This is from http://www.eonline.com/ If anyone has heard any further details, do tell. "In perhaps the largest rejection in history, '70s Swedish pop group ABBA has turned down a $1 billion offer to reunite after 17 years. "'It's a hell of a lot of money to say no to, but we decided it wasn't for us,' Benny Andersson, ex-leader of the four-member group, told Swedish tabloid Aftonbladet today. "The staggering offer came from an American-British consortium that reportedly wanted the group to reunite for 100 concerts and cash in on a recent revival of several of their hits. (Currently, the teen band A-Teens has covered 'Mamma Mia' and 'Gimme Gimme' and a musical based on several songs is a hit in London's West End.)"22 responses total.
Abba came up twice in conversation today... weird. We had all the 8-tracks, I had an Abba folder I took to school...
That makes *no* sense. Each of those 100 concers would have to produce, on average, ten million dollars in order to even recoup the amount that the band would make, let alone make any money for the investors. Or to put it another way, if the band were able to clear $10 profit per fan, they'd have to perform for one hundred million fans to reach the break-even point for the investors. Either the details of the offer have been completely screwed up by the reporter or the offer was bullshit to begin with, but there's no way ABBA, popular or talented as they may be, could be worth $1,000,000,000.
Or the "million, billion" issue has been confused by the difference between US "million, billion" conventions, and continental "million, billion" conventions. (In the US a million is, I think 1,000 times 1,000. In Europe, a million is 100,000 times 1,000) Or some such thing.
I believe million is actually the same in europe & england (at least).
It's billion where the difference begins - the british say "thousand
million" where we say billion, & the british "billion" is our trillion.
I may have this all wrong, but I think the table goes something like:
sci us uk
1e3 thousand thousand
1e6 million million
1e9 billion thousand million
1e12 trillion billion
1e15 quadrillion thousand billion
1e18 quintillion trillion
In the rest of europe, the rules change per-language; in french, "mille"
is our thousand, and french "cent" is our "100".
Presuambly, the ABBA investors were also thinking of record, tv, and
radio deals. How much money did madonna make on her last big world
tour?
not even *close* to a billion dollars. let's assume that each fan buys a $50 concert ticket, a $20 video, a $15 CD, and watches so much television and listens to so much radio that the promoters can get $20 in advertising, for a total revenue of $100 per ultra-fan and that all of that revenue is pure profit -- assumptions which are clearly ludicrous. You'd still need 10 *million* such ultra-fans to hit the break-even point. The numbers aren't remotely plausible.. Top-grossing musical acts like R.E.M., U2, etc, can pull in grosses that are in the multiple tens of millions of dollars on a packaged worldwide tour (including videos, t-shirts, CDs, concert tickets, pay-per-view, etc..) but a billion is so far from that that something is just wrong about the story in #0.
Well, some of them were married to each other, and the girls from Abba have new husbands...or something along those lines. Whatever. Anyway, they said it just wasn't for them. I would play 100 concerts in a band of my ex-boyfriends for a billion dollars. I mean, really... =)
Perhaps they're all so utterly wealthy already that there's nothing left to buy. A person can use only so many mansions.
((( winter agora #115 <---> music #232 )))
the rumor, when Abba was popular, was that they were Sweden's second-largest industry, right behind Volvo. Or that they were ahead of Volvo, depending on who was telling the rumor.
I *just* heard this on the radio.
The announcer seemd to be saying "billion",
but he didn't articulate it clearly to differentiate
from "million".
We need Carl Sagan back.
Perhaps the offer really was for a billion, but ABBA members wisely did the math and realized they probably wouldn't get paid what they were promised.
From the website of Abba's record company, cached on google:
"ABBA were second only to Volvo as Sweden's biggest export
earners for several years..."
The British music magazine Q, on their web site, prints the story and says that the amount turned down was 630 million UK pounds, which is a billion US dollars in round numbers.
Maybe the offer was for 1,000,000,000 Krona. That cuts it down to $100M.
My impression was that Abba was really big at one point, and the principals were pretty busy building an industrial empire based on the profits. I doubt they're hurting for money. When I say "Really Big" - I think they were bigger in europe than the Beatles ever were here.
prp's explanation makes sense; maybe we'll see a correction in the news media tomorrow. I don't have at hand the web article I printed off which listed the top grossing concert tours of 1999, but my recollection was that the Rolling Stones topped the list at $90+ million. So $100 million for ABBA would be plausible.
resp:12 what doesn't help is a VH1 episode of "Where Are They Now?" featuring ABBA said precisely that, as well. I'm assuming, however, that the record company website could be considered a fairly conservative source..
While I'm not expert on such deals, I have to imagine that the contract offered was laced with contingencies and ownership rights. Very likely, ABBA members would have lost all ownership rights to royalties to past and future performances, a la Michael Jackson owning a large library of Beatle song royalties. In return, a consortium of investors would be able to do anything they like with the brand and products of ABBA. Frankly, that's what I'd insist on if I was offering BILLIONS.
From what I have read, ABBA members made about $300 million during their careers. With anything approaching reasonable investment, since the early 1980's, they should be facing the choice of, "Do I want to settle for having more money than I can reasonably spend, or do I want to have a lot more money than I can reasonably spend?" Tough.
Yep. And the dark-haired woman has since married a German prince, so I doubt she's strapped for cash. I think the others have successful solo careers in Europe anyhoo. Abba broke up because both couples (and that's what the band consisted of, two married couples) split up on very unfriendly terms. You wouldn't want to work/travel with/spend time with an ex you can't stand.
Okay, here's my theory... Bill Gates is a big ABBA fan, and put up the billion just so he could see them perform live again, and didn't care if there were any profits from the tour. ABBA, being devout MAC users, of course turned it down. Hey... it could happen.
Re 6: I'm trying to imagine a band of my ex-boyfriends now... kind of a strange concept... :)
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