It is sad to see that shows don't interest the great public in many places. I kind of understand that to a certain extent - I would not watch galas at competitions if some of my big faves were not doing sth in them. The quality of the non-competition routines is usually not great and watching a series of numbers not in any way connected with each other can be mind-numbingly boring. For me, the problem is mostly the lack of interesting content in the choreographies.
There are different approaches, such as Art on Ice who started using live music and adding also dancers and acrobats and what not into their shows. They have been able to go on for a remarkable 25 years. I have not followed their ticket sales that much but the fact they still are able to go on and do a two-three week long tour in a tiny country - the shows are attended by people from all the surrounding countries and elsewhere as well which partly explains the success. They did try to go abroad - I saw them in Finland two times - but that ended after a couple of years.
As a huge Javi fan, I have followed the development of Revolution on Ice closely and have even been to the two previous tours. The main thing I guess is that they have a national skating star who has managed to become a bit of a celebrity in his country despite being from a sport that hardly anyone had heard of before. They have also worked hard to get where they are now. The first show was a single one in Madrid in 2016 and Javi has revealed that it was a great gamble involving his and his managers and their families' life savings and that they managed to get a big sponsor last minute to make it all happen... The tour that followed in 2018 was probably already easier to make happen. He was a much bigger star than in 2016 with the Olympics success, with much more visibility. They managed to get a huge international sponsorship for the show as well as national sponsors which made the costs easier to cover. The cast was international and pretty good level (yeah, Yuna Kim and Kurt Browning...). They also had national artists for live music and acrobatics a la Art on Ice. The novelty could also be a thing for the Spanish audiences, but this year there were already signs that people would return. Their problem is maybe getting the schedule working so that they can get the same artists and skaters for the whole tour - the current set up of two parts works not so well. The timing around the holidays works for the audiences, but for the competitive skaters there are still competitions going. Not to mention the big Russian and many smaller shows in many places going on at the same time.
Getting through with the shows has happened differently in each year. Last year they started PR very early and had also ads in the streets, I don't know if they TV ads, but I doubt it because I have not seen any... This year, much of the earlier PR concentrated on the cities outside Madrid and involved also meetings with city authorities etc. Then there was a more intense period for promotion starting at the beginning of November, just before the first show. And Javi was truly working hard as the face of the tour - there was something almost every day for those two months! But they did get through and the attendance was very good - slightly down from last year (60 000 to 55 000), but still very good considering that it is Spain. The 16 000 audience at Madrid was a bit of an exaggeration, not sold out definetly and I think the 13 500 that I saw from someone inside the organisation is more realistic...
What is perhaps different with ROI compared to many other countries, is that even though it is clearly a commercial enterprise, many of the national sports entities support it and promote it also on their own channels. LaLigaSports maintained by football in Spain and supporting other sports in the country is also among them. They also have a charity organisation involved. Promoting skating through Javi and shows is pretty unique and could be a factor thinking about the show's continuation. We'll see what happens in the future, if they will be able to maintain the success.
One thing I wanted to comment upon from the previous discussion is the linguistic problems mentioned by someone. ROI is organised in Spain by a Spanish production company, the choreographers are Canadians (Sandra Bezic and David Wilson), the cast included this year Spaniards, Canadians, Germans, French, Italians, Russians. Different levels of English are probably the most common language spoken among them, but language does not seem to be a problem in casting the show. This also applies to the Japanese shows most of which feature an international cast (there are also strictly Japanese ones but these are perhaps not the biggest of them). The Russian shows tend to be more focused on national skaters, but then again, they can pick and choose, I guess. The other Canadian tour with Tessa and Scott in the lead had last year an international cast as well (Thank you Canada was of course another story). Nationality and language is not really a problem.
E
so many of the Canadian skaters).
