While ticket sales for next year's Mission Estate Winery Concert were going well they are slower than the organisers had hoped - but they're not too concerned.
"No one's too worried at this stage," the man who heads Sport and Entertainment Ltd (SEL), chief executive James Erskine said.
"At the end of the day it is trading like the Motown show - I don't think people quite realise what they are getting here," he said, adding that by stage time the Motown event drew 24,000 people.
Mr Erskine has been involved with hundreds of events and managed and represented scores of top entertainment and sports stars since setting up SEL in 1997 and said he had no doubts that the 2014 line-up would ignite the crowd.
"It will be a real show, a real party ... you have acts here who have collectively sold 250 million albums."
In the wake of this year's Barry Gibb concert Mr Erskine said he was out having a round of golf at the Cape course and came across several people who lamented they had not gone.
"You hear it every time ... 'I wish I'd gone'."
He has no doubts that will happen again, and also has no doubts that a great swathe of the crowd will go away thinking "that was the best Mission concert I've been to".
The choosing of the acts was a mutual agreement process between the Mission Estate management and SEL and polls of "a few hundred people" are carried out.
The final tick is given by the Mission bosses.
Mr Erskine said they wanted to create a point of difference - a show featuring several diverse acts spanning the musical landscape and history.
He said getting some major acts was becoming increasingly difficult as the world had become more open in terms of new venue choices as well as more lucrative for the entertainers.
The ever-constant flow of acts touring through New Zealand reflected what was happening everywhere.
There was also a locked-in determination to keep ticket prices down, and Mission-goers had been able to attend shows which, if staged overseas, would have cost a lot more.
The Mission, as a venue, sparked in its own right, Mr Erskine said.
"It is unique - it is special and we are here to stay - it is simply the Mission and it's pretty well become an iconic event."
It was the largest winery-based event he had been involved with, and the most fun.
"Do I get up and dance too? Absolutely. It is so good to see people of all age groups up and dancing."
But it didn't start that way.
At the first concert in 1993 people were seated and many of the men present wore ties as Dame Kiri Te Kanawa sang.
Mr Erskine was with the International Marketing Group (IMG) back in the early 90s and was managing a string of top names, mainly from the world of sport like Greg Norman, Sir Jackie Stewart and Muhammad Ali.
IMG also had Dame Kiri on their management books.
"Kiri came to me one day and said she wanted to play an outdoor concert," Mr Erskine said.
He spoke to people he had come into contact with through Mission Estate and went to take a look.
"When I saw it I knew straight away it would work - I knew we had something special."
And so it began.
He left IMG in 1997 and set up SEL with David Coe, Tony Cochrane and Basil Scaffidi and retained the Mission concert link.
His diary is a busy one. He is a multi-tasker and has recently overseen an equestrian event in London and a golf tournament in Fiji. Or as he puts it "all sorts of different things".
But the Mission stands out.
"Because I like to be involved in events which are ongoing and the Mission will be ongoing - we are here to stay."
When spoken to while he was in London yesterday he said he was about to take a bit of a break - he had four days off lined up and then it would be back into it with deadlines and meetings and negotiations and event analysis.
He works long hours but he said something Sir Michael Parkinson said to him several years back when they were talking about their respective high-profile jobs had stuck with him.
"Michael said 'you and I don't work ... my father was a coal miner ... now that's work'."
The line up for this year's Mission Concert is Ronan Keating, Sharon Corr, Billy Ocean, Leo Sayer and Melanie C (Sporty Spice).