‘ABBA Voyage’ Is Making $2 Million a Week With an Avatar Band
One of the most expensive tours in music history has created a new model for aging stars.
By Lucas Shaw
4 de septiembre de 2023 at 19:00 GMT-3
Abba is making more than $2 million a week touring as avatars
Seven times a week, the Swedish supergroup ABBA performs in front of a sold-out crowd in east London. None of the band’s four members are on stage.
The ABBA Arena, which seats about 3,000 people, was built specifically for this show, featuring LED screens that make the venue seem deeper and 291 speakers to deliver surround sound. All told, ABBA Voyage is one of the most expensive productions in music history, with a price tag of £140 million (about $175 million) before the first show opened in May 2022.
That investment is starting to look like one of the savvier bets in modern music history. In 15 months, the show has generated more than $150 million in sales and sold more than 1.5 million tickets, surpassing all but a handful of the biggest live shows last year. The venue is 99% full every night and, with an average ticket price of about £85 ($105), the show is making more than $2 million a week.
ABBA Voyage is expected to run in London for many years, and its producers are in discussions to expand the show to cities such as Las Vegas, New York, Singapore and Sydney. Its success has created a potential model for other aging artists who want their fans to see them forever.
“If you are an artist, you can create your legacy in a way you never could before,” said Per Sundin, chief executive officer of Pophouse Entertainment, the project’s lead investor. “This is such a success. We already have been talking to some artists that really want to do this.”
The idea for ABBA Voyage started with Simon Fuller, the producer of American Idol and former manager of the Spice Girls. Fuller had been inspired by the hologram of Tupac Shakur that performed at the Coachella music festival in 2012, as well as the image of Michael Jackson at the 2014 Billboard Music Awards.
Fuller wanted to apply the idea on a larger scale, taking a virtual performance on tour. He contemplated projects involving Elvis Presley or Jackson. In the years that followed, dead artists including Roy Orbison, Frank Zappa, Amy Winehouse and Whitney Houston all went back on the road in digital form.
But it soon became clear that those hologram-only shows were both boring and expensive. “We’ve seen different iterations that come and go, and it’s not that entertaining,” said Jeff Jampol, who represented Tupac’s estate for the Coachella hologram. Rather than make holograms, Fuller approached ABBA about using motion capture technology to create digital avatars.
While ABBA has fewer No. 1 songs than Presley or Jackson, it has a large and loyal fan base all over the world – especially in Europe. The band, which released eight albums between 1973 and 1981, had never toured that much. But it had sustained and built its fan base over the years thanks to the popularity of the jukebox musical Mamma Mia! and the subsequent movies. Despite lucrative offers to get back on the road, the band had always said no.
“They wanted people to remember them as they were,” said Sundin, who at the time was head of the Nordics for Universal Music Group, the record giant that owns ABBA’s recordings. In 2016, Fuller invited Sundin to brunch at his 11,200-square-foot mansion in the wealthy Los Angeles neighborhood of Bel Air to discuss the idea. Fuller would eventually create a film and songs using the virtual ABBA, but isn’t involved in ABBA Voyage.
“My original concept was to create a ‘Virtual ABBA’ by using technology to take them back to their former selves in their heyday,” Fuller said in a statement.
The band still decided to pursue the idea and wanted something so visually immersive that the crowd would forget they were watching a prerecorded show. For help, they turned to Industrial Light & Magic, the visual-effects firm founded by Star Wars director George Lucas.
ILM used 160 motion-capture cameras to film the members performing their songs. The producers also filmed younger body doubles to make the band members’ movements look youthful. “If you’re 75, you don’t jump around like you did when you were 34,” Andersson told Rolling Stone.
Those images are projected onto a screen, and the digital avatars perform 22 songs with help from 1,000 visual effects artists.
Pophouse, which is the largest investor in ABBA Voyage, helped build a custom arena for the show in Stratford, a town of about 40,000 five miles east of central London. The venue has 600 tons of equipment above the crowd and 500 moving lights mapped to 30,000 points in the arena to create the illusion of a real-life band.
