The change-makers

Welcome

The promise of the ‘roaring twenties’ certainly came true this year, with record numbers of shows and sales worldwide.

The Global Promoters Report is a first-of-its-kind publication, highlighting some of the key national promoters working with international artists in 40 of the most important markets. And as we’ll see over the following pages, promoters have never been busier. More shows by more artists, grossing more than ever before – the top 100 tours worldwide brought in $6.2bn this year, eclipsing even the previous record in 2019, according to Pollstar’s 2022 box office data.

Each of the market profiles that follow includes overviews of touring conditions for artists at all levels, from stadium-fillers to those looking to break into new territories. With invaluable insights, it presents local conditions, challenges and opportunities, and interviews with the very people who know their home turf best.

What transpires is although there are specific local conditions, there are also global matters that affect everyone – not least the familiar challenges around staffing, global supply chains, production, and economic factors.

Yet, despite everything, promoters’ creativity shone through, bringing joy to the millions of people worldwide who returned to concerts and festivals with gusto. As Bruce Moran of Live Nation Latin America says in Your Shout on page 72: “Our business can be unrelenting and unforgiving. But at every show I cover in Latin America, I rediscover the magic of our world.” I think that’s true all over the globe.

My thanks to everyone involved who has helped bring the first Global Promoters Report to life. I hope you enjoy reading it as much as we’ve enjoyed putting it together for you.

James Drury | Editor

The change-makers

As the breadth of countries on international tour routing has continued to grow, with so many markets available for concerts, the world can be an artist’s oyster. But what it’s taken to reach this point is in no small part down to the promoters in those territories making it happen.

These imaginative, creative, practical people have refused to allow obstacles, governments, or a lack of infrastructure prevent them enabling artists from around the world to connect with fans – live.

As Luiz Oscar Niemeyer, one of Brazil’s pioneering promoters, says: “I’ve been in this business for a long time. We started bringing international acts to play here in the mid-80s. When I first started promoting here, we had no sound system in Brazil, no lighting, no generators. We had to bring everything in from abroad. But now Brazil is part of the international routing for acts. Brazil has developed a lot of professionals and equipment companies, meaning we have a proper live music industry here, which has grown in the last 30 years.”

And change is still being driven by promoters in many territories – a look at how promoters around the world lobbied governments over reopening measures during the pandemic is emblematic of this.

Entertainment and ticketing platform BookMyShow in India has been working tirelessly to improve the concerts industry in the subcontinent, as Kunal Khambhati, head – live events & IP, explains: “It would be fair to say the obstacles [to organising shows here] have been significantly broken down, with a state of flow achieved over the past five or six years when it comes to live entertainment acts across music, performance, comedy, and theatricals marking their presence in the country.

“India follows the umbrella taxation system of Goods & Services Tax (GST), and at the highest slab of 28% GST rate for live entertainment, taxation was a bottleneck for the live entertainment industry both in the pre- and post-Covid world. In the aftermath of the pandemic, as the industry attempted to recover gradually, India’s live entertainment ecosystem required that the government wholeheartedly support the industry, and it has significantly played its role by bringing down taxation rates to 18% for live entertainment.

“This has been a significant boost to making more commercially viable acts and formats feasible in the country. Additionally, favourable regulatory policies such as easing infrastructure roadblocks to create and enable parallel venues for various formats and scales, streamlining timelines and permissions required to host events at various venues to make out-of-home entertainment accessible to millions of Indians, have aided and will continue to further help script a strong growth story for this industry and millions of jobs associated with it.

“BookMyShow has been working with both regulatory authorities and stakeholders across the value chain to resolve some of the challenges at state and central government levels, and while we have a long way to go to make the ecosystem ideal, it would be more than fair to say the work has already begun and is well underway, paving the way for some of these experiences to make their way to India over the past five or more years.”

Promoter power

Over the past two decades, promoters have become more important – one could argue more powerful – in an artist’s career, as live revenue now often makes up the bulk of a performer’s income.

