Arena Market: Serbia

Across Eastern Europe, more of Serbia’s neighbours are joining the EU’s free movement Schengen Area, meaning the country is one of only a few to have a hard border to cross for internationally touring artists and their fans.

“We’d need to offer more [competitive] fees to attract artists to come to Serbia and play, but it [highlights] the issue that the local market can’t really bear high ticket prices,” says Sara Gigante, general manager of promoter Charm Music Serbia. “The promoters are cautious to experiment with new trends, and this limits the audience’s access to new artists.”

Serbian audiences prefer well-established artists over newcomers, with the international-artist-dominated EXIT Festival being the major exception to the trend. Other popular genres include localised turbo-folk and trap music, Gigante says.

The major arena in Serbia is the recently renamed Belgrade Arena, formerly known as Štark Arena. The 18,386-capacity venue returned to its original name in April and will host Rod Stewart and André Rieu in 2024.

“The promoters are cautious to experiment with new trends, and this limits the audience’s access to new artists.”

A lack of available venues is disrupting promoters’ ability to bring international tours into the country, Gigante says. The vast majority of venues with capacities over 4,000 almost exclusively prioritise sport, severely limiting the availability for international artists to route their tours through the nation.

“The priority [is given to] the sports events, and the arena-level [music] shows are [only] happening between [sporting events] if the dates are free,” Gigante says.

“This reflects negatively on promoting international arena-level [artists], as these shows need to be very well planned in advance. There’s less impact on local arena-level artists because they can be reasonably planned short-term and moved if the date has to be given to some sports delegation.”

Nonetheless, Serbian music industry leaders hope to continue attracting and hosting global artists, along with local newcomers.