Features
Lanxess Arena’s Stefan Löcher On Genesis’ Last Shows In Germany
Genesis gave their last two German concerts ever at Lanxess Arena in Cologne, March 13 & 15. Pollstar reached out to arena CEO Stefan Löcher, to ask him about this historic occasion. Here’s what he had to say about…
…the atmosphere at the concerts:
Stefan Löcher: After more than two years of event bans and drastic audience restrictions, it is, of course, incredible to hear thousands of guests cheer again. The noise level at shows like Genesis or BAP gave us all goosebumps. We are very grateful for this after all this time.
At the same time, we are proud to have confidently mastered the restart. After all, we weren’t allowed to apply the processes of everyday event life for a long time. The important thing is that we continue to do everything we can to ensure that the Laxess arena has a colorful future ahead of it, and that we can successfully stage the great events that are coming up in the near future.
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…ingress:
In close consultation with the event organizers and our security service providers, we have tried to stagger ingress. In addition, we raised awareness to ensure that the “2G+” [vaccinated or recovered plus negative test] and “3G” [vaccinated or recovered or negative test] checks were carried out efficiently and carefully so that all guests could be offered a safe event experience.
Basically, I am very satisfied with these first events of the past weeks. There’s room for improvement here and there, but we can still speak of a smooth event. In this context, I would like to thank our security partners and the promoters.
…the economic viability:
We are at a point where we can finally talk about profitability again. The fact that this was, of course, long overdue and would have been possible earlier in our opinion, is something we should no longer focus on.
The important thing now is that we can once again do what we all love: Give people a good time through great events. It is even more important that we will be allowed to do this in the long run. We are currently demonstrating in an impressive way that events can once again be safely mapped out, and we will work to ensure that this remains the case after the summer.
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…upcoming events:
Due to various postponements, this year is brimming over with highlights. We’ll have world stars like Billie Eilish, Alicia Keys, Bryan Adams or Queen as guests. National heroes, I’m talking about Udo Lindenberg or Peter Maffay, for example, as well as shooting stars à la Apache 207 or Felix Lobrecht will be joining us in 2022, as well.
Of course, top-class sports can’t be missing from the program either. We host the European Basketball Championship in September, and, as usual, the FINAL4 tournament of the EHF Handball Champions League, to name a couple. All employees are highly motivated and we are looking forward to every single act, every band, every event.