As agent Obi Asika at United Talent Agency in the UK says: “There was a long period where live performance was by far the biggest income stream for an artist. This created a shift; promoters have used that influence to create huge businesses that meaningfully effect all aspects of the entertainment industry.

“Promoters are much more connected to all aspects of a project. For many artists, the most important barometer of success is how many hard tickets they can sell. In many cases, that is more important than how many albums they sell.”

Longstanding promoter Rob Hallett has decades of experience in the industry, working first as an agent and promoter with Barrie Marshall’s Marshall Arts before joining Mean Fiddler (later MAMA, now owned by Live Nation), and then establishing AEG Live in the UK in 2005. After ten years with the company, he launched Robomagic in 2015, later acquired by Live Nation but recently going independent again after three years with the multinational. His roster includes TLC, Sleaford Mods, Goldie, and Boy Better Know, as well as Duran Duran, who Hallett represented as an agent in the 80s.

“I think we're finally being taken more seriously, as a major part of an artist’s life,” he says. “It was always frustrating when we were making more money for the artists, but the labels had more power and influence. Labels seems to have disappeared from the mix pretty much these days. In the old days, a label would call you before you went to sell the tour, your marketing teams would talk about how you'd mesh your campaigns, but that doesn't seem to happen anymore.”

But in the ever-changing space of the broader music business, recent years have seen a more joined-up approach across the whole artist team, says Rauha Kyyrö, head

Australia

Population: 26.1million Language: English Currency: Australian dollar (AUD) GDP per capita: $48,700 Internet users: 23.1million Active smartphone users: 27.5million

Australia is a sophisticated concerts and touring market, a regular stop on any major global tour and one that, with the biggest acts, can shift close to – or more than – one million ticket sales for a single trek.

Following a crushing two-plus years when cities and entire states were locked down, touring has returned as a national circuit, and it’s accelerating into the warmer southern months.

Some promoters say there’s too much inventory in the months ahead, an embarrassment of riches following a barren spell. No one is complaining.

“It’s very solid,” and business appears to be returning “to some sort of level” similar to pre-pandemic times, notes Michael Chugg, the chairman of Chugg Entertainment, part of the Mushroom Group and a member of the leadership team for Frontier Touring.

Size, scale

“It’s only 25m people but it really punches above its weight when it comes to live performance,” comments AEG Live’s Adam Wilkes, who visited Australia in September 2022. The per-capita spend in Australia is among the highest in the world, he notes, adding that “it’s just so engrained in the culture to see live music and sport.”

The live space is expected to fully recover by 2024, according to the PwC report Listen, published in 2022. That’s thanks in part to the lifting of restrictions across the country, triggered by high rates of vaccinations, which saw 80% of all Australians get their first or second jab by early 2022.

Australia’s concert promotion space is dominated by Live Nation, Frontier Touring (part of the Mushroom Group), and TEG, which includes TEG Dainty, TEG Live, and TEG Van Egmond.

Those market giants continue to evolve and build for busy times ahead.

In September, Live Nation threw the doors open to its latest venue, the Hindley Street Music Hall in Adelaide, following an “compared with what we’ve dealt with the last two years, things are opening, and things are good.”

Ticket sales across Untitled’s suite of shows and events are expected to top 500,000 this year, say reps for the company, against a typical, pre-Covid year when annual ticket sales topped 300,000.

Chillinit Adelaide © Domscopes AU$6m renovation. The 1,800-capacity complex promises to reconnect the South Australian capital with the east and west coasts. It’s the City of Churches’ “premier live music hub,” enthuses Roger Field, president of Live Nation Asia Pacific, and is set to be “an industry-leading venue across Australia.”

Live Nation now owns and operates a portfolio of venues.

“We are starting to see light at the end of the tunnel,” says Mark Vaughan, vice president – talent & artist development, Live Nation Australia. “We have the first full festival summer coming up without any Covid restrictions, so we think that’s going to breathe fresh life into the live market. Big arena and stadium shows are coming back, so the fans are finally starting to see their favourite artists hit our shores, which is exciting!