The show was supposed to open in October 2021. But that was before the Covid-19 pandemic. By the time it finally opened in May of last year, the reviews were rapturous.
The popularity of ABBA Voyage speaks to the growing business of managing aging artists. In recent years, private equity firms, artist managers, financiers and all kinds of opportunists have spent billions of dollars on catalogs of songs. As streaming revived music industry sales, many people saw music as a good investment. They looked for yield and stability.
But some industry figures are taking a more tailored approach. Jampol looks after the estate of the Doors. Music mogul Irving Azoff is handling the Beach Boys and Linda Ronstadt. Talent giant Endeavor Group has a division working with the estate of Notorious B.I.G.
“We are losing a generation of artists, and they need proper management of their intellectual property, name, image and life rights,” said Phil Sandhaus, the head of Endeavor’s WME Legends.
Pophouse has positioned itself as a leading player in the space. Conni Jonsson, the founder of Swedish private equity firm EQT AB, teamed with ABBA’s Ulvaeus to start Pophouse in 2014. Pophouse doesn’t own the ABBA catalog, but it does operate the ABBA Museum, which includes a re-creation of the site where the band first met, a re-creation of the studio where they recorded a lot of their music and a self-playing piano that comes alive whenever Andersson plays at home.
The company has been selective in buying catalogs; it acquired the catalog of Swedish electronic music trio Swedish House Mafia and a controlling stake in the catalog of the DJ Avicii. It is working on new projects involving both artists, though it declined to specify what they are. The company is also now raising money to buy more catalogs – including some from non-Swedish artists. With ABBA, they have the template.
“ABBA has done it again,” Sundin said. “They were early to music videos, they were early to jukebox musicals.” Now, they are early to the art of living forever.
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ABBA Makes $3 Million From Concerts Every Week… Without Actually Performing
HUSTLE
— 6 SEPTEMBER 2023
Henry Garnett
Seven times a week, a sold-out crowd of around 3,000 people make the pilgrimage to East London, where they experience ABBA Voyage. It’s one of the most expensive productions in music history, but here’s the twist: live performances from Agnetha Fältskog, Björn Ulvaeus, Benny Andersson, and Anni-Frid Lyngstad were never in the show’s budget.
Prior to opening back in May 2022, the show’s aforementioned budget had already ballooned to an eyewatering £140 million (AU$275 million). 15 months on, however, ABBA Voyage has clearly demonstrated its been worth the investment, selling more than 1.5 million tickets to generate over US$150 million (AU$235 million) in box office revenue — and becoming one of the year’s highest-earning shows in the process.
With an average ticket price of approximately £85 (AU$167), that means it’s consistently raking in more than US$2 million (AU$3.1 million) week after week.
Within the custom-built ABBA Arena featuring 291 speakers and LED screens that make the venue’s internal dimensions seem even grander than the already-impressive reality, three-dimensional renderings of the Swedish supergroup — exactly as they appeared in their heyday — take to the stage to perform 22 of their biggest (and most memorable) hits.
The band enlisted the help of Lucasfilm visual effects subsidiary, Industrial Light & Magic (ILM), to help create something visually immersive and believable enough to satisfy a paying audience. ILM then used 160 motion-capture cameras to record them in action, before digitally de-aging them with help from 1,000 visual effects artists.
The producers also filmed younger body doubles who were able to imitate the way the band used to move in the 70s. As ABBA’s own Benny Andersson explained to Rolling Stone:
“If you’re 75, you don’t jump around like you did when you were 34.”
RELATED: Beyonce Projected To Earn – Get This – Over $3 Billion For ‘Renaissance’ World Tour
Due to its consistently high demand, ABBA Voyage is expected to run in London for years to come. Its producers are even in early discussions to expand the show to other cities around the world such as Las Vegas, New York, Singapore, and right there in Sydney; it’s also opened up the possibility for hologram shows of other iconic artists who want their fans to witness them in perpetuity.
“If you are an artist, you can create your legacy in a way you never could before,” said Per Sundin, CEO of Pophouse Entertainment (this undertaking’s lead investor).
“This is such a success. We already have been talking to some artists that really want to do this.”
What a strange time to be alive.
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