Finance and Artists Riders

One of the major things that involves finance that a live venue owner has to know about in order to run a great business is that there will sometimes be exuberant costs to get certain artists to come out and perform. There are many websites that have artists riders and some of the crazy things the superstars would like in their dressing room and backstage in order for them to perform. The first place I checked out to find some of these wacky riders are Thesmokinggun.com. to be able to get T.I, a famous rapper, to come out to your show you must have 11 flights booked, 2 first class, and 9 coach, for him and his crew to be flown out, the venue/ promoter must also have  their hotels booked which are 8 rooms. 2 of which are suites and 2 are double rooms. This adds up just rounding off the 2 cross country trips for first class are probably 1000 dollars a piece and the 9 others are probably around 500 dollars a piece. Then depending on the suites for the hotel rooms they could run anywhere from 1000-1500 dollars a night and about 300 per individual double room. So just adding those numbers up we would need just about 10,000 dollars just to be able to accommodate and fly out T.I.’s touring group.

This does not mention anything about what the artist needs for the day of show, or even what he needs backstage before, during, and after he plays. To have T.I. come out to play the artist asks for a total of around 20,000 dollars to even show up to play.

            Keeping this in mind, I would try to make it easier by having my stuff ready and having a personal artist manager for any touring group that comes through. And I will realize that they may be expensive to have for the show, but are worth it in the end.