“We just had a huge Billie Eilish tour that we co-promoted with Frontier and was a massive success. We have Dua Lipa in the market now, Idles, Crowded House, and Kendrick Lamar coming back. Watching the recent Blink-182 sales was a real highlight, the demand was unprecedented, and what is even more staggering is that the shows are not until 2024!”

Following the 2021 death of legendary impresario Michael Gudinski, the company he founded, Mushroom Group, and its concerts arm, Frontier Touring, restructured its executive and leadership teams. Among the changes, Adam Wilkes, president and CEO, AEG Presents Asia Pacific, which acquired 50% in Frontier back in 2019, additionally assumes the post of Frontier Touring chairman.

Gudinski’s son, Matt Gudinski, is now chairman and CEO of Mushroom Group, which is entering its 50th year in business. “Frontier is probably at its strongest point ever,” he explains.

Upcoming tours include the final trans-Tasman dates on Elton John’s farewell trek and Ed Sheeran’s Mathematics run, the follow-up to his Divide tour of 2018, which shifted more than 1m tickets – a record. “I can’t even count how many approaches we’ve had over the years to buy our business or merge our business,” says Gudinski. “We’re very set on continuing on the path of Frontier and what our live vision is about.”

TEG, meanwhile, added the Laneway Festival to its portfolio of events in 2021, acquired the boutique tour and events promoter Handsome Tours in the same year, launched its European division in mid-2022, and will bring SXSW to Sydney from 15-22 October 2023, through a collaboration with the New South Wales government's events and tourism arm Destination NSW.

“We are not fully out of the woods as regards the long tail of the pandemic and its effects,” explains TEG CEO Geoff Jones, “but there is no denying that live entertainment is well and truly back, and we are hugely excited for the coming years ahead.”

Among the leading boutique and independent concert promoters operating in Australia are the Untitled Group, which runs Beyond The Valley, Pitch Music & Arts, Wildlands, Grapevine Gathering, For The Love, and Ability Fest; UNIFIED Music Group, which runs Unify Gathering, Gippsland, and Goulburn Valley Country Music Festival, and is led by Jaddan Comerford, an entrant in the Australian Financial Review’s 2022 Young Rich List; and Bluesfest Touring, which operates the annual Byron Bay Bluesfest, which is expected to expand into Melbourne in 2023.

“Things are good. Obviously, there’s still the interruptions,” says Comerford, noting irregular spikes in Covid-19 infections, Billie Eilish © Mark Metcalfe

Introducing acts

Labels have a strong interest in placing their emerging artists in support slots for more established artists in the territory. And booking an artist as support can give the promoter team a foot in the door with the artist/manager/label at a very early stage of their career.

“This gives Live Nation a chance to show the level of expertise we can apply to a tour and set a standard of what an artist can expect if they are to continue a working relationship with us,” says Vaughan. “It’s not necessarily ‘innovative’ but as far as the best ways to break acts goes, bringing the artists into the market is a key pillar.

“Moving forward, there is a strong appetite from labels to work in conjunction with promoters to collaborate on promo trips for emerging international acts. By working closely with the labels, promoters support those artists by committing to a run of club shows leveraged off the back of the promo tour – promoter/label share the financial commitment, with the goal of establishing an audience for future touring opportunities.”

Costs

The business of presenting live music in Australia is not without its troubles. Bushfires have plagued the summer festival season in recent years, and floods are a menace that keep promoters on their toes. The first day of the 2022 Splendour in the Grass festival was scrapped due to on-site flooding. Crowded House’s scheduled 13 November performance at Gateway Lakes, Wodonga, was cancelled due to severe flooding.

The cost of insuring events is on the rise. “The more outdoor shows that are going on around the country, the more cancellations that are going to happen with the weather we’ve got, and then everyone’s insurance premium goes up across the board,” notes Mick Newton, director of Roundhouse Entertainment, a division of Mushroom Group, whose A Day on the Green celebrated its 500th show in 2022 with Crowded House.

