Lopez is scheduled to perform at Yerevan’s Republican Stadium on Sunday as part of her ongoing “Up All Night” concert tour. Tickets for the concert cost from 25,000 to 180,000 drams ($65-$468).
Although the concert was announced this spring, it was not until this Thursday that the Armenian government admitted financing it and released details of the funding very large by Armenian standards. That includes a performance fee of $2.6 million to be paid to the 56-year-old pop star.
The government said that it is the same sum which it provided for Snoop Dogg’s concert and then reclaimed due to its cancellation.
The rapper’s show was originally scheduled for September 23, 2023. It was cancelled two days after Azerbaijan launched on September 19, 2023 a military offensive in Nagorno-Karabakh that forced the region’s entire population to flee to Armenia.
Despite that, Snoop Dogg and his production team received at the time a performance fee of about $3 million. An Armenian official said in February that the rapper has returned the money.
The rest of it was paid to the Armenian organizer of the open-air concert, a little-known company called Doping Space. The latter was hired for organizing Lopez’s Yerevan concert as well, a fact which was also disclosed only on Thursday.
The government spending on the concerts exceeds the annual budgets of most rural communities of Armenia. Critics condemned it in 2023 as reckless extravagance aimed at distracting Armenians from grave national security problems facing their country. Government officials insisted that the money is worth it because Snoop Dogg will raise Armenia’s international profile and attract thousands of foreign tourists.
The money for the failed concert was allocated from a special Ministry of Education fund designed to promote music and arts with a “national basis.” The ministry never explained how this relates to the American rapper who has had a history of using drugs.
