After alerting his admirers he was going on the hunt for a new boy band, Simon Cowell was met with a surprisingly small crowd for his new Netflix show, The Midas Touch.
Finding a new boyband was no easy feat for Simon Cowell, particularly as only a small handful of lads were keen to try their luck.
The music mogul announced he was ready to create the next One Direction earlier this year and announced a string of auditions for music enthusiasts and talents to show off their skills.
Auditions began this Saturday, July 6, 2024, and will feature in Simon’s upcoming Netflix programme The Midas Touch, but the X Factor star’s search descended further into chaos when a trickle of 40 people showed up.
The small crowd showed up at Liverpool’s Albert Dock, worlds away from the long queues of hopefuls ready to face the X Factor judges, and one source revealed organisers faced a similar outcome for this Sunday’s (July 7) auditions.
One source told The Sun : “They started arriving slowly from about 9am on Saturday but the biggest number in the queue never amounted to more than about 40. By early afternoon, the number arriving had virtually dried up and it was the same story on the Sunday audition.”
The insider revealed that organisers had clearly expected for more people to show up as they added: “The amount of railings they put up suggested they were expecting hundreds or thousands of people to arrive and pack out the queues but they had a fraction of those kinds of numbers.”
Simon has faced a series of hurdles for his new series, which he launched with the slogan “Simon Needs You”, as he most recently cancelled his first two originally scheduled dates in Gateshead.
A TV insider warned fans that X Factor fans would be surprised by their set up as they said: “These auditions will not look like The X Factor in the slightest – no shiny desks, big productions or celebrity guests. It will be incredibly stripped back.”
“Simon has amassed a team of real experts – songwriters, producers and A&R people – who he really trusts. Together they’ll be chatting to the talent and trying to work out who should go through.”
During a press chat, Simon admitted that the show would have no built-in record deal arranged with a label, meaning that successful candidates would need to have enough star power to grab a label’s interest on their own.
In other news, former X Factor judge Nicole Scherzinger was tipped to be going head to head with her former boss in the upcoming programme. Two more audition days are scheduled in Dublin later in July, 2024, while three dates have also been set up in London in early August.
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