Mariah Carey Downsizes Tour Plans
Posted by Darren Hewett on 05.25.2003
Smaller venues in store...
Mariah Carey has decided to downgrade the venues in her upcoming tour. She will be playing in theatres now, rather than in arenas. This move has nothing to do with slow ticket sales, Billboard.com reports. Mariah had been speaking to people, monitoring her Web site, and listening to her fans, and the resounding note she heard was her fans wanted to see her in a more intimate environment and were less concerned about the big production aspects of an arena tour, says John Marx, senior VP of contemporary music at the William Morris Agency.
The 47 date tour beings June 21 in Seoul, South Korea It is Carey's first in more than three years, was to be her most extensive yet.
Marx maintains the tour would have been fine as booked. Ticket counts were not that bad, and our average capacity on this tour was about 11,000, he says. She'll have the same band, minus the bells and whistles. She's going to bring it back to what Mariah's all about: the music.
Only four North American shows had gone on sale when plans began to change: Xcel Energy Center in St. Paul, Minn. (July 26), United Center in Chicago (July 29), Air Canada Centre in Toronto (Aug. 7), and the Verizon Wireless Arena in Manchester. Carey's official Web site advised her fans in cities where the shows had gone on sale to hang on to tickets and receipts, presumably for a refund or exchange. But some building officials were out of the loop.
