The Armenian government has touted Saturday’s Jennifer Lopez concert in Yerevan to be a financial success amidst concerns of the hefty sums spent on the pop star’s fees.
Days earlier, RFE/RL revealed that the government had directed $6 million to be paid to Lopez and her team for the concert, which included an eye-watering $37,000 for two days of meals while in Armenia.
The funds had originally been earmarked for a 2023 concert by the rapper Snoop Dogg, who ended up cancelling the event in light of Azerbaijan’s offensive into Nagorno-Karabakh. Nonetheless, the sum was not returned by the event’s organisers Doping Space, and was ultimately redirected to pay for the Lopez concert.
The organisers of the Lopez concert said that 15,000 foreigners had travelled to Armenia for the concert, resulting in a hotel shortage in Yerevan. More than 30,000 people attended the reportedly sold out concert in total, the Armenian government said.
In a post on Facebook, Armenian Economy Minister Gevorg Papoyan estimated that the government had raked in some $13 million in revenue from the influx of tourists and related expenses connected to the concert, far outstripping the $6 million spent to put the show on.
Papoyan based his calculated estimate on a 2024 survey, which found that foreign tourists on average spent roughly $900 when visiting the country.
One of the organisers of the concert claimed that $1.6–$2 million of the $6 million allocated for the show was ‘automatically transferred to the state budget’ in the form of taxes and other revenues.
After the sums being paid to put on the concert were revealed, there was a backlash, with some accusing the government of wasting money on unnecessary expenses.
On 3 August, before the concert was set to take place, Parliamentary Speaker Alen Simonyan slammed critics of the show — without mentioning it or Lopez directly — writing on Facebook that ‘nothing pleases’ the detractors and that there is no point in discussing whether the money could have been spent on something else.
Arshaluys Barseghyan
