Features
Exclusive: Pink Manager Roger Davies On Her Aussie Appeal, U.S. Growth
Pink manager Roger Davies talked to Pollstar from Australia, where the singer is hugely popular and has already sold out 35 dates on her Beautiful Trauma World Tour, which includes 49 North American dates and Davies says will likely hit Europe later in 2018.
Renaud Philippe / FEQ – Pink
Pink gives an intimate performance during the 50th Festival D’été De Québec at Plains Of Abraham in Québec City July 8.
This comes just as the singer’s new Beautiful Trauma album topped the charts upon its release.
“I think for Australians, they really relate to her as sort of what you see is what you get, and she has a very broad audience, probably from 7 to 70-plus,” Davies, who is Australian himself, told Pollstar. “They strongly relate to her personality and she’s very honest, and I think that is very appealing to Australians.
“We have a good time here,” Davies added, laughing. He added that it’s likely they will add five more dates in Australia before all is said and done.
Pink, 38, has toured Australia seven times already, with the build starting in 2004.
“(Australian concert promoter) Michael Coppel believed in her, and we said we’ll build this market,” Davies said.
“So we did promo there and a lot of television and she did the ‘I’m Not Dead’ tour in 2007 and we did 36 shows in Australia. All arenas, which was pretty fantastic, and then we followed that two years later with the ‘Funhouse’ tour, where we did 58 shows in Australia and sort of beat our own record.
“The last tour we did here was in 2013, we did 46 shows. We did more capital cities this last time. We did 18 shows in Melbourne, 16 in Sydney and things like that.”
Some Pollstar number crunching has Pink’s 2009 tour of Australia alone playing to an estimated 639,229 people. That’s just more than 2.6 percent of the country’s population of 24.1 million. For 2013, we have her selling an estimated 590,010 tickets, which would be 2.2 percent of the population.
Pink’s touring is not growing just Down Under, as word of mouth has spread over the years and more dates are added in Europe as well as North America.
“I think a lot of it is she is a great live performer,” Davies said. “It’s very much it’s word of mouth. People would say, ‘Oh you’ve got to see that Pink show, it’s fantastic and spectacular.’”
“America is really growing. The last two tours have really grown there. We’re doing 49 shows starting on March 1 in Phoenix and going to end in Los Angeles in June. And they’re pretty much sold out. So it’s just really good.
“The last American tour did well but this I think will be a fantastic tour,” said Davies. That’s some confidence from the manager, considering Pink was already No. 8 on Pollstar’s Year End Top 200 North American Tours in 2013, with 766,418 tickets sold and grossing an average of $1.23 million per event.
Pink has had a few years off, with the birth of a second child with husband and off-road truck racer and motocross competitor Carey Hart.
“Because we haven’t had a record in five years and she’s had a second child in that period, we went out and did about 14 festival dates in the summer,” Davies said, “just to get her foot back in the water and see how that would be. And we had a really nice time with that. We did five in Europe and about eight in north America. And it was really enjoyable.”
“Now we’re getting ready to put the big production together which will be a more theatrical show,” Davies said, which Pink has become known for with high-flying acrobatics and nonstop energy.
“She’ll be out with the whole family,” Davies said, laughing. “It’s a traveling circus, but it’s good. Members of her band and her core dancers have been with her for 10-15 years, which makes it a very much a family feel, which is nice when you go out and tour with people you like.”
Up next is likely Europe, where Pink is also huge.
“Europe is doing really well,” Davies said, “We have to get there, we’re just doing America and Australia first and we’ll head to Europe probably later in the year.”
Pink’s Beautiful Trauma album knocked it out of the park on its first week of release, obliterating the competition on Pollstar’s Elite 100 Artists chart this week. On that chart, her total of 470.3 is nearly seven times higher than the next-closest.
Pink is booked by Bill Buntain of Bonus Management for North America and Australia, and Marshall Arts handles Europe.