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Bros fans at a concert in their favourite boy band’s T-shirts, 1988.
Bros fans at a concert in their favourite boy band’s T-shirts, 1988.
Photograph: Eugene Adebari/REX/Shutterstock
Bros fans at a concert in their favourite boy band’s T-shirts, 1988.
Photograph: Eugene Adebari/REX/Shutterstock

The money in tour merchandise – archive, 1993

This article is more than 4 years old

19 March 1993 For touring bands, T-shirts on backs are worth more than bums on seats

When you part with £12 for a T-shirt at a pop concert, you’re not just paying extortionate tribute to your heroes. You’re making the difference between the gig showing a profit or a loss.

To quote an impressive example, Iron Maiden grossed £6.5 million on merchandising during an eight-month tour in 1990. At the other end of the scale, the committedly crusty Levellers estimate that 50 per cent of every concert audience buys their specially low-priced T-shirts.

These sorts of figures greatly interest managers, always alert to ways of reducing tour costs. They have to be: touring a band costs from £13,000 for a mid-level indie outfit to £160,000 for a Simply Red.

Last week, Wembley plc, owners of the Arena and Stadium, announced it was to provide merchandising services for the European leg of U2’s Zooropa tour. This will amount to “specially trained” Wembley operatives selling souvenir paraphernalia (manufactured by speciality merchandising company Winterland) at custom-built stalls.

The Wembley deal is another step towards what Simply Red manager Elliot Rashman calls the “corporatisation” of pop, with labels also starting to get in on the act by setting up their own merchandising divisions - Sony has just launched one called Sony Signatures. It’s now quite common for record companies to try to claim “merchandising rights” in artists’ contracts.

Even smallish groups can sell enough to make touring worthwhile. Dave Newton, manager of indie heart-throbs Ride, says: “You can sometimes make more from merchandise than from touring and records. On our last tour we broke even, but we made an extra £30,000 on T-shirts and posters. Without merchandising the tour would just have been promotional.”

Hitherto, tour ranges consisted of a poor-quality T-shirt or two, a sweat shirt, a brochure and a badge. Today, the besotted fan can choose from - well, take Simply Red’s merchandise list as a guide. Available during their just-completed tour were eight separate shirts, a baseball cap, a mini-torch, a “portfolio” (brochure), three badges and a duffle bag.

Other bands do something along these lines plus a high-priced “premium” item like a jacket. Happy Mondays once sold “designer” (the mind boggles) condoms.

Iron Maiden fans In Sydney, Australia. Photograph: Martin Philbey/Redferns

Apparently, the biggest-selling bands are Iron Maiden and, of all people, Depeche Mode. Simply Red’s designer, Vicky Mockett, knows about heavy metal. “Groups like Iron Maiden make the highest per head on merchandising of all. The punters buy one of everything. They’ll put a new T-shirt on over an old one, wear all the badges . . . they pay in 5ps, 10ps, 50ps. There is no relationship between people’s income and what they’ll pay for music merchandise.”

This gives the industry carte blanche to charge what it chooses, and although much of what is on sale is of good quality, that doesn’t seem to justify the prices: £18, £30 and £140 seem rather a lot to pay for a Simply Red T-shirt, a Go West denim shirt and a Pet Shop Boys jacket.

Merchandisers indignantly respond by inviting you to feel the quality. However, they assign most of the blame for prices to the venues themselves. It’s customary for most places to charge 25 per cent of a merchandiser’s gross for allowing them to sell there.

“The concession fee is the biggest single evil of the whole merchandising system because it pushes up prices and encourages bootleggers,” says Elliot Rashman. Carter The Unstoppable Sex Machine simply refuse to sell at concession-fee halls. Venues maintain that the charge is a major source of income. “We spent £1 million last year on improving our catering and merchandising areas,” a Wembley spokesman remarked.

That’s something to think about while you’re queuing for those Depeche Mode cycling shorts.

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