Yesterday we learned that Madonna would be live streaming her intimate club performance at the Olympia Theater in Paris, France for fans online but today we are hearing about the experience for fans inside the venue in Paris. Those of us who watched the live stream know that the show lasted only 8 songs long and was over in about 45 minutes. I assumed that the rest of the concert would proceed in person for fans at the Olympia Theater in Paris … I was wrong. 45 minutes is all the fans got in person as well … and many of them were angry because of how expensive the concert tickets were for such a short show. Yikes! UPDATE: Madonna‘s publicist has issued an official statement about this controversy, read it in full below.
Madonna was booed and called a “slut” by disgruntled fans after a gig in Paris last night (July 26). The intimate show at the city’s 2,700-seat Olympia Theatre was a last-minute addition to the singer’s ‘MDNA’ tour, with tickets offered to fan club members first and selling out in less than five minutes. However, the gig was considerably shorter than other performances on the tour. Madonna performed just eight songs, ending her set with a cover of Serge Gainsbourg’s ‘Je T’aime… Mon Non Plus’ and leaving the stage 45 minutes after she had come on. Some fans apparently felt short-changed after paying between 80 and 280 Euros (£62 and £219) for tickets. Video footage uploaded to YouTube shows gig-goers chanting “Remboursez!”, French for “We want our money back!”, shortly after Madonna left the stage. Later in the video, a group of fans begin to chant “Salope!”, a derogatory term that translates as “slut” or “whore”. Scroll down to watch the video.
HMMM … while I think it is a bit excessive to yell out these sorts of derogatory names, I can understand the fans’ anger at having paid so much money for so little show. Let me be clear, it is completely outrageous to call a woman a “slut” and a “whore” because a concert was cut short. Misogyny of that sort is totally unacceptable. But calls for refunds? Yeah, that’s totally justifiable. I’m not gonna lie, I watched Madonna‘s concert at the Olympia online yesterday and I felt a tiny bit “cheated” when it was over so quickly … and I didn’t pay anything for the show. I can absolutely understand the anger from fans who spent so much money to see a concert only to be treated to a very short performance. At the end of the day, I highly doubt Madonna knows or even cares about this incident. She will carry on her MDNA World Tour, raking in the money along the way. Still, I think it would’ve been nice for her to give her fans a bit more for their money. But, it’s Madonna we’re talking about here … I guess you get what you pay for.
UPDATE: In response to this fan furor, Madonna‘s publicist Liz Rosenberg has issued the following statement:
Madonna’s Paris club show was planned as her heartfelt thank-you to France, which she expressed at the start of her show. Despite a grueling concert tour, she desperately wanted to perform for her fans in an intimate setting at the historic Olympia as a means to honor her love for French artists, French cinema and a tribute to France’s long history of welcoming and inspiring artists, authors, painters, poets and minorities from other countries over the years. The show was not billed as her full MDNA concert and tremendous effort was made to keep the ticket prices reasonable ($100 for 2,000 floor seats) and keep them strictly for her fans. The show cost Madonna close to a million dollars to produce. She has done a handful of club dates in the past and they were never more than 45 minutes. And by the way, she put on a fabulous show, which was streamed for millions of fans around the world.
LOL! To me, this sounds pretty much like Madonna‘s camp is saying … Quit complaining, you’re lucky you got what you got ;) I’m not sure that this statement will adequately quell the bad feelings among fans but it’s the response I was expecting to hear. Folks hoping for a refund are likely shizz outta luck. Does this official statement make you feel better or worse about this situation?
I think if you ever see a $80 ticket price for a Madonna concert you have to expect it isn’t a full 24 song show. I was figuring it was going to be a “promo” type show.
@joe — I mean, because it’s Madonna I’m not surprised by much. That being said, for $80 she could’ve at least performed for an hour.
it was 80 euros, actually, which makes the high end tickets almost 350 USD!
I don’t have any issues with a 45mns show … I do have a problem with the fact that she “performed” a song where she is not on stage! For 45mns I think she could have made the effort to spare the fans a video of her …
by no means in the name calling appropriate, but i would be pissed too.
i get that it was a last minute add on..and suppose to be an “intimate” show. but intimate does have to be half ass’d. i read she was about 2 hours late – dont know if its true, but if it is, thats horrible. and those people dropped damn good money for those tickets. if you’re going to give a shorter show, lower the prices.
these people were better off staying home & watching it for free online.
@nicole — Not only did they pay a pretty penny but they camped out for days ahead of time. Boy, I’d be livid!
@Trent – being livid is putting it nicely lol
I watched the show yesterday and I thought basically the same thing – that the show went on a little longer and we just weren’t seeing it through youtube. Or that my internet was messing with my head.
I am surprised to learn that THAT was the WHOLE show she did. I bet they WERE pissed!
I’ve been a Madge fan for a LONG time and I just wanted to add my two cents here . . . I think the real people to blame here are her management team. This show was doomed from the beginning. There was little to no promotion for it and it was announced 5 days before the show. The show should have been promoted as a showcase and not as the MDNA tour and the ticket prices should have reflected that. 45 min or so shows are not unheard of for Madonna. She’s done them for Roseland Ballroom, Koko Club and Brixton Academy. These venues are about the same in size and intimacy as L’Olympia. But to give a comparison, the Roseland Ballroom show had about 8 million online viewers where as this show only had about 70,000 viewers. Plain and simple it was poorly promoted and organized. That being said, I do think Madonna performed her ass off and the addition of the two new songs were great. I think her manager, Guy Oseary is really lucky that boss lady doesn’t read reviews or have a twitter account.
I understand how they felt. Last year I saw Morrisey in Mexico City and mi ticket cost me aprox. $100 dlls, the show, for me was pretty short, just over 1 hour 15 minutes and I kinda felt scammed, I don’t regret it, ’cause it’s freaking awsome Morrisey, but still,I left the venue wanting more Morrisey for my money and with a huge grin on my face because I just saw Morrisey live for the first time in my live (and hopefully not the last).
I understand the fan’s anger. I think if it was intended to be a short show, it should have been marketed that way. People spent crazy amounts of money for such a short show!
The statement is awful! If she was doing it as a “thank you”, then they shouldn’t have to pay anything at all. I myself have never had to pay someone to get a thank you.
I think this whole thing was just handled poorly, and she should own that. If they would have let the fans know ahead of time that it as going to be a smaller, shorter show, then it should have been marketed as such. Also…over $1 million for 45 minutes? That is over $22,222 per minute. Someone needs to do some better financial management. I hope she isn’t including personal chef/massuse/yoga instructor in the cost of the show just to guilt fans.
With a honest and proper promotion it still would have sold out. Fans would’ve leave happy because they would been aware of what they were getting into and not with this bad promotion.
Yeah slut was a bit misdirected. She’s actually a try-sexual. She’ll try anything at least once.