The inaugural concert (pictured) on Saturday (December 28) at Macau’s new “Outdoor Performance Venue” on Cotai drew a crowd of circa 11,000. That is according to a press release from the city’s Cultural Affairs Bureau, which organised the event, described as the first during a year-long “trial” period.
The 94,000-square-metre (1.01-million-sq.-feet) venue, near to the Grand Lisboa Palace casino resort, is designed to accommodate up to 50,000 spectators according to the authorities, meaning Saturday’s crowd was about 22 percent of its ultimate carrying capacity.
Saturday’s presentation brought together more than 30 artists, drawn from Hong Kong, Macau, mainland China, and South Korea.
Those performing at the two-and-a-half hour concert included: Hins Cheung, Julian Cheung, Pakho Chau, Grupo Asia Super Young, Hendery and Sabrina Mendes.
The bureau stated in its release: “The event served to test the venue’s facilities and equipment, arrangements for the circulation of people, traffic capacity and other aspects, which will continue to be improved during the trial period.”
The Cultural Affairs Bureau said the coming year would be the trial period for the venue, adding the bureau was “collecting proposals and programmes” for further events.
The department said: “In the future, we intend to attract institutions, both from within and abroad, to organise major cultural festivals, shows and outdoor itinerant activities, to hold large-scale, international-level events in Macau, with a view to enriching Macau’s cultural tourism resources and build the ‘City of Entertainment’.”
The latter is a slogan used by the local government to emphasise a policy push to increase the relevance of the entertainment sector to the city’s tourism market.
