Jerry Seinfeld, the name largely speaks for itself. Proclaimed as the12th greatest stand-up comedian of all time by Comedy Central, the American comedian, actor, writer, and producer was slated to perform at the Stage 42 festival at SVP Stadium, NSCI in Mumbai last weekend. This event being organized by
Only Much Louder was not only heavily publicized withbrands like Askme.com and Baccardi acting as sponsors but the fans too were eagerly awaitingJerry’sfirst ever show in Asia.
But joining the long list of ill-fated international acts, this event too got cancelled over the weekend leaving the event industry abuzz with speculations and creating uproar on social media. What led to this last minute cancellation? Was the event a hoax from the get go? Or was it another example of a mismanaged event? With everyone giving their own answers about the fallout at the last hour, EE managed to speak to
VijayNair, CEO & Co-Founder, OML,who shared with us the reason behind the last minute cancellation.
“Everything was on track till Wednesday, March 11, when we were informed that the show cannot take place because the Mumbai Police would not give licenses for a show on a weekend at NSCI. In my understanding, this was largely due to a major fracas caused by a recent event where at the same venue there were issues related to traffic being held up. An unfortunate reaction to this was that the Police had to re-think licensing of events in this venue. However, the first time we were told about this issue was on March 11. We did everything we could to come up with solutions, including:
1) We offered to book additional parking. Parking for 600 more vehicles were available in the vicinity.
2) We offered to do the show at 3pm instead, so that traffic would be minimal.
However, the above was not satisfactory for the authorities and we were told that the event would not get a license. We also spoke to a few members of Parliament who we know, ministers in the government, all of whom tried to help and speak with the authorities, but eventually they all came back saying it wouldn’t be possible. So on the night of the 11th, a few hours before the artist’s crew was going to get on a flight, we called them and cancelled the show. The private jet which was booked for the artist was also cancelled.
We were on the verge of announcing the cancellation yesterday when we got a call from the authorities, and I was called for a meeting. Since this would be a last-minute cancellation, the authorities were trying to help us with a plan to let this weekend’s events go on. We were now told that we could get the permission, tentatively, as well. Having cancelled the performance with the artist already, we did our best to re-book a charter and look at every possible option to get them here on time. Unfortunately, with all our travel arrangements changed, parking slots cancelled and crew being re-assigned, it became impossible to make this work. While the chance of making this happen again, at this late a time, was minimal, we did everything we could to make it work. We found a few flight options that could work, but the rest of the logistics couldn’t come together. It was just too late. In short, we were trying to arrange what took us a month the first time around, in 12 hours time.”-quotes Vijay Nayar.
FANS TOOK TO SOCIAL MEDIA TO VOICE THEIR OPINIONS ON THE CANCELLATION OF JERRY SEINFELD AND REGISTERED SOME INTERESTING RESPONSES ON THE SAME. AMAN SETH USED FACEBOOK TO EXPRESS HIS THOUGHTS AND UPDATED-
They were right. The world has become very small and connected. I mean, Jerry Seinfeld will be spending his saturday night alone at home in USA because of parking problem in India. -.-
#SeinfeldCancelled
AN INTERESTING RESPONSE FROM NISHANTTANWAR
WAS A SARCASTIC COMMENT WHICH READ-
Now waiting for another documentary as a gift from some foreigner called “Parking in India!” #SeinfeldCancelled
SAPANVERMA
TOOK OUT HIS ANGER ON THE INCIDENT BY POSTING-
Situations where Mumbai doesn’t have “parking issues”:
– Match at Wankhede.
– Political rallies at MMRDA.
– Bollywood award shows anywhere.
If parking was really an issue, the govt should’ve shut down all offices in Andheri East a decade ago.
#SeinfeldCancelled
The twitterverse too, witnessed some explosive reactions on the Jerry Seinfeld Cancellation with
SagarMehratweeting-
@sagarvmehra Mar 13
Congratulations fellow Mumbaikars! Our infrastructure has made it to Jerry Seinfeld’s future monologues! Way to go!! #SeinfeldCancelled
HardikShah,said;
@hardlyavailable Mar 13
Moral police cancels AIB show, traffic police cancels Seinfeld show. Clearly the only comedy we get is from our police #SeinfeldCancelled
@shiladitya Mar 13
Much respect to @vijay_nair and his calm, concise explanations of what led to #SeinfeldCancelled hope this turns around for all it impacted
An event of such high magnitude when cancelled results in an earth shattering set-back for the organizers. In the past, events of international performers like Christopher Nolan and the band Metallica have also been cancelled creating bigger problems for the organizers in the process. The operational head Rajesh Chandwani and his three team members of DNA Entertainment Network event even went behind the bars as the police had received several complaints after the Metallica show was cancelled.
On being asked how will OML survive this loss,
Vijay Nayar-“ A lot of you have been nice enough to send me texts and messages to see if we are doing alright. I am not going to lie. The loss from this show is the single biggest loss for us ever and possibly among the biggest in our industry. We are still a small company of 70 people and have worked really hard to get where we are at. This is a significant setback and looking at Excel sheets right now is not a particularly pleasant exercise. However, businesses are not run by Excel sheets, they are run by people. My team has the capacity to absorb this and continue pushing ahead, but many others won’t and it will be a tragedy if people have to shut down their businesses for things that they can’t control. So yes, we will survive this and will do whatever it takes to ensure that situations like these don’t arise in the future.”
Members of the event industry too seemed disturb about the sudden cancellation of this much hyped event.
HumayoonZaidi, CEO, Event Network says-“The situation is very sad from the industries point of view. The organizing team was prepared for the event but because of the existing red tapism the event could not take place. The surprising fact is that till now, multiple events have taken place at the same venue but the police have never created a problem before.”
Amanveer Singh, Director at Ten Events and Entertainments comments-“The cancellation of this event has led to heavy discussions happening internally at EEMA. The event has been cancelled due to government interventions, what needs to be done now is reaching out to the public and explaining the entire situation.”
So what can an organizer do if a heavily marketed event falls apart at the last minute due to divergent reasons? Do event companies have a contingency action map planned for such times?
SharadMathur, Director of EMG Entertainment address the questions and responds-“Events can always have plan A and B but if the main content of the show that sells the tickets goes missing how can you ever replace that? There is no backup for such circumstances.
When asked upon where does the solution lie to avoid such last minute fallouts?
SharadMathur completes his stance by saying- “Well, I think it is time now for the entire industry to unite and figure out the reasons behind the cancellations of such events and institutions like the government of India should support us. We also promote international culture when we organize such events and thus we need to find out the real issues that lead to cancellation of such events and jointly work towards resolving them.”
