Question - when a band brings an opening act on tour, does that opening act share the expenses such as for union work or even hotel fees etc..?
This depends on the main act (if they want to pay the support act or not and pay for the accommodations or not). If not, then band pays for everything, except what's on site (stage hands, catering, etc). A well established band like DT would probably pay at least for the accommodations and maybe the support act. The opening band usually gets paid in "exposure" by supporting the main act. Kscope (Tesseract) and Inside Out (Dream Theater and Devin Townsend) are decent labels and probably help the smaller bands with some touring support.
Things may be different now, but apparently when MP was involved and they did the Prog Nation tours, DT covered all the expenses of the opening acts. Here's an excerpt of an interview I did with MP at the end of the North American leg of PN09:
SH: Gotcha. In the last interview I read in the New Voice fanzine, you had mentioned wanting to make ProgNation a 5-band festival bill, and yet both the North American and European tours feature 4 bands.
MP: Once again, it’s another – mainly financial – logistical nightmare. At the start of this tour, in all the meetings I had with our booking agent, I was pushing for a 5-band thing that would start at 3 in the afternoon. And once again, there’s just so many behind the scenes reasons why those things are so much harder to implement than they appear on paper. Adding a fifth band on this tour is another bus, another 10 people you have to feed each day at catering – we pay for all the catering. Then there’s all the union fees – that means that load-in is gonna have to be that much earlier, the local hands at every show… It just gets harder and harder and harder, the more bands you have on the bill. There’s a million reasons why it is difficult. And believe me, my agent and my manager were trying to make Progressive Nation 3 bands. I put my foot down and said it’s gotta be at least four. I mean the Queensr˙che show in Maryland was a one-off example, but it’s a very big expense to do a tour like that. To be honest with you, this is the first tour in a very long time where we’re not making money – we’re breaking even. In addition to ticket sales being really light this summer – for every tour – which surely hurt us, we’re paying Zappa a lot of money and all of the other bands and the catering, the union fees and blah blah blah. At the end of the day, it would be way more financially feasible to do an evening with tour and just pocket the money ourselves. But to me, I want to offer something more to the fans. And I know that’s a debate – I know a lot of people would prefer an evening with – it would make more sense for it to be an evening with, but those 3 hour shows are tough on us.
As for DT canceling the Bilbao show perhaps due to low ticket sales, I haven't a clue, but it's always possible. It's strange they'd cancel the show a week out. It definitely wasn't a case of a band member being sick. It could have been a venue issue - like the venue wasn't up to the standards or requirements that the band dictated in their tour rider and this wasn't paid attention to until just shortly before the show. In interviewing Rikk Feulner, DT's long-time tour manager, I remember him saying that he's got a constant string of e-mails not just regarding the next show but the shows in the following weeks and even months. So it's quite possible that there was a make-or-break detail regarding the venue that was missed and only came to light now, and there were no reasonable options for them to switch to another venue. Has DT previously played at the venue they were scheduled to play on this tour?
Of course, if the show was canceled because of low ticket sales, there's no way they'd ever announce that. But if that were the case, I'd be curious to know who was the one to pull the plug - the band or the promoter. I'm guessing it would be the promoter who would probably rather just cut their losses rather than put the show on and potentially risk even bigger losses. But maybe I'm wrong. Anyone that has a background in that sort of thing have more insight?