The fall­out fol­low­ing the fi­as­co that turned out to be the One Caribbean Mu­sic Fes­ti­val has left many with­in the en­ter­tain­ment fra­ter­ni­ty en­gag­ing in some re­flec­tion.

Vy­bz Kar­tel’s non-ap­pear­ance, and the sub­se­quent pull­out of oth­er top-billed acts for the May 31 event, has al­ready placed the pro­mo­tion team in a fi­nan­cial pick­le. How­ev­er, some even pon­dered if the team would have made a prof­it on the event giv­en the rev­e­la­tion by Ja­cho En­ter­tain­ment team on Sat­ur­day that the Ja­maican star had al­ready re­ceived US$950,000 of his US$1.35 mil­lion per­for­mance fee, af­ter the dance­hall star’s man­age­ment is­sued a state­ment that the artiste, re­al name Adi­jah Palmer, would not be com­ing due to a breach of con­tract.

Based on the cur­rent ex­change rate this meant Kar­tel was paid ap­prox­i­mate­ly $6.45 mil­lion in, while his over­all fee would have been $9.18 mil­lion.

This has prompt­ed some to ques­tion if the event could have made a prof­it af­ter the artiste was paid, or if tick­et sales could have even sur­passed the po­ten­tial pay­out for the Ja­maican su­per­star.

The sim­ple an­swer is yes.

While Vy­bz Kar­tel’s per­for­mance fee came as a sur­prise to many, it is not the largest fee paid out to an in­ter­na­tion­al act who per­formed in this coun­try.

Be­y­once Knowles-Carter per­formed in T&T on Thurs­day, Feb­ru­ary 18, 2010. Her ap­pear­ance fee then in TT dol­lars was re­port­ed­ly $11.1 mil­lion or US$1.6 mil­lion.

That event al­so raised se­ri­ous ques­tions of TSTT/bmo­bile, the ma­jor­i­ty state-owned com­pa­ny that host­ed the con­cert, as con­cerns were raised the R&B star’s per­for­mance fee guar­an­teed the event would run at a loss.

Those con­cerns were rub­bished by then TSTT CEO Lisa Agard, who was con­fi­dent that the event would at worse break even when asked if the telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions com­pa­ny was wise to foot the bill for the pop­u­lar en­ter­tain­er’s ap­pear­ance in Trinidad.

She was proven cor­rect as 25,000 tick­ets were sold for that con­cert at the Queen’s Park Sa­van­nah, with VVIP tick­ets sell­ing out im­me­di­ate­ly in De­cem­ber 2009.

The break­down of the 25,000 tick­ets sold was 4,000 VVIP tick­ets at a cost of $1,600 each; 8,000 VIP tick­ets which cost $1,000 each and 13,000 gen­er­al ad­mis­sions tick­ets, which will each cost $450.

The re­turn for VVIP tick­ets at that price was $6.4 mil­lion, while VIP tick­ets would have re­turned $8 mil­lion while 13,000 gen­er­al ad­mis­sion tick­ets would have earned $5.85 mil­lion. This meant the tick­et re­ceipts for that con­cert would have been $20,250,000 mil­lion, eas­i­ly cov­er­ing Be­y­once’s fee.

While Ja­cho En­ter­tain­ment, up to the time of writ­ing, has yet to re­veal how many tick­ets were in­deed sold for the event, if there were in­deed a sim­i­lar turnout, the re­turns from gate re­ceipts would have been high­er than the 2010 con­cert.

The One Caribbean Mu­sic Fes­ti­val had gen­er­al tick­ets list­ed at $600 to $670, VIP tick­ets at $1500/$1600, with VVIP on sale at $2500/2700. There were al­so 12 ca­banas avail­able for the event which were sold for $50,000.

If there were a sim­i­lar 25,000 pa­tron break­down for the event, the OCMF would have earned be­tween $7.8 mil­lion to $8.45 mil­lion for 13,000 gen­er­al tick­ets sold, be­tween $12 mil­lion and $12.8 mil­lion for 8,000 VIP tick­ets and 4,000 VVIP tick­ets would have fetched $10 mil­lion to $10.8 mil­lion. Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands that all 12 ca­banas were in­deed tak­en, mean­ing $600,000 had been paid by those pa­trons.

This means the event could have earned be­tween $30.4 mil­lion to $32.65 mil­lion from tick­et sales alone if it had a sim­i­lar pa­tron­age to the Be­y­once con­cert.

