16/07/2012

Olympics - musician fees disgrace

Keith Harris, PPL's director of performer affairs, has called the fees offered by LOCOG to musicians to play music during London's summer Olympics a 'national disgrace'. Scottish musician Kris Drever recently posted on Facebook about his surprise and disgust that musicians were being asked to play for free at some events.

Even if money is offered it is a laughable amount - a recently circulated letter from the Dorney Lake rowing venue offered  £50 per act per hour for performance. Harris writes on the MusicTank blog today. 'I had better write that out in full in case you think there is a typing error. That is, fifty pounds per act per hour. So a five piece band would get £10 each for a one-hour performance.'

So, say Bellowhead were going to play somewhere at the Olympics, as an eleven piece touring outfit they would pocket £4.50 each for an hours performance, call it 8 quid for two hours.

It is easy to forget that the Olympics contains any sport as all the news concerns the frankly ruthless marketing, advertising and business side of the affair. When the biggest sporting event on the planet is sponsored by purveyors of junk food and sugary drinks you do start to wonder what's happened to its integrity.

Reuters recently polled some leading economists, their opinion was that the games would be of little benefit to the beleagured economy "The UK economy is maybe the seventh largest, and when you stage an Olympic Games in an economy like that, it's very difficult to identify what the impact is," said Stephen Lewis, chief economist at Monument Securities in London. Given London is already one of the world's top tourist destinations, lasting economic benefits would be inconsequential.

The Olympics are costing £9 billion, maybe using that to pay off the deficit would have helped more. David Cameron has suggested the games would generate 13 billion pounds over four years, but he does have a track record of talking bollocks.

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