CHARLOTTETOWN — Cirque du Soleil won’t pitch its tent in Charlottetown next summer.
The popular Quebec circus troupe has finalized a deal with Tourism Charlottetown to prematurely end a three-year agreement with the city because of poor ticket sales the first year.
Tourism Charlottetown announced last week that it had an agreement in principal to terminate the deal and said Wednesday it had been finalized.
P.E.I. taxpayers pumped $250,000 into bringing Cirque to the province while the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency contributed $450,000.
The City of Charlottetown kicked in another $10,000.
Doug Newson, president of Tourism Charlottetown, said the two sides agreed to walk away without penalty.
“I can’t get into the exact details but what I can say is we’ve had a number of discussions with Cirque since the event this summer and ... they graciously agreed to pull out and terminate the contract,” he said.
“They’ve been very good to work with and they certainly put on a first-class performance.”
It cost between $1 million to $2 million to bring Cirque du Soleil to the city last summer but tickets were a difficult sell.
“I don’t think it was in anybody’s best interest to move forward with a program that we just felt was too much risk for our organization,” Newson said.
He wouldn’t reveal how much money Tourism Charlottetown lost on the Cirque show but the organization did need a $1-million line of credit from the province to stay afloat.