LOS ANGELES (CelebrityAccess) CAA music chief Rob Light recently talked to Music Week magazine about pitching a Las Vegas residency to the Britney Spears camp and Vegas residencies in general in the wake of the recent onslaught from acts like Lady Gaga, Burno Mars and Queen + Adam Lambert.
“When we pitched Britney Spears in 2011/2012, we got a lot of pushback,” Light told the magazine. “But what the hotels realised was that there was a generation of 20 and 30-somethings coming to Vegas who weren’t going to see Celine Dion and Elton John.
“My whole pitch was very simply that those 20 to 30-somethings have nothing to do between the swimming pool and midnight. If you give them a show, they’re going to go. Sure enough, everyone took a bet on Britney and off to the races we were.”
Light added that the benefits of residencies are enormous.
“Touring takes a toll and so to be able to sit in one place for an extended period of time is just physically better,” he said. “It also allows you to build a production that you might not be able to build for a normal tour, given that you don’t have to move it from night to night, so there are a lot of factors that make it appealing.
“A whole generation of artists are going to say, ‘I don’t want the grind of 150 cities when I can go to Vegas for six to 10 weekends and make a lot of money, at lower cost.’ And that’s a great break between album cycles.”
He said that the trend isn’t dissipating.
“Whether you want to go on a safari in Africa, golfing in Scotland, or kayaking down a river, people want experiences and Vegas is one of those experiences,” Light said. “So I don’t think it’s going to slow down in the foreseeable future.”
h/t Music Week
