Stars in their eyes
By Andrea Katz, FT.com site
Published: Sep 22, 2006

The court entertainer, royally commissioned to riddle at feasts and provide the monarch with much-needed distraction, was a dying breed as far back as the 17th century.

But in recent years there has been a renaissance in court performances. The Queen’s 2002 Golden Jubilee saw stars including Sir Paul McCartney, Annie Lennox and Brian May grace the Party at the Palace stage for a three-and-a-half hour spectacle.
These entertainers performed free for the Queen, with profits from album sales going to charity. Everyone else has to pay - and although these stars don’t come cheap, the rise of the global billionaire class has created a booming business in the world’s finest private shows.
Christina Aguilera, for example, earned $580,000 for a 30-minute performance at Suleiman Kerimov’s 40th birthday party, and a reported $2m for three songs at the wedding of another Russian billionaire, Andrei Melnichenko, last year.

And publicly reported sums generally don’t include additional fees for luxury accommodation, meals, production costs, transport and insurance.
For artists there are many other perks to these billionaire-funded soirees. There are several incentives for an artist to do private engagements, says Ben Bernstein, an agent at the William Morris Agency, which represents entertainers ranging from Dolly Parton to Eminem. First of all, private gigs are felt to be a safe engagement. "For a newer artist who may not as yet have commercial drawing power, the ability to make money and not have to be concerned about their [audience] is the incentive," says Bernstein.
Private showings also allow touring artists to play more than one show in the same city - for example, an office party one day and a large arena concert the next - without attracting undue attention. Artists and their managers tend to feel that they receive better treatment at private venues, with some preferring the usually more intimate setting of a home or office, or enjoying a welcome respite from the pressure of playing in front of reporters and critics.

Bernstein says another plus is that a private show takes less time. "The artist usually arrives the night before the engagement, plays the night of engagement, and leaves the following day. The show is basically the same that the artist does normally, although usually a private engagement only looks for an artist to perform around 60, maybe 75 minutes, so shows are much shorter than a normal concert."

And then there’s the cash: "It’s kind of a no-brainer," says Steve Einzig, founder of the New York-based online company BookingEntertainment.com. Though figures on private transactions are elusive, talent agents agree that professional artists are paid above market value for private shows. By way of an estimate, Einzig says a one-and-a-half time price increase on an artist’s normal fees is generally the rule. "If Artist A normally gets $200,000 for a public show, then they would probably charge $300,000 for a private event, although there is no set price."

Barry Weisblatt, of the Whiteleaf Entertainment Group, says: "The one element I’ll stress is that most of the time my clients or other people interested in hiring entertainers for private events forget how expensive it is to produce them. It often comes as something of a shock to someone who doesn’t understand how our business works. Given a number of $150,000 - the artist’s fee - the client often thinks that’s all they are responsible for. The costs of production can be astronomical - by that I mean hiring someone like myself to procure and produce the entertainment, the staging, the sound system, lighting - even catering needs can become very elaborate."

Whatever the reason for these star performances, the role of the entertainer is much the same today as it was in the days of the court entertainers: to make the host look grand.

Retail tycoon Philip Green, for example, threw a massive toga party for 250 guests to celebrate his 50th birthday in 2002 and, three years later, spent a reported $4m on a bar mitzvah party for his son Brandon. The birthday bash was held in Cyprus, with Tom Jones and Rod Stewart providing the musical entertainment. For his son’s celebration, Green flew 300 guests to the French Riviera, held the religious services in a private synagogue erected in the 14-acre hotel gardens for the occasion, and hired superstars Destiny’s Child and tenor Andrea Bocelli to perform on consecutive nights. As a baseline figure, Beyonce will not be hired for less than $500,000 a time.

But how is a figure such as $500,000 worked out? WhiteLeaf Entertainment’s Barry Weisblatt confesses, "I think the numbers are very arbitrary." An artist’s performance fees are set according to concert ticket sales, CD sales and possibly by advertising revenues, while for private showings, agents and managers can raise the sum by a factor of upwards of 50 percent, apparently at their own discretion.

"I think that for a lot of these artists the numbers are based on what they were able to get from the last date they book. When they get $100,000 one week and the next week someone offers them $250,000 the artists and their agents honestly believe that their market value has increased," says Weisblatt.

In some cases the fees are negotiable, but for many performance veterans, as Weisblatt puts it, there is no "wiggle room".
Putting a price tag on a celebrity’s desirability is a complicated business, and an outside observer may not see justification for the steep fees. However, for a select group of extremely private and wealthy individuals the benefits of a private concert far outweigh the costs. Even so, as celebrity worship starts to hover on the brink of ridiculousness, a little restraint might be a good thing.