Asia News: More Taylor Swift; IU Launches World Tour; Rihanna’s Private Payday

SINGAPORE

Taylor Swift Deal Raises Regional Hackles

As Taylor Swift started her highly anticipated, sold-out six-show run at the National Stadium in Singapore, the country’s neighbors are questioning the city-state’s methods for gaining exclusive dibs on the “Eras Tour” in Southeast Asia.

Yahoo! News reports that one Philippines lawmaker criticized the agreement that Singapore made with Swift’s team to make sure she wouldn’t play anywhere else in the region during the tour.

Joey Salceda of the Philippines House of Representatives asked the Department of Foreign Affairs to formally protest the agreement.

“This isn’t what good neighbors do,” he said in a media statement distributed Feb. 28.
The agreement, he went on, would severely damage diplomatic relations between Singapore and the Philippines, which reportedly has the highest number of Taylor Swift fans in Southeast Asia, judging by social media metrics.

Salceda is an economist in addition to representing the province of Albay in congress, where he chairs a committee that oversees laws generating government revenue. For several weeks, regional media has been filled with stories, based on a claim made by Thailand’s prime minister, Srettha Thavisin, that the government of Singapore offered Swift’s people up to $3 million per concert to visit Singapore on her current tour and no other regional city. Neither the Singapore Tourism Board nor the Ministry of Culture, Community and Youth have confirmed these claims.

Salceda has acknowledged to local press that however Singapore proposed the exclusivity idea, it has been extremely successful in boosting hotel sales and air travel to Singapore during the time Swift is in the country.

“In the long run,” he said, “we need to step up our game” in terms of improving infrastructure that can handle a world-class act like Swift’s.

In an interview with Channel News Asia, Singapore’s Culture, Community and Youth Minister Edwin Tong said that the amount Singapore paid for the exclusive shows is “nowhere as high” as being reported, though he didn’t get into specific amounts.
CNA says it heard that the amount was more like $3 million for the entire six-show run rather than for each show.

“With every promoter, [the Swift team] make their own calculations,” said Tong. “They decide whether they want to come, how many nights they want to come, where else they want to go. The truth of the matter is not about a grant or a deal, but the overall package.”
Many of the factors that are important to a large-scale tour are out of Singapore’s control, which suggests that the decision to play Singapore only was as much Swift’s decision as it was Singapore’s.

The only condition that Tong said Singapore requested was that the Singapore shows be at the “end of any segment of her tour.” With that in mind, it was easy to extend the run of shows, which is what the ministry wanted on behalf of local businesses.

In that regard, the scheme worked, since only three shows were initially planned.
CNA also reported that demand for flights and accommodations during the concert run increased by 30%. The boost to the local economy could be well more than $700 million.

KOREA

K-pop Star IU Launches World Tour

IU, who has been called the Taylor Swift of K-pop, launched her first-ever, large-scale world tour with four sold-out shows at the KSPO Dome in Seoul on March 2. The tour will then take her to arenas and stadiums in Japan, Taiwan, Southeast Asia, China, Europe and six cities in the U.S.

Prior to the tour, IU’s agency, Edam Entertainment, carried out a purge of her fan club in a bid to send a message to people who buy tickets from scalpers. Apparently, the agency canceled several dozen tickets for the Seoul shows that had been resold illegally, with five of the tickets having been bought by members of Uaena, IU’s official fan club.

The five, according to the Korea JoongAng Daily, were “expelled from the community and stripped of their membership status.” Twenty-nine “general buyers” were also “restricted from joining [the fan club] in the future” and were also banned from buying IU concert tickets indefinitely.

INDIA

Rihanna Plays Private Party For Asia’s Richest Man

Rihanna’s first legitimate concert appearance since 2016 took place at a private event March 1 in Jamnagar, India, to celebrate the upcoming nuptials of Anant Ambani, the son of Mukesh Ambani, the “richest man in Asia,” according to USA Today.

The private concert was part of three days of celebration ahead of the Ambani scion’s wedding in July.

The guest list for the party numbered more than 1,000 and included celebrities such as Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg and Ivanka Trump. Rihanna’s fee for the performance has not been disclosed, though varying reports suggest anywhere from $6 million to $9 million.