
Music has a special interest to us. Besides being huge music lovers, both of us have worked in and with the music industry for many years. Annette has worked with the Danish Music Award as Marketing Director at IFPI and internationally as VP Marketing for Carlsberg globally where she initiated the brewery’s international music sponsor strategy. Thomas has produced albums, been an active music sponsor, advised artists, worked with international music festivals, sponsorship consultant, arranged concerts etc as marketing Director at Tuborg Denmark, General Manager at EMI Records, member of the board for Copenhagen Jazzfestival and as volunteer in various grass root projects. The feature on the Portuguese Festival scene in Pollstar Pro Friday made me reflect on the issue.
The European music audience may find the Portuguese entertainment scene hunky-dory, as Gideon Gottfried write is his article in Pollstar Pro. From a promoter’s point of view, it’s a bit different. “Over the last years main artists have included Portugal in their tours, and a lot of brands/companies support a lot of the big events. Tourism has provided international audiences as well.” The audience benefited from a large number of cheap and even free festivals staged by the government. This poses a problem for promoters who cannot compete with government money. And if they lowered ticket prices they would, of course, not be able to cover all their costs. The fact that Portugal has high marketing costs, a lot of bureaucracy and expensive licenses exacerbates the problem. “For that reason, promoters are dependent on governmental funds and/or sponsors,” Bramão said. Others simply organized events with a non-professional attitude, which limited future growth and development of the sector. He emphasizes, however, that “things are changing in Portugal and there is a lot of potential of growth and sustainable development of the entertainment business. ”Many festivals, especially the smaller ones, only survived because of government funds. There are some programs for events that have a great impact on tourism or in the communities, events that help the development and economy of a small region for example.” Read Gideon Gottfried’s interview with founder & president of Aporfest (Portugal Music Festival Association) Ricardo Bramão in PollstarPro on 14 October 2016