Abu Dhabi At Saturation Point?

The company that brought Coldplay, Aerosmith and The Killers to Abu Dhabi in 2009 will promote fewer shows with top-level international acts because the market can’t stand much more.

“We are coming close to the city’s saturation point with the amount of things that are happening,” Flash Entertainment managing director John Lickrish told local English-language daily The National. “It’s a lot for people to digest.”

At the end of 2009, Flash staged The Killers, the Creamfields outdoor dance festival, Rihanna’s New Year’s Eve concert and the Capitala World Tennis Championship. The company will now focus on smaller-scale attractions.

“We won’t do four major events in one month again,” Lickrish explained. “We may still do three or four events in a month but they will be targeted at different demographics, and we’d cut down on their scale. It’s easier for us to do rather than big grandiose projects that are quite draining on manpower.”

The company has an event planned for late February or early March, and two on the books for the spring – one “purely sporting event” and one “youth-orientated sport-music festival.”

Lickrish said organising a large-scale concert in Abu Dhabi was much more labour-intensive than elsewhere, because facilities must be built from scratch.

The company, which plans to double its staff from 20 to 40 by the end of March, has also looked at expanding into theatre and comedy. But Lickrish says there are logistical problems with bringing in large Broadway shows, for example.

Few venues are suitable for such a production, which also needs a long run to be viable.

Founded two years ago by the Abu Dhabi government’s Executive Affairs Authority, Flash has also produced shows by Andrea Bocelli, Kings of Leon, Beyoncé and Jamiroquai.