Concert tourism a growth area S'pore can tap into: Edwin Tong

Demand in Asia for major Western acts to perform for more nights, says minister

- Anjali Raguraman

The back-to-back, high-revenue generating concerts seen in the first quarter of 2024 are not likely to recur, given the rare scale of the Taylor Swift and Coldplay concerts.

But concert tourism "is a growth area that we can tap into" and one that has "unlocked a potential that was latent previously", Minister for Culture, Community and Youth Edwin Tong told The Sunday Times.

Mr Tong noted that the advent of streaming services means music acts have to tour as streaming generates only a fraction of what album sales used to do 10 to 15 years ago.

"When you analyse the travel patterns of the major Western acts, they're very much focused on touring Europe and United States, (markets that) are already very saturated, whereas in Asia, as we have seen, the demand is there with more acts coming (to the region to play) for more nights... there is headroom for growth," he said.

He was responding to a question on whether the Republic is looking to plant a flag here as a concert destination, given the success of a run of four blockbuster concerts by top-tier acts in the first four months of 2024.

Coldplay was estimated to have brought in over 200,000 fans to the National Stadium over six shows in January, while Swift drew more than 300,000 fans during her six shows in March.

According to private sector estimates, these two shows injected up to $450 million into the Singapore economy, bringing high international visitor arrivals, high hotel occupancy rates and tourism revenue.

Ed Sheeran commanded a crowd of 60,000 for his one-day show on Feb 16 a record for the National Stadium that was broken a mere few weeks later by Swift on one night, which drew close to 63,000.