Vy­bz Kar­tel had been a ma­jor draw at events in Trinidad be­fore his ar­rest in 2011, and in­deed his pop­u­lar­i­ty in­creased dur­ing his time be­hind bars. He record­ed his biggest hit Fever while in prison and re­leased sev­er­al hits dur­ing his in­car­cer­a­tion.

Fol­low­ing his re­lease from jail in Ju­ly 2024, there was great an­tic­i­pa­tion for his first per­for­mance in T&T which was height­ened when the Ja­maican artiste him­self said on so­cial me­dia that T&T was one of the first coun­tries he planned to have a con­cert per­for­mance.

How­ev­er, the main dif­fer­ence be­tween the two sce­nar­ios would ap­pear to be the fi­nan­cial stand­ing TSTT/bmo­bile would have en­joyed to cov­er the ex­pens­es re­quired to en­sure that the artiste would ap­pear on stage in front of fans.

Al­though TSTT was in the midst of a sig­nif­i­cant mo­bile phone war with Dig­i­cel in 2010, the T&T had still been a very prof­itable com­pa­ny re­port­ing a prof­it of $384 mil­lion for fi­nan­cial year 2008/2009 and a prof­it of $202 mil­lion the fol­low­ing year.

No­tably of­fi­cials from Dig­i­cel con­firmed that the of­fer to bring Be­y­once was first pitched to them, but the com­pa­ny de­clined due the cost of ac­com­mo­dat­ing the R&B su­per­star in ad­di­tion to her ap­pear­ance fee.

Even with TSTT’s strong fi­nan­cial stand­ing, bmo­bile did no­tably scale back on spon­sor­ship for Car­ni­val 2010 to en­sure the Be­y­once con­cert would be prop­er­ly ex­e­cut­ed.

While even Palmer ac­knowl­edged the pro­mot­er at­tached to Ja­cho En­ter­tain­ment had suc­cess­ful­ly brought him to T&T be­fore, it is cur­rent­ly un­known if that com­pa­ny has any­where close to that lev­el of fi­nan­cial re­sources to af­ford such an in-de­mand artiste at this time.

Ex­pe­ri­enced pro­mot­er Randy Glas­gow told the Sun­day Busi­ness Guardian that in most cas­es the av­er­age pro­mot­er would strug­gle to pay such a fee with­out sig­nif­i­cant spon­sor­ship or back­ing from large busi­ness or­gan­i­sa­tions.

He how­ev­er felt it high­light­ed a ma­jor gap in sup­port for lo­cal artistes and by ex­ten­sion lo­cal events.

“Re­gret­tably, a few big cor­po­rate spon­sors see lit­tle val­ue in spon­sor­ing good lo­cal events and pre­fer these big-show align­ments where the over­all ben­e­fits promised are nev­er ful­filled in most cas­es. I am hop­ing all cor­po­rate spon­sors, small, medi­um and large go back to their mar­ket­ing draw­ing board and en­sure go­ing for­ward they lend their sup­port, in-kind or cash to lo­cal events. Their sup­port will make all the dif­fer­ence in lo­cal events be­ing suc­cess­ful” said Glas­gow.

This point had been em­pha­sised a day ear­li­er by the T&T Pro­mot­ers As­so­ci­a­tion (TTPA), which point­ed out in a state­ment the event should spark a cru­cial dis­cus­sion about in­dus­try re­form.

The TTPA said, “This event was not up to our stan­dards and about this we are ex­treme­ly con­cerned. Com­ing out of this, we be­lieve that is it time to broad­en di­a­logue with the state and our pri­vate sec­tor part­ners, in an ef­fort to en­sure that is­sues like the ones be­ing dis­cussed pub­licly are min­i­mal or ide­al­ly non-ex­is­tent.

“We want to lead a con­sul­ta­tive ap­proach to­wards achiev­ing deep leg­isla­tive re­form, spe­cif­ic to the en­ter­tain­ment and tourism sec­tors.”

For­mer TTPA pres­i­dent Jerome Pre­cil­la al­so shared sim­i­lar con­cerns par­tic­u­lar­ly as the event came so short­ly af­ter an­oth­er spat be­tween in­ter­na­tion­al act Keyshia Cole and a lo­cal pro­mot­er, adding fur­ther doubt about the in­dus­try.

How­ev­er, he said most pro­mot­ers took the job se­ri­ous­ly and this should en­cour­age the in­dus­try to en­sure all pro­ce­dures are com­plied with to en­sure all par­ties in­volved are sat­is­fied go­ing for­ward.