Arena Market: Peru

Peru is a busy market and, in spite of recent economic troubles, it remains a staple destination on most Latin American tours. However, its capital city’s shortage of large, modern venues is an ongoing bone of contention among the nation’s promoters – even if the National Stadium of Peru is being upgraded for Lima’s turn as the host of the Pan American Games in 2027.

Specifically, the overselling of tickets for a Juan Luis Guerra concert at Lima’s outdoor, 9,000-capacity Arena Perú site in November 2022 – 14,000 people were reckoned to have been allowed in – led in turn to a series of cancellations and an announcement that the venue would be taking time to restructure and make improvements. The arena hasn’t reopened since, and while rumours of a purpose-built arena project in the 11m-strong city keep on bubbling hopefully away, there is nothing concrete yet.

Given that its northern and southern neighbours, Colombia and Chile, have two of the busiest indoor arenas on the continent in their respective Movistar venues, local feeling on the subject is increasingly resentful.

“The lack of suitable venues to hold concerts is costing formal concert entrepreneurs a fortune due to the number of cancelled and postponed concerts that we have been experiencing for a year,” says Alejandro González, CEO of Grupo Kandavu, a local promoter of long standing that brought The Rolling Stones to Lima in 2015. “The city needs an arena or a venue that meets everything necessary to receive large numbers of people, which is imperative in the entertainment industry today.

“The lack of suitable venues to hold concerts is costing formal concert entrepreneurs a fortune due to the number of cancelled and postponed concerts that we have been experiencing for a year”

“This also has to do with modifying certain laws and regulations that facilitate the need that we have. Nowadays, the public that attends concerts en masse is worn out and mistreated by the lack of venues. The experience of going to concerts is frustrating – sometimes it can take you double or triple the [duration] of the show you are going to enjoy.”

Currently, the best options are down on the city’s Pacific waterfront, where One Entertainment’s Arena 1 is among the foremost solutions. A $6m mobile geodesic structure on the shoreline, the venue can take 15,000 spectators, with various configurations enabled by mobile bleachers and inspired, according to developer One Entertainment’s Ramón Larrea, by the travelling structure erected in Lima by Cirque du Soleil.

Accordingly, Cirque’s Messi show is coming to Arena 1 in August, with Keane, Kim Loaiza, Ana Gabriel, and Louis Tomlinson also on the schedule this year.

Another new entrant in the same neighbourhood is the Multiespacio Costa 21, an 18,000-seated/3,500-standing outdoor space on the beach a little further down. Guests already this year include the auspicious likes of Jonas Brothers, Spanish rumba duo Estopa, Mexican siren Danna Paola, Dutch boy wonder DJ Martin Garrix, and Argentinian trap star Duki, as well as Puerto Rican rapper Farruko in June.

Both Arena 1 and Costa 21 are doing good business, but it is clear the city – the fifth-largest in South America, and the single biggest in the northern half of the continent – needs bricks-and-mortar reinforcements, and soon, if it is to maintain its reputation for a warm Peruvian welcome.

In musical terms, González says there isn’t much Lima can’t get excited about. “Peru is a very attractive place for all musical genres, especially for Anglo music, and even more so when [a big act] comes to the country for the first time,” he says. “By nature of my country, our favourite music is salsa but today cumbia and urban music have gained many fans, and it is possible that salsa is no longer the number-one genre in Peru today.”