,000 trips, or 10% of that crude number of 406,000 "trips".
So how does Australia compare to other countries regarding annual tourist numbers?
Here's the top 10 countries with the most foreign tourists in 2022:
1. France 79.4 million tourists
2. Spain 71.7 million tourists
3. USA 50.9 million tourists 4. Turkey 50.5 million tourists 5. Italy 49.8 million tourists 6. Mexico 38.3 million tourists 7. UK 30.7 million tourists 8. Germany 28.5 million tourists 9. Greece 27.8 million tourists 10. Austria 26.2 million tourists
way down the rankings:
xx. Australia 6.1 million tourists
I would expect that most Chinese tourists to Australia would be the new, moneyed middle class over 60 years of age, considering that younger Chinese people don't have as much disposable income to enable them to travel overseas. I wager that older Chinese people wouldn't know about ABBA, or care about seeing an ABBA show whilst in Australia, preferring instead to be bused around to visit the Sydney Opera House and then out to a petting farm to cuddle a Koala and pat a kangaroo. And then they'd get straight back on a plane to China after their carefully managed, Chinese government-official supervised, one week all-expenses covered cheap tour.
I don't know how far down Australia is in the rankings for international tourism with its 6.1 million annual foreign tourist "trips", but it's safe to say that many Asian countries, like Thailand, Japan, India, China and Indonesia (and for Indonesia, think "mostly Bali") rank much higher than Australia in annual foreign tourist visits.
Australia is one of the longest distances to travel to for most foreign countries' citizens, requiring an expensive air ticket to get there and an expensive stay unless staying with relatives, as most UK tourists to Australia seem to do.
Compared to most countries, Australia has less attractions, and most of these attractions are not easy to access, given the massive size of the country.
Conclusion:
It seems extremely unlikely that Australia's 6.1 million annual overseas tourists (many of these being over the age of 60, plus many of these same being UK citizens visiting relatives who emigrated to Australia) and its middling population size of 26 million could sustain the Voyage show for very long - let alone as a profitable concern - unless Voyage's production and running costs were drastically reduced.
Sources for the above stats:
Ugh, i hate that i agree with this. Hahahaha... As an Australian it breaks my heart this makes total sense. I guess from an investment perspective you are absolutely right. I know Australia was a huge factor to their success so deep down I`d love to think they would reward us for sentimental reasons, so i can still dream hey?
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Post by johnny on Mar 25, 2024 21:42:01 GMT
Some stats £141 million to produce 21,000 tickets a week (basically sell out) 2,000,000 tickets sold so far 25% of visitors from outside UK Of the 2,000,000 tickets I wonder how many are people who have seen it multiple times? A future venue would need to be in a country with a huge fan base and could have a sizeable amount of foreigb tourists. Perhaps it's only London that fits this. www.iq-mag.net/2024/03/abba-voyage-producer-hints-at-new-venues-worldwide/
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Post by HOMETIME on Mar 26, 2024 16:35:40 GMT
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Post by Alan on Mar 26, 2024 16:51:48 GMT
Getting a lanyard would be a reason not to go! Can’t stand the things. A modern scourge. How much plastic do they waste? I only have to wear one once a week but that’s enough. And even some school kids have to wear them? I saw some the other day anyway. But yes, I’d like to think someone will ask them a decent question, whatever nonsense they answer it with.
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Post by johnny on Apr 2, 2024 19:02:56 GMT
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