money, money, money

ABBA’s “hologram” show is giving Taylor Swift & Beyoncé a run for their money—could it be coming to a city near you?

Image Credit: Getty Images

While Taylor Swift’s discography-spanning Eras Tour and Beyoncé’s ballroom blitz Renaissance Tour made headlines all summer long for their record-breaking earnings, there’s another big-ticket music show that’s been making some serious *ahem* money, money, money…

Over a year into its run, Swedish pop legends ABBA’s London residency show ABBA Voyage is still selling out arenas and raking in a whopping $2 million a week—and the band’s not even stepping foot on stage!

And that’s because Voyage is a unique virtual concert experience, featuring Agnetha, Björn, Benny, and Anni-Frid partying like it’s 1979. That is to say, the septuagenarian queer icons are using motion-capture digital avatars and other cutting-edge technology to appear and perform like they did all those decades ago.

So, yes, while Tay and Bey complete Olympic-level marathon performances every night of their tours—both clocking in over three hours long—ABBA gets to kick back, relax, and enjoy the fruits of their historic career while their “holograms” do the work. It’s what they deserve!

Image Credit: Getty Images

But that’s not to say ABBA Voyage hasn’t been a lot of work. For one, an entirely new venue was created to house the massive undertaking: The aptly named ABBA Arena in London’s Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park.

And, digital avatars aside, designing and bringing the show to life was a massive undertaking, all done in an effort to give the band’s fans, young and old, gay and straight, the true, multi-sensory ABBA concert experience.

In fact, despite the whopping weekly earnings and sold-out shows night after night, ABBA Voyage has yet to recoup its production budget, believe it or not. Per a report from Bloomberg, before the show’s doors even opened, the budget had ballooned to over $176 million—that makes it the most expensive music production ever.

“No, we haven’t broken even,” show producer Svana Gisla tells Variety in a recent interview. “I don’t even know if we’re halfway to breaking even! The audacity of how much this show costs—it was all a bit mad. But we will get there…”

Which is to say, this Voyage has no end in sight—in fact, it’s only just getting started.

For one, the London show is currently booking tickets through May of next year, and Gisla says the team is eager to extend the Voyage far beyond that. There have also been rumors of expanding it to new cities—potentially Las Vegas and/or NYC for U.S. ABBA fans—which co-producer Ludvig Andersson confirms there are early plans for… with a catch.

“In the sense of going on the road, it was never an option, because it’s just too big and heavy of a thing,” he shares with Variety. “You can’t move it around.”

“What you can do is, do the same thing somewhere else and we’ve been looking at that for a long time. There are still options out there, but nothing is set in stone. And if that is North America, South-East Asia or Australasia, we’ll see—but we’re absolutely working on it.”

Given the fact that Voyage is such a smash success, you might think other artists and musical acts would be keen to follow suit with a “hologram” show. But not everyone is ABBA!

“People have been in touch, but you’ve got to be a band of a certain stature to even contemplate it,” show producer Baillie Walsh tells Variety. “Luckily, ABBA are that creatively curious that they wanted to go ahead despite the enormous expense.”

“Everyone’s interested until you put the budget in front of them and say, ‘How about that?'” Gisla jokes.

As ABBA once famously sang, “it’s a rich man’s world” after all!

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