Response to Collabro's statement about Big Top cancellation
We are very disappointed at Collabro’s statement issued on 22 August 2018 regarding their cancellation of their show in the Big Top on 16 August.
This is particularly so considering that all other artists at the Big Top’s 14 previous shows worked with staff at the venue without any of the issues Collabro have raise to give performances that were greatly appreciated.
Many of the issues on the night lie with Collabro’s management team and were not in the Council’s control.
Their sound engineer, who was not their usual engineer and was onsite from midday, had a number of issues with their showfile, which was provided by the artists, not the venue.
The full band arrived at the venue at around 6.30pm and from 7pm refused to talk with any onsite staff, communicating instead via their agent in London and posting their cancellation notice first on social media before informing onsite staff so that they could tell fans what was happening.
We accept that at the time of set up there was interference in the original in ear pieces and new ones were ordered to be delivered via courier. All equipment at the venue, including in ear pieces had previously worked for all other artists at Big Top. Collabro’s support team ignored suggestions at 5pm from the onsite technical team to help resolve the interference with in-ear pieces.
Collabro refused to test the replacement in ear sets which were onsite at 7:45pm. Collabro cancelled at 7.49pm. Collabro left the site to go to their hotel in Telford before the announcement was made to fans queuing on site and did not talk to any staff.
The Big Top had the necessary licenses to ensure it could use the radio frequencies needed for in ear pieces. It’s very disappointing that Collabro have chosen to claim this was not so without ever checking facts.
Given that Collabro stayed overnight in Telford, we believe it would have been reasonable for them to at least test the new equipment and to give either a delayed or shortened performance and we are very disappointed for everyone involved that they chose not to.
We were willing to run the show later and inform all audience members of the delay and offer refunds to those fans who couldn’t stay any later. Their management were told this numerous times before they chose to cancel.
All customers who had tickets for the show were contacted and offered a full refund within 24 hours.
The Council will now seek to recover all the costs of the cancellation from Collabro’s management.
