Easter, Sheeran boost southern coffers
The Easter break and Ed Sheeran may have given Otago businesses their biggest March spend-up yet, a Dunedin business leader says.
Otago Chamber of Commerce chief executive Dougal Mcgowan said Sheeran’s concert over the Easter weekend most likely brought in more sales for Dunedin than last year’s British and Irish Lions rugby tour.
‘‘From talking to local business owners it seems sales were better than the Lions tour. It was a huge boost to the city and all local businesses,’’ Mcgowan said.
About 120,000 fans packed Dunedin for Sheeran’s three Easter concerts, including 65,000 from outside the city, which has a population of 120,000.
Heidi Proctor, owner of Governor’s Cafe on Dunedin’s busy George St, said she mentally prepared her staff for the record weekend beforehand and brought in spare fridges and more cutlery.
‘‘We can seat about 100 people but we had a line out the door for about three hours on Sunday,’’ she said. Despite a 45-minute wait, people stuck around and the business made record sales.
Paymark’s latest monthly electronic spending data showed the most significant surge in core retail spending between March 28 and 31 happened in Otago, the West Coast and Marlborough.
Spending increased by $36 million in the regions and decreased by $7.5m in the big cities, as people travelled out of the urban centres for the long weekend.
Kiwis spent most of their time shopping for food, liquor, hardware and appliances over Easter.
The biennial Warbirds airshow in Wanaka also drew in many visitors, Mcgowan said.
A spokeswoman from the company that runs Dunedin’s Forsyth Barr Stadium, Dunedin Venues Management Ltd (DVML), said confidentiality agreements meant details of how the city secured the Sheeran concerts would not be released. That included whether a one-off payment – understood to be six figures – was made to secure the concerts.
The spokeswoman confirmed the venue received commissions from food and beverage sales.
The company worked hard to secure Sheeran for the Australasian leg of his Divide tour, as it did with other acts, she said.
Spending nationally through Paymark was $5.266m in March, up 5.7 per cent since March 2017.
The total number of transactions in March was 113.5 million.