News - Newspaper: Money spent but Snoop Dogg's Armenia concert not taking place

Zhoghovurd daily of the Republic of Armenia (RA) writes: At the beginning of the summer of last year, rumors circulated, then it was confirmed that the famous American rapper Snoop Dogg would perform a concert in Armenia. In August, it became known that 6 million dollars (2.3 billion drams) were allocated from the state budget for the concert. Later, it was decided that the concert will take place on September 23. But between September 9 and 10, the organizer of the concert, Doping Space company, released a statement on its Facebook page: "We inform that the government of the Republic of Armenia has conveyed to us its decision to postpone Snoop Dogg's concert scheduled for September 23." (…) Zhoghovurd daily tried to find out from the ESCS [i.e., the Ministry of Education, Science, Culture and Sports] what progress has been made regarding the organization of the concert, but the ministry replied that the addressee of the question is the government. The government, in its turn, directed the ESCS, then they asked to send an inquiry, they will forward [it]. Anyway, the interesting part is the answer, in which the question as to what were the processes regarding Snoop Dogg's concert in 2024 was answered: "We inform that on August 18, 2023, a contract was signed between the ESCS Ministry and Doping Space LLC, and on February 19, a decree N1, according to which the concert of world star Snoop Dogg is planned to be organized in 2024." We asked the government to also answer who is ultimately responsible for the concert and the addressee of our questions, in response to which we received the following: "The responsible body for the implementation of the music project World Star Armenian Tour is the ESCS Ministry, according to the decision of the RA government on August 11, 2023." After our question, the ministry also learned that it has obligations, but like others, it does not fulfill them properly, and Snoop Dogg's concert seems to have become a bone in the throat, which is not being swallowed.