Longtime Arizona Concert Promoter's Business Devastated By COVID-19
While Arizona businesses are starting to reopen, it may take longer for music fans to return to concerts.
Longtime promoter Danny Zelisko said the coronavirus has devastated his business since he's been completely choked off from his supply: live music.
Zelisko started booking concerts in Arizona more than 40 years ago. In that time, he said he’s never had an empty calendar, and he thinks it may be awhile until he can fill it up again.
“Right now, sitting here in mid-May, I don’t see any shows for May or June or July. August is questionable and hopefully we are back with stuff in September," he said.
When concerts are allowed to start up again, Zelisko thinks he will have a very busy year because musicians and concert-goers will be anxious to come back.
Whenever that time comes, he hopes to give concert-goers the full experience, not a partial reopening where he has to keep every other row and every six seats empty.
“I think I would rather wait for the real concert experience to come back rather than do something like that, personally," he said.
But for now, no money is flowing into his business.
"My overhead is somewhere around a hundred grand a month," he said. "If I don't make a hundred grand a month, I've got to pay it out of my own pocket, or I've got to furlough people, or I've got to ask people to wait to get paid because I've got no money coming in."
