Seven weeks without a single word for them. Performers, producers, musicians and other intermittent workers felt abandoned by the State. Until the floor was. The President of the Republic finally addressed the big family of culture, Wednesday, May 6. He unveiled the first lines of a major plan, the most emblematic measure of which is the extension until August 31, 2021 of the rights to unemployment insurance for intermittent workers in the entertainment industry.
It was the minimum expected by the artistic community. From where a certain disappointment, even an anger barely returned. "I was stunned by his speech, plague Jean-Michel Ribes, director of the Rond-Point Theater in Paris, one of the great places of contemporary creation. He asks us to be inventive, but that's what that we have always done. And what did he invent? His intervention was full of clichés and clichés. " The Théâtre du Rond-Point receives 35% of public subsidies, the rest of its budget comes mainly from ticketing that has been stopped for two months. How can the 70 jobs be kept under these conditions? "It's simple, we're on the brink. Without support, we died before the end of the year."
Yellow vests, pension strikes, Covid-19: the dark years are linked
After the bad times due to the demonstrations of the Yellow Vests at the end of 2018, then of the demonstrations against the reform of the retirement at the end of 2019, the culture undergoes another hard blow with the Covid-19. This last shock could be fatal to him because the season stopped suddenly at the beginning of March 2020. The producer of "Les Franglaises", Christian Bourgaut, was delighted with the success of his show, one of the most popular in Paris. "I don't know if the show will be able to resume in September," he explains. "I reserved the Bobino hall until January 2021."
Will the public be there? Should we respect the barrier measures recommended by the report of the infectiologist François Bricaire given to the President of the Republic on Friday May 1? Two seats between each spectator, wearing of the compulsory mask, distance between the actors on the stage… In Bobino, which includes 900 seats, the show is profitable only if the hall is 65% full. Christian Bourgaut has trouble seeing how to recoup his costs with such constraints. There are far too many unknowns in this equation to perpetuate his company whose turnover (between 6 and 10 million euros) should drop by 60%. He too lives with the anxiety of filing for bankruptcy before the end of the year which would put 20 employees on the floor.
Macron's ads disappoint
Disillusionment is also strong on the music scene, where bankruptcies threaten many festivals and production companies. "This is an unprecedented disaster," points out Luc Gaurichon, president of Caramba Culture Live, one of the first producers of Alain Bashung. In recent years, its turnover has fluctuated between 17 and 18 million euros. This year, he expects an 80% drop. He does not know if a state guaranteed loan of two million euros will be enough to keep his permanent 38.
"We are extremely disappointed by the presidential intervention as well as by the attitude of the Minister of Culture, these people seem completely above ground", laments Rémi Perrier, director of the Musilac festival in Aix-les-Bains initially scheduled for mid -July 2020. With a loss of more than 500,000 euros, he hopes to limit the damage thanks to loyal festival-goers. "We only have a 13% refund request. People seem to carry their ticket over to the 2021 edition."
Carol Meyer, director of the Art Rock festival in Saint-Brieuc, hopes to face the storm without too much damage. As with Musilac, almost all of the grants from local authorities and sponsors were honored despite the cancellation of the festival. Carol Meyer expects the government to give hard cash assistance to mop up a financial hole which amounted at the start of May to 100,000 euros.
"We felt abandoned by the Elysée Palace and the Ministry of Culture. We were never invited to participate in the interministerial crisis committee. We were dropped like mad ...", gets angry Jules Frutos, boss from the production company Alias, which organizes concerts by world pop and rock stars. Former leader of Prodiss, the national union for musical and variety shows, Jules Frutos has put his twelve employees on short-time work. 2020 promises to be catastrophic for his company which posted a turnover of 37 million euros last year. "My sales will be ridiculous this year and yet I will have to pay 1.4 million euros in charges."
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The Prodiss published a first survey at the end of March which announced a loss for the profession of 590 million euros between March 1 and May 31. A new study should appear in the coming days to update these figures. Union officials estimate the aid needed at a billion euros. For now, the Ministry of Culture has signed a check for 50 million euros for the music industry. Rémi Perrier, director of the Musilac festival, points out, in comparison, that Germany announced at the end of March 2020 aid of 50 billion euros to the cultural and media sectors.
The solidarity of the big show family
Can the entertainment world count on the solidarity of its members? Producers and festival directors talk to each other to limit breakage. In general, the former agree to postpone the performance of their artists to the 2021 season. "We even have discussions to reduce the fees of the great Anglo-Saxon stars by around 15% to 25%", explains Jean-Paul Roland, director of the Eurockéennes de Belfort, one of the biggest French pop / rock festivals which were to host headliners this year like Simple Minds, Massive Attack, The Lunineers or Paul Kalkbrenner.
But not everything is rosy in the rock world. Some refuse to play collectively. This is the case of Fnac, Ticketmaster and other sellers of concert tickets, regrets Jules Frutos: "They do not want to pay independents like me the advances of tickets sold for the 2021 season".
A risk of cultural uniformity
What will happen if producers shut down? Will large structures like Lagardère, Bolloré, Fimalac or the Americans AEG and Live Nation buy them out? "Not sure. They would prefer to let us die and recover our catalog and our artists for a symbolic euro", fears Christian Bourgaut. "It's crazy how lately we often hear from me, jokes on his side Jules Frutos. We have never been so interested in the financial health of my company. Will I become a target to be bought?"
A concentration of the sector risks impoverishing the cultural offer, the behemoths of the spectacle then having the free way to impose their artistic standards. Multinational music companies are not short of money. The American Live Nation announced on April 27 last the entry in its capital of the Public Investment Fund of Saudi Arabia. The Saudi put more than $ 500 million to take 5.7% of the capital. Enough to absorb the shock of the crisis, to raise the price of its shares which had fallen by 50% since the start of the pandemic and allow it to shop for artists from weakened competitors.
A sector that brings in billions of euros
If the argument of cultural diversity is not successful, professionals in the creative industries hope that the government will be sensitive to the economic weight of their sector. A very recent and unpublished study, carried out by two academics (Aurélien Djakouane and Emmanuel Négrier) assesses between 1.55 billion and 2.6 billion euros the economic losses due to the cancellation of most of the 4,000 summer events.
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