Magna Charta Clubs: Ancienne Belgique Reflects On Another Successful Year & ‘How To Keep It Funky’

DEUS
Francis Vanhee – DEUS
The show sold out eight shows in a row at Ancienne Belgique, moving 16,000 total tickets.
Leading the Magna Charta’s club category for a second consecutive year is Ancienne Belgique in Brussels, Belgium.
Said venue artistic director Kurt Overbergh: “2018 and 2019 were the best years AB ever witnessed since our birth exactly 40 years ago – artistically, financially, as well as in terms of audience.”
Forty percent of AB performers are Belgian, and the local market is strong. The venue, located in the Belgian capital, receives 20% of its funding through state subsidies, and although Belgian’s current government has cut its cultural budget, Overbergh said “we stay strong.”
Based on 141 box office reports submitted to Pollstar, AB sold 206,735 tickets and grossed $6,050,438 between Feb. 1, 2019 and Jan. 31 2020. That’s 127,353 tickets and $3,135,306 more than reported by this year’s runner-up,  Scotland’s O2 Academy Glasgow.
Kurt Overbergh
AB – Kurt Overbergh
Artistic director of Ancienne Belgique

AB has several special events planned to celebrate its 40th anniversary this year. “We asked Mark Lanegan to curate a whole weekend, and he invited 15 bands altogether,” Overbergh said. 

“It’s his first curated weekend ever, and he also will play his überclassic Bubblegum in its entirety. He will only do this at AB, so very unique. We keep on organizing shows in churches, too, like the one with A Winged Victory For The Sullen, neoclassical beauty. The audience loves it; we always sell out.”
AB’s 2020 will also see the creation of a new rooftop establishment that will serve as a bar, restaurant, and 60-capacity club for intimate concerts and avant-garde electronic music, which is currently booked in the AB Salon.
According to Overbergh, the works will take a year and make AB more open and accessible. He said 2020 was already completely locked down in terms of dates, and that offers for 2021 have started to roll in. This new booking
reality is good and bad, according to Overbergh.
It’s “good to know ahead of time that your calendar will be full and [that] sales are going well, but it also makes the programming more conservative, as the young bands book later,” he said.
“How to keep it funky? Hard to say,” Overbergh continued. “If you book hyped bands, the hype might be over one year later, and by the time the concert takes place, nobody remembers anymore why we booked them.”