The two concerts "Call Me by Fire" and "Anh trai say hi" held in Ho Chi Minh City on October 19th have caused much discussion among experts and audiences. In addition to the impressive numbers of audiences and participating artists, another thing that people are equally interested in is the organization and scale of investment for these concerts.
Allocate human and material resources for billion-dollar concert
Musician Quoc Trung once affirmed that for the performance industry in Vietnam to develop, it requires the efforts and ambitions of many elements, from producers, performance companies, to artists in many fields, from composition, staging, choreography to performing singers.
From the comments of musician Quoc Trung, expanding to the current show market in Vietnam. From the audience's skepticism, not daring to spend a lot to watch Vietnamese concerts, the two concerts "Call Me by Fire" and "Anh trai say hi" with the number of up to about 50,000 audiences recently broke all the worries of fans that: It's time for pure Vietnamese shows to be made professionally, on a large scale and with huge investment...
In fact, to sell a huge number of tickets and satisfy the audience's audiovisual needs, the two big brother shows seem to have solved the above requirements to the maximum by investing carefully in costumes, lighting, stage effects, choreography... creating the appeal of the musical performances.
Behind the flashy stage, the smooth and attractive performances are the contributions of a lot of human and material resources.
With "Call Me by Fire" and "Anh trai say hi", they own the top music producers of Vbiz today such as: SlimV, Touliver, Justatee... along with hundreds, thousands of personnel for post-production.
Among them, the concerts "Call Me by Fire" and "Anh trai say hi" received attention from fans when they had a beautiful "sea of lightsticks", a stadium full of fans, and an impressive fanchant (fans singing along and shouting slogans).
For the "Call Me by Fire" concert alone, the crew built a "huge" stage size along with investing in designing LED screens, stairs... Following that were images of seating setup according to the diagram, directions, ticket area locations... the actual cost for this stage is estimated to be up to billions of dong.
The "Call Me by Fire" concert stage was rated as "huge" by many showgoers when viewed from the outside. The producer also invested in LED screens placed effectively in many viewing angles, a large number of sound and lighting systems, and a 3-story staircase built on both sides...
The person behind these stagings is director Dinh Ha Uyen Thu and a large number of staff.
Regarding the story of the staff performing the concert "Call Me by Fire", director Dinh Ha Uyen Thu said there were times when the crew had to work hard, racing against time to keep up with the program's schedule.
Dinh Ha Uyen Thu admits that she is a difficult and strict director, so in every post-production stage, the female director always wants everything to be the most meticulous and professional to bring the best experience to the audience.
To produce a concert, the crew must spend months coming up with ideas. From choosing the right location to promoting the concert, selling tickets and setting up the stage, the producer must also have careful calculations.
Regarding the story of investment costs for the concert, Mr. Nguyen Xuan An - Communications Director of "Call Me by Fire" shared with reporters: "Organizing a concert serving nearly 20,000 audiences is definitely a challenge for the company's staff. We are not comfortable sharing the cost yet, but it is certainly the most optimized number possible to bring a great experience and be recognized by nearly 20,000 audiences at the concert".
Talking about the number of staff for this concert, he said: "If we combine all the departments, we have about more than 1,000 teammates working together for this concert."
During the concert "Anh trai say hi" on the evening of October 19, to prepare for the concert, the organizers also arranged staff to organize many activities to support idols such as printing standees (photo frames), photo booth check-in, and hanging flags along the routes to the concert venue. The number of staff for these activities is estimated to be in the hundreds.
The highlight of the program "Anh trai say hi" is the giant 270m2 LED grid system on the stage. The LED system with a total area of nearly 1,000m2 is arranged throughout the stage and the audience area, also costing the producer billions of dong.
When reporters contacted to ask about the total investment figure, the organizers of "Anh trai say hi" have not given an official answer.
Although the two producers of the "brother" show did not reveal the specific cost, looking at the scale of the stage, the staff as well as the preparation process for the shows, the amount spent is not small.
From the perspective of a media expert, Mr. Hoang Van - CEO of Clover Media Company said: "With the scale and large investment level for concerts, the estimated cost could be more than 1 million USD. This cost includes stage construction, concert promotion costs, sound, lighting as well as other post-production stages."
In which, director Huynh Phuc Thanh Nhan commented: "It can be said that holding an international concert is simple. Organizing it is difficult. And the deciding story is still the budget. Most of the current concerts are funded by marketing funds from sponsoring brands. 2024 is a year of global financial difficulties, as well as a sharp decrease in advertising budgets, but there are still concerts being held, which is an effort from many parties, dedicated to the audience, very commendable".
The profits behind concerts with tens of thousands of spectators
According to the reporter's observations when participating in the last two concert nights, many audiences present at the concert nights commented that domestic concert production units are increasingly professional and meticulous in the staging and organization process.
The "sold-out" concerts also show that the profit from the concert "pie" is extremely potential for investors and exploiters.
According to media expert Hoang Van's estimate, the concert "Anh trai say hi" with ticket prices ranging from 500,000 VND to 10 million VND earned around 22 - 30 billion VND. Meanwhile, the concert "Call Me by Fire" with ticket prices ranging from 800,000 VND to 8 million VND earned around 30 - 40 billion VND.
According to Mr. Hang Van, concert revenue contributes a lot to the overall revenue of the game show, so production units continuously hold post-show music nights to increase revenue and profit for the producer.
Looking at the financial report sent to reporters by Yeah1 Group Joint Stock Company (YEG) (the unit behind Call Me by Fire), it can be clearly seen that thanks to the production of the show "Call Me by Fire", YEG's revenue in the third quarter reached 345 billion VND, more than 3 times higher than the same period last year.
After deducting the cost of goods sold (VND265 billion), YEG recorded a gross profit of VND79 billion, an increase of nearly 3.6 times. Not to mention, financial revenue in this period also increased from more than VND10 billion to VND24.5 billion.
Thanks to that, although all types of expenses increased, as a result, YEG still reported a profit after tax of 34.3 billion VND, nearly 11 times higher than the same period.
As can be seen, million-dollar concerts are a delicious "cake" for producers to invest heavily. From there, a new trend is opened - the trend of international-class concerts to meet the needs of the audience.
