❗️Louis' Brisbane & Sydney shows 2026 have been moved into smaller venues!
Brisbane:
Melbourne:
(source / source)
Sydney:
(source)
Thank you so much for notifying me of this, @tbslhabit lovely!!
ℹ️ additional meta, for anyone interested: the new venue in Brisbane, Riverstage, is quite smaller (search engine said 9k total cap) than the old one, Brisbane Entertainment Centre (which was 14.5k total cap for concerts) and the new venue in Sydney, Hordern Pavillion, is also loads smaller (search engine said 5.5k total cap) than the old one, Qudos Bank Arena, (which was 11k total cap for concerts), so it was definitely moved because of ticket sales not meeting expectations of the tour promoter in Australia. 🎟️ Here's an overview of how those ticket sales looked last month.
@louisisalarrie has made this post and this post a few months ago to give more insight about Louis' new tour promoter (because it is not Live Nation this time!) and about Louis' tour booking deals. Louis' HDWGH? AUS tour promoter is Untitled.
Let me quote them here (but please read their entire post, bc it's super interesting): "Untitled are an independent promoter and predominantly focus on festivals and dj/edm tours. They aren’t known for securing major artists, because Live Nation is clearly the monopoly in AUS, with Frontier Touring in second, and so [Untitled] just don’t get the big artists. It’s very rare that they would get an artist of Louis’ size and if they did, it’d most likely be a co-pro with Live Nation. [...] I have had my personal bad experiences with Untitled as both a consumer and an industry professional, and i don’t think it’s going to be as easy and smooth of a tour as [Louis] did previously with LN. I have a very good mate who often tour manages them [Louis' tour], but won’t be this time because Untitled is involved, which is such a shame… but i also don’t think this is Louis'/his team’s choice. [...] I think he just didn’t make enough money/sell enough tix last tour for LN to put in a big bid for him. Frontier is probably on the same page, as they would be second highest bid, but at that time of year it’s CRAZY in AUS. LN and Frontier both have some of the biggest stadium/arena acts in the world coming, and with already such an oversaturated market and millions of dollars going into these acts… they just can’t forecast that he’ll make enough money for them to put the resources in." (and we sadly now know, he wouldn't have 😔) "Personally, I think Untitled aren’t experienced enough with [Louis'] demographic/fanbase and the production that will be required, but that’s a personal observation. Please buy tix and support him, no matter what I say about the promoter!!! [...] I think this time round will be smaller venues/reduced capacity. A few of his [previous] shows here didn’t sell that great and were heavily “papered” (ticket offers were given to people working in the industry and their family and friends) to fill the capacity out. it’s… yikes but it is what it is. [...] the way the economy is here and the lack of promo/excitement in AUS about him, it’s really affecting his ticket sales. [...] But i’ll be doing everything in my power to be as involved on that tour as possible, because he deserves an excellent tour." ❤️
my personal thoughts: it doesn't surprise me that this happened, but it's still always kind of a bummer. But moving a show to a smaller venue is always 100 times better than cancelling it! A move like that is usually done to cut costs and as a precautionary measure, because they probably don't see him realistically even selling out the ticket contingent that had been originally given into sale. (for the shows in the US and Canada I had been thinking about whether venue changes would been on the horizon, too, but that didn't end up happening... so far. Another Planet Entertainment is the independent tour promoter for the US, Evenko for Canada)
i do think it was a bit early to make the move, but i also don't have weekly report insights into the sales numbers like the promoter does. perhaps the numbers have been stagnant for months. usually you would counter-measure poor ticket sales with more local promo, but an independent tour and/or local promoter often doesn't have a big budget and from what I quoted earlier, it doesn't like like Untitled has much experience with hitting Louis' needed target demographic... so they cut their losses early and moved the shows to a smaller venue. it's also possible they were peeping their eyes over to the US shows and saw that he didn't even sell out the 6k - 9k sold cap shows (venue itself were often bigger than that) -except for MSG. and they were like 'alright, there's no hope for our shows' 😔
in any case, i'm sad he isn't getting the ticket sales he deserves, but at the same time, the shows seem to not have been promoted a lot in AUS and and hoo boy, is artist promo COSTLY. also, like louisisalarrie said, the economy and the buying power of households are SHIT pretty much all around the globe right now. we all know that, we all see it in our own bank accounts.
it's not the first and not the last tour that will be affected. and i think, no, I hope this is a lesson learned type of situation for everyone. but still I have no doubt that the shows will be fucking FUN and no matter the size of the venue, crew, band, Louis will give it his all! 🙌🏼
