Cirque du Soleil's emphatic comeback
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Cirque du Soleil will bring its show back to China starting October.[Photo provided to China Daily] |
Ticket prices for the yearly tours and resident shows in China would cost between 380 and 1,980 yuan, a range that Lamarre considers affordable for the country's burgeoning middle class, which is the main target audience. He added that he is aiming to sell 200,000 tickets in each city for the Kooza tour.
According to China's National Statistics Bureau, the country's cultural industry enjoyed a compound annual growth rate of 22.67 percent from 2004 to 2014 when it was worth 2.39 trillion yuan.In addition, the average spending on entertainment and cultural products has been growing at a faster pace - it increased by 23.3 percent from 2013 to 2015 - than the growth rate of average disposable incomes, which rose by 18.8 percent during the same period.
In 2015, Chinese spent an average of 1,723 yuan on live entertainment and cultural programs, accounting for less than 8 percent of the annual income. The box office in China, the world's second-largest moviegoing market, grew 48.7 percent in 2015 to hit a record $6.78 billion, according to the State Administration of Press, Publication, Radio, Film and Television, the country's entertainment industry regulator. Industry experts expect China to overtake North America as the world's largest movie market by the end of this year.
"China has become the most important market in the movie industry in the past few years. I think this is what will happen to the live entertainment industry here as well," said Lamarre.
"We are only at the beginning of the trend. The magic of live entertainment is that the more you see it, the more you want to see."
