Coldplay will snub Adelaide on its 2009 tour as they announced it will tour Australia in February and March of next year. South Australian fans will instead have to pay for flights to one of the band's performances in Perth, Brisbane, Sydney or Melbourne.
But a spokeswoman for touring company Chugg Entertainment said there were no plans to add Adelaide to the Coldplay schedule at a later date. That was despite the band playing at the Adelaide Entertainment Centre on their 2006 tour.
"We were given a specific window of availability for Coldplay's Australian tour and, unfortunately, despite our best efforts, it was not possible to route the tour through Adelaide this time around," the spokeswoman said.
Coldplay is the latest in a line of big-name acts to dodge Adelaide. Kylie Minogue is only playing Sydney and Melbourne when she brings her X2008 tour Down Under next month. Similarly, rapper Kanye West and American electro-pop group MGMT have only scheduled December concerts in the eastern states. Rock veterans Sting and Eric Clapton are also eschewing Adelaide in their forthcoming tours. The snub comes after punk-pop superstar Pink this week announced a fourth show at the Entertainment Centre in August, bringing the US singer's number of Australian dates to 34.
With Coldplay's tour billed as its biggest ever, there has been speculation the band may miss Adelaide due to the lack of an appropriate venue. This comes after the Sunday Mail reported last week that the Adelaide Entertainment Centre has come under fire from tour promoters for being "tired" and "poor and dated".
The comments, made in a Public Works Committee report tabled in Parliament last month, included a statement from Michael Chugg, director of Chugg Entertainment, the promoters behind Coldplay's Australian tour.
In the report, Mr Chugg – who has previously brought tours from Sir Elton John and Keith Urban to Adelaide – describes the centre as "well below the standards expected from a major capital city such as Adelaide".
Coldplay's Sydney and Melbourne concerts are being staged at the Rod Laver Arena and ACER Arena. Local concert promoter Trevor Hunt says AAMI Stadium would be more than suitable for such a tour. "When you look at U2, one of the biggest bands in the world, playing at AAMI Stadium . . . 60,000 people, they were very happy with the venue, as have a lot of the acts that have been down there," Mr Hunt said.
"We've never had a problem with outside venues here. AAMII Stadium has been used successfully on a number of highly successful tours, and likewise Adelaide Oval has been used successfully."
The record crowd at AAMI Stadium was 80,000 for Robbie Williams in 2006. Mr Hunt, the promoter behind Pink's upcoming mammoth Australian tour, said there were a number of factors behind why bands skip Adelaide. "It just depends on circumstances. It depends on the band, the timing, the tour schedule. Occasionally we do miss out on shows over here."
The tour announcement caps off a bumper year for Coldplay. Their fourth album, Viva La Vida (or Death And All His Friends), was released in June and sold millions worldwide. A deluxe edition of the album – Viva La Vida: Prospekt's March, with eight new tracks – is released in Australia this weekend.
Source: news.com.au
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