Knowledgeable sources say the city-owned Alerus Center is guaranteeing that Britney Spears makes somewhere in the $750,000 to $850,000 range, though one source said that’s not something unique to this tour.
“We did not pay any more than anybody else,” said Alerus Center executive director Steve Hyman, though he said he couldn’t talk about the arrangement until after tickets go on sale Saturday.
He got the show, he said, because of a professional relationship with tour promoter AEG Live going back 20 years, from when he used to head the Verizon Wireless Center in Moline, Ill.
And, he said, he patched up a contentious relationship between the Alerus Center and the promoter dating back to a disastrous Fleetwood Mac concert in 2003.
According to Hyman, money was not the lynchpin of the deal with AEG Live, but relationship.
The Alerus Center damaged its reputation with the promoter in 2003 after the Fleetwood Mac concert, which sold only 6,174 tickets out of 20,000.
For reasons still murky, the Alerus Center failed to pay AEG Live a six-figure sum, causing the promoter to blackball the events center.
“We paid our dues,” Hyman said. “This is the same gentlemen that didn’t quite get straight on Fleetwood Mac. We straightened that out with Neil Diamond, even though we took a hit on it.”
If Britney does as well here as she did elsewhere, the Alerus Center also will get a rebound in its reputation as an entertainment venue, both with promoters and with its advertisers and suite holders.
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