There are strong rumours circulating that Prince will announce an Australian stadium tour for late 2012. It was first rumoured that Prince would be playing the 2012 Big Day Out Festival, however, that failed to eventuate. Big Day Out promoter Ken West confirmed they had spent a year working on the notion that Prince would headline and that the failure to obtain his signature had a part to play in the decline in ticket sales of the Big Day Out 2012 Festival.
Speaking with the New Zealand Herald in December, West Said:
We got asked a year ago, over a year ago — by Prince’s representation, saying ‘We really want to do the Big Day Out’, So we spent a year, working that forward… Neither happened. It just kept going to the end of the line and nobody actually ever said ‘No.’ It’s like, ‘A little bit more, I think I can do this, you can do that.’ So we started going with other options at the time.
Promoter Michael Chugg was in the Gold Coast on the weekend discussing a possible Coldplay show at Metricon Stadium. An article published on Goldcoast.com.au today mentions the fact that a Prince Australian tour is on the cards for 2012. Other rumoured tours that are mentioned in the article include Bruce Springsteen,Radiohead and The Rolling Stones.
According to reports, the Big Day Out promoters had also approached Eminem for the 2012 line-up, however he decided to play his own Stadium shows instead when Paul Dainty put a lot more cash on the table. It appears Prince has decided to do the same; if he does turn up in 2012, it will be his first visit to Australia in over 8 years.
