Boxoffice Insider: WiZink Center Stages Indoor September Festival

Indoor live performances have been rare in the past seven months because of the many restrictions impacting venues in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. Most events since the shutdown of live shows have been set in outdoor environments, primarily at the drive-in concert sites that have been quite popular.

In Madrid, however, the 17,450-seat WiZink Center brought live concert activity back indoors as early as July 3, making it one of the first large European venues to host an indoor event after the March shutdown. The arena staged three socially distanced events in July with 6,680 tickets sold.

In September the venue again hosted indoor socially distanced entertainment with a two-week run of the “Madriz Summer Fest,” a series of nine concerts that took place from Sept. 2-16. Maximum capacity was 2,662, with seats surrounding a 360° stage centered on the arena floor. Spanish event producer Proactiv and Voltereta Tour organized the festival, which launched with a performance by local pop singer Sofía Ellar. Her show brought in $53,399 from 779 tickets.

Violinist Ara Malikian was most successful in box office earnings among the festival’s nine headliners. A resident of Madrid, his concert on Sept. 6 grossed $224,198 from 1,762 sold seats. The show marked a return engagement for Malikian, who played the arena 11 months earlier, grossing $605,255 from 8,093 tickets sold on Oct. 6, 2019. That show was one of two prior Malikian performances at WiZink found in Pollstar’s archives, the first being a Dec. 29, 2017 concert during his tour dubbed “The Incredible World Tour of Violin.” It sold out with 13,000 attendees and $972,358 in sales.

The festival’s best-attended show came on the second night, with Madrid’s indie-pop band Izal moving 1,885 tickets. With prices ranging from €33.60 to €100.80, box office revenue totaled $151,036 for the concert and marked the launch of the band’s “Little Big” tour. Like Malikian, Izal also has two prior concert engagements in the archives, most recently a two-show stint on April 5-6, 2019 that grossed $1.2 million. Those shows drew 28,811 hometown fans over both nights. An earlier reported show on Feb. 25, 2017 sold out, with 15,500 tickets and a $512,284 take.

Also appearing during the festival’s first week was Maldita Nerea. The pop-rock band played for 641 people on Sept. 4, scoring a $31,298 gross. It was the group’s second show at WiZink Center this year, having also played the arena in February, just one month before the live business closed down. That Feb. 14 show logged 10,781 total tickets and $229,931.

Camela, the Sept. 10 headliner, has performed three WiZink shows since April 2019, including a March 7 show this year, the last one at the arena before the lockdown. The band sold a total of 17,977 tickets across its three WiZink appearances, 429 of which came from the recent festival.

Funambulista performed Sept. 11 for 863 people and earlier played the arena in February for a crowd of 3,691. Barcelona’s Carlos Sadness sold 611 tickets on the Sept. 12, and also played WiZink in February 2019, but for 5,832 fans. Stay Homas, a trio in Barcelona who formed this year and gained fame playing music from their balcony during the lockdown, entertained 585 attendees on Sept. 13.

Finally, the festival wrapped on Sept. 16 with singer Pablo López, a 2016 Latin Grammy Award nominee. His show drew 913 people for a gross totaling $101,240. Previously, he headlined a show at the WiZink Center on Nov. 13, 2018, selling 10,890 tickets with box office earnings of $418,293.