There aren't many questions, but Karsten Schölermann has prepared a standard answer just in case: “After weighing the social consequences, we in the Knust team decided in favor of cultural freedom.
After almost two years of forced Corona break, we and our audience are completely "dancing under" and would therefore like to remedy this need by implementing 2-G concerts for vaccinated or recovered guests ".
They are aware that such a part of the audience will be excluded, but: "We are convinced that this will only affect a transitional period" - and in the end the restart of the cultural scene is "of existential importance and cannot tolerate any further waiting time."
Benjamin Fischer
Editor in business.
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Like the Hamburger Club, many other venues handle it for better or for worse.
Open airs are hardly an issue in autumn and winter and with the 3-G rule, the distance and mask requirement would often continue to apply - not an option if the concert atmosphere should be as normal as possible again at rock shows.
In Knust, almost all possible opening days are currently occupied with concerts.
Lots of smaller national tours, hardly any big shows
“Under normal conditions, we have a maximum capacity of around 600 pax, but we are currently voluntarily limiting ourselves to 450,” says Schölermann. Apart from the “somewhat shaky deployment of personnel”, everything feels the same as it used to be. "Development issues", that is, artists or newcomers that are lesser known in this country and with whom organizers usually hardly earn anything, have always been rather sluggish. Overall, the occupancy rate is currently around 20 percent below the level before the pandemic.
A show by the Kölschrock group Kasalla that was rescheduled for the end of October would probably have been sold out. Pure party formats have meanwhile been going very well, and sales at the counter have also increased somewhat at concerts - a “catch-up effect”, estimates Schölermann. As for the many concerts that have been postponed several times, he has observed an increased “no show rate”. This is confirmed by Axel Ballreich, Chairman of the Association of Smaller Music Venues in Germany (LiveKomm) and himself a club operator and organizer. 20 to 35 percent of ticket holders currently did not show up at postponed concerts in the evening, he says.
In his “Hirsch” club in Nuremberg, he worked for a while with the 2 G as well as the 3-G plus model (with a negative PCR test, access is also permitted for those who have not been vaccinated or those who have recovered).
After tightening the rules in Bavaria, from now on only 2 G applies. In terms of the program, there are currently no major differences in principle: “At the moment, there are mainly smaller shows and tours of national acts with perhaps up to 4,000 spectators per concert , for which tickets were mostly sold with reference to the 2-G rule, "says Jens Michow, the executive president of the Federal Association of the Concert and Event Industry (BDKV), summarizing the situation.
"Of course, 2 G does not yet mean full operation"
10,000 spectators like Roland Kaiser’s 2-G concert in Hamburg’s Barclays-Arena are an exception. International artists are rarely out and about in Germany anyway.
The risk of being left with the costs of the time-consuming tour planning due to short-term cancellations or restrictions is too great.
First of all, playing in your own country is less risky - especially since fans there too are usually longingly waiting.
There is also another problem: “In the case of tours that were postponed several times, the tickets were bought when a 2-G or 3-G regulation was not yet up for discussion, so that there may be a lot more tickets in circulation than with the respective regulation currently spectators for an indoor concert are allowed, ”said Michow.