Australia’s indoor venues are also reporting a steep hike in the price of public liability insurance.

Promoters are also reporting difficulties getting enough hands on deck: security; food and beverage sellers; crew to load in and out. And a dearth of baggage handlers has led to disruption at airports in 2022, leading to delays and flight cancelations.

“We’re still seeing some no-shows at each event due to fans saying they have Covid symptoms or have tested positive,” notes TEG’s Jones. “It is just part of the current reality, which we expect will fade over time as vaccinations continue to rise and herd immunity grows.”

And Vaughan from Live Nation adds: “All of our suppliers are having the same issues we face in the live industry with staffing shortfalls that are affecting everyone from crew companies to travel agencies and hotels, so just getting in invoices at the end of a tour has its own set of complications. Most touring productions are aware of this and are understanding.”

Denmark

Population: 5.9million Language: Danish Currency: Krone (DKK) GDP per capita: $55,900 Internet users: 5.7million Active smartphone users: 7.2million

Not as happy as Finland but happier than everywhere else – the two make up a Scandinavian 1-2 in Gallup’s 2022 World Happiness Report – Denmark’s live scene is not significantly less vigorous than that of its neighbour Sweden, and the corporate interests ranged behind its promoters include some familiar faces.

DTD Group (formerly Beatbox) is the largest independent promoter in Denmark and is behind two of the country’s largest festivals, NorthSide and Tinderbox, as well as around 200 headline shows a year by predominantly international artists, among them George Ezra, Tame Impala, Sigur Rós, and Dermot Kennedy in autumn-spring 2022/23. In 2019, DTD entered into an investment and partnership agreement with Superstruct Entertainment on undisclosed financial terms.

The FKP-backed smash!bang!pow! had perhaps the biggest single smash hit of the year when it sold 100,000 tickets to Ed Sheeran’s four Copenhagen shows in around 100 minutes, with the remaining 60,000 disappearing in another 48 hours.

FKP took a 25% stake in smash!bang!pow! in 2018. “We’re only four years in, and that is including a long period with Covid-19,” FKP CEO Folkert Koopmans told IQ in August. “Nonetheless, smash!bang!pow! have more than doubled their office, and they’ve broken the Danish ticket record by far.”

Live Nation Denmark has brought Cirque du Soleil’s Corteo, Swedish House Mafia, Rag ‘n’ Bone Man, and Editors through Copenhagen in recent weeks and plans major business for 2023, with Depeche Mode, Blink-182, Louis Tomlinson, Roger Waters, Robbie Williams, Peter Gabriel, and Sting among the names on the horizon.

Live Nation bought Danish booking agency and management company PDH Music in 2019, and Live Nation’s Luger opened a Danish office in Copenhagen in 2018, led by Sarah Sølvsteen.

ICO Concerts was one of the founding partners in Waterland Private Equity-backed All Things Live when the group launched in 2018, and All Things Live Denmark CEO Pernille Møller Pedersen hails 2022 as “a solid year,” with more still expected of 2023.

“We promoted some great shows in 2022, like Rammstein at Ceres Arena, which sold out at 35,000 capacity; sold-out comedy shows with Jeff Dunham and Gabriel Iglesias at Royal Arena; a record- breaking tour with Danish comedian Heino Hansen that sold 90,000 tickets; and we are ending the year with a sold-out show at Royal Arena with Blackpink,” says Pedersen.

“2023 is going to be a great year for us, with Rammstein coming back to play two shows in Odense (total cap 90,000), and we have shows on sale with Céline Dion, Sam Smith, Michael Bublé, and many more – it finally feels like the live music business is back.”

All Things Live has strengthened its roster with the signing of Copenhagen-based international management firm Then We Take The World (TWTTW), home to clients including Danish pop band Lukas Graham.

“I think we have a healthy competition here in Denmark, and we enjoy the competition,” says Pedersen. “It keeps us on our toes and forces us to be creative. I trust there is enough business for all of us. At All Things Live we are proud to be independent and with that we can offer artists, agents, and managers something that our competitors might not be able to.”

