Posted by The music industry is reportedly $30 billion behind where it would have been this year if COVID-19 hadn’t wreaked havoc on the world.
According to a Pollstar report dated Friday (December 11), 2020’s events caused the performing industry to take a major hit, which includes a calculated loss of $9.7 billion at the box office alone, and an additional $20 billion from sponsorships, concessions, merch, transportation, restaurants, hotels and more.
2020 was actually set to be a recording-breaking year at the box office with a projected $12.2 billion in revenue, but when things came to a total halt in March, it was all downhill from there. But with a vaccine now looming in the near future, the President of the company that oversees Pollstar assured that things will soon be back to normal.
“It’s been an extraordinarily difficult year for the events industry, which has been disproportionately impacted by the Coronavirus,” Ray Waddell said. “As painful as it is to chronicle the adversity and loss our industry and many of our colleagues faced, we understand it is a critical undertaking towards facilitating our recovery, which is thankfully on the horizon. With vaccines, better testing, new safety and sanitization protocols, smart ticketing and other innovations, the live industry will be ramping up in the coming months, and we’re sure that at this time next year we’ll have a very different story to tell.”
Countless artists cancelled scheduled tours and appearances as COVID-19 spread, and festivals quickly became a distant memory. Even Lil Baby, who was the first artist to go double platinum in 2020 revealed during a recent appearance on The Breakfast Club that he’d only had just one show this year because of the pandemic.
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“Since I started rapping, I been booked two, three times a weekend,” he told hosts Charlamagne Tha God and DJ Envy in the interview posted on Tuesday (December 8). “I only did one show this year and it’s the end of the year! That’s every bit a hundred shows maybe at least in a year, so it’s like a whole year, I did one show.”
Fortunately for the Quality Control rapper, his pockets haven’t really suffered.
“Even though I ain’t doing no shows, that number that [Charlamagne] calculated, I ain’t making that but I ain’t counting that,” Baby said. “I’m counting on whatever I used to make, shit I’m still in that bracket. I was supposed to make it to the $40 million, $50 million a year off touring bracket. But I’m still making more than what I was making when I just was getting $100 bands a show or whatever the case may be.”