Does Queen’s show at Metricon Stadium start a new era for Gold Coast concerts?

Queen + Adam Lambert’s visit to Australia is now a glittery memory, a smorgasbord of hits, guitar solos and — at some sites — epic weather.

Rhapsody Australian tour also featured something rarely seen on stadium tours: a Gold Coast date.

Brian May, Roger Taylor and Co. completed their national trek with a sold-out show Feb. 29 at Metricon Stadium in Carrara, the official home of the Gold Coast Suns AFL franchise and one-time venue for the now-gone Big Day Out.

That a Gold Coast stadium date could feature, let alone complete, a major touring itinerary is itself a solid story. Study the itinerary and the plot thickens.

In years past, the Gold Coast would typically bite the dust when touring juggernauts passed through. Not this time. The legendary rock band opened their tour on a stormy night Feb. 13 at Brisbane’s Suncorp before crisscrossing the country for five metro shows, not including their unscheduled stop Feb. 16 for Fire Fight in Sydney. Queenslanders got two bites of Queen.

Queen + Adam Lambert

In years to come, Rhapsody may be seen as a template for stadium tours in these parts, with Brisbane and the Gold Coast scoring their own, separate gigs.

“TEG’s promoting companies will definitely look at bringing more world class content to the Metricon,” explains Geoff Jones, CEO of TEG, the entertainment giant which owns TEG Live, Van Egmond Group, and TEG Dainty, producer of the Queen tour. “It is a great stadium in a large catchment area.” TEG’s Ticketek business is the official supplier for the venue.

It’s been a long drought for concerts at Carrara. The last was the Foo Fighters, which shifted 37,000 tickets back in December 2011, part of the rockers’ seven-show Australasian run for Frontier Touring. On that occasion, Foos fans in Queensland had just one chance to see Dave Grohl and his bandmates, at Metricon. The BDO also took place at Metricon in 2014.

Today, the Gold Coast is all grown up. Hosting a multinational sporting tournament, as the Gold Coast did with the 2018 Commonwealth Games, can graduate a city and tweak attitudes (Brisbanites keenly remember the 1982 Games as a transformative moment in the city’s history).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VXJ12nnJ6ww

The Gold Coast has struggled in the past with perception problems, held back as sporting teams experiencing difficulties establishing a foothold and due to the gravitational pull of its much larger neighbour 80km up the M1.

Investment helps. The Games’ most significant legacy infrastructure project, a $1 billion light rail network, shuttled spectators to and from Carrara for the opening and closing ceremonies and the athletics competitions. On the night Queen came to town, public transport was free for concert ticket holders.

The Gold Coast is Queensland’s second biggest city, with a population nearing 600,000. It’s also one of the fastest growing regions in Australia, with an average growth rate of 1.72% over last 9 years since the Foos last dropped in. Brisbane’s population is north of 2.2 million.

“They have a big population base and Queen has proved that in spades with well over 80,000 people attending shows in South East Queensland showing that the two can co-exist,” says Jones. “We think that result is a sign of things to come.”

According to the Gold Coast Bulletin, the Queen concert injected some $7 million into the local economy. “The GC is ready for sure,” Shane Billings, the Gold Coast-based manager and partner of Amy Shark, tells TIO. “It was Queen, they could sell out any stadium. I do feel that during the off-season of AFL and NRL (entertainment) would work much better and the act would need to be world class, but the Coast loves music and Metricon is amazing.”

Geoff Jones

The multi-purpose Metricon Stadium opened its gates May 28, 2011 and has been jointly funded by the Queensland Government ($71.9 million), Commonwealth Government ($36 million), Gold Coast City Council ($23 million) and the AFL ($13.3 million).

It’s a Stadiums Queensland venue, operated by the Gold Coast Suns, whose chairman Tony Cochrane said a new, extended contract could prove favourable for bringing content into Metricon. “We stood up to Stadiums Queensland and demanded a fairer deal that would put us at least into a position where we could attract big events, whether they be sport or entertainment,” he explained.

Gold Coasters have had a flow of arena-scale acts stop in. The Convention and Exhibition Centre on Broadbeach has hosted concerts from the likes of Mariah Carey, Kings of Leon, Rihanna, Powderfinger, Pink, 50 Cent and Nick Cave, and the nearby Star casino hosted Human Nature in concert last December.

“There is a very broad market there,” Jones says of the GC. “We partnered to bring the One Love Festival to Australia for the first time in February and it sold out four months in advance and was a big success. I’m a Queenslander and I have great faith in the Gold Coast market.”

This article originally appeared on The Industry Observer, which is now part of The Music Network.