Other promoters include veteran operator CSB Island, which has promoter Simply Red, Jethro Tull, Slade, and James Blunt in recent years, and has Disney on Ice, Paul Potts, and ABBA and Dire Straits tributes this winter.

Danish festivals bounced back with vigour this summer, with giants such as Roskilde, Smukfest, and Copenhell among those selling out months ahead.

Denmark’s second-largest festival, the 66,000-capacity Smukfest, is owned by 20,000 members, three-quarters of whom volunteer at the event each summer. Gorillaz, Kraftwerk, Kygo, Limp Bizkit, and Justin Bieber were among the 200 artists that performed at Smukfest between 31 July and 7 August in ’22.

Haim at Roskilde’s Orange Stage © Flemming Bo Jensen

Finland

Population: 5.6million Language: Finnish Currency: Markka (FIM) GDP per capita: $47,300 Internet users: 5million Active smartphone users: 7.1million

Finland doesn’t have a lot of promoters but those it has are industrious. Fullsteam, founded in 2003, came into FKP Scorpio in 2015 and is a powerhouse, promoting Ed Sheeran, Rammstein, Justin Bieber, System of a Down, and The Killers in recent years, as well as diverse domestic artists such as JVG, Stam1na, Paperi T, CMX, Asa, and others. It also operates a record company, publishing, management, and two festivals: Sideways and Provinssi.

All Things Live has a footprint in Finland, too, and in addition to shows with Céline Dion, Andrea Bocelli, Louis Tomlinson, and Manowar, it operates the WKND Festival in Hämeenlinna, headlined by David Guetta this year, with 60,000 visitors over three days.

Live Nation Finland is another major player, founded on Risto Juvonen’s Welldone Agency and Promotions. Juvonen departed as chairman in 2020, and Tomi Saarinen has served as CEO since 2019.

Live Nation’s accustomed flow of international arena acts remains solid, in spite of the shuttering of the Hartwall Arena in April 2022 due to its Russian ownership. The new Nokia Arena in Tampere, opened in late 2021, has done stand-in duty.

“That’s been a blessing,” says Live Nation promoter Scott Lavender. “Tampere is within easy reach of Helsinki, so it hasn’t really affected our business in that way.” The Nokia, consequently, is where Live Nation will send Robbie Williams and Iron Maiden next year, and where Volbeat, Sting, Eric Flow Festival 2022 © Petri Anttila

Clapton, and Queen + Adam Lambert went in 2022.

Live Nation Finland has also been building its domestic roster. In 2019, it acquired Hög Agency & Promotion, which represents Finnish artists such as Olavi Uusivirta, Adi L Hasla, Mouhous, and Vilma Alina.

Finland’s tastes and its range of talent, says Lavender, are broader than many suppose. “Finland is well known for rock music and people talk a lot about that,” he says. “The reality is that rock is really big, and we can do really successful shows, but there’s a very broad music base. With the range of headline shows we do and the festivals that exist, you can pretty much get to hear any style of music, and there’s a good audience for everything.”

In 2019, Live Nation acquired hip-hop festival Blockfest – which takes place at Tampere Stadium and attracts some 75,000 festivalgoers each year – bringing founder Kalle Kallonen and his team on board.

Many of Finland’s best-known festivals are independently owned and organised, such as the eclectic Flow Festival in Suvilhati, Helsinki, which drew 90,000 attendees over three days of its comeback edition in 2022. The festival remains under the guidance of music producer Tuomas Kallio and music collective Nuspirit Helsinki.

Ilosaarirock in Joensuu, eastern Finland, which has chalked up a half-century since its founding in 1971 by the Joensuu Pop Musicians’ Association, remains within the same structure today, directing its profits to the North Karelian music scene. The huge Ruisrock in Turku is older still – by a year – and is organised by Vantaan Festivaalit and promoter Mikko Niemelä.

Other Finnish promoters include Grey Beard Concerts, which works with a heavy roster consisting of Amorphis, Amaranthe, Sabaton, and Amo.