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BLUE SWEDE SHOWS
Market focus: Sweden
ROLLING THE DICE
Live music’s growth in Las Vegas
LEAPS & BOWNES
Emma Bownes: 25 years in music
REGGAETON’S RULES
L SERIES
FEATURES
14 What’s Going on... in Malta
With major names heading to this small archipelago, what’s happening? 20 IFF 2024 Preview
A look at the programme of panels and events at IFF’s tenth edition
The New Bosses 2024
The industry has voted - IQ ’s annual list of top emerging execs is revealed
32 La Bichota: Rewriting Reggaeton’s Rules
On tour with Latina sensation Karol G as she takes the world by storm
44 Leaps & Bownes
O2 programmer Emma Bownes celebrates 25 years in the biz
56 Vegas: Rock & Rolls the Dice
Hanna Ellington investigates how Vegas has become the hottest entertainment market in the world 60 Blue Swede Shows
Adam Woods takes a fresh look at the contemporary Swedish live market
COMMENT & COLUMNS
Improving Event Accessibility
Fil Palermo from Australia’s Untitled Group on the need for inclusivity in event planning
Diversifying Your Festival
Nick Bonard discusses alternative ways to market your festival brand
Members’ Noticeboard
ILMC members’ photographs
What the Robots Think
Detailing some of the erroneous “facts” that AI generated for some of ILMC’s best-known professionals
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Cover photo: Karol G performed two sold-out shows at The O2 arena in London as part of her recordbreaking Mañana Será Bonito Tour © RYZE
MOST READ INDEX
The ten most-read stories from ’s daily news coverage...
ED SHEERAN ANNOUNCES 2025 STADIUM TOUR
Ed Sheeran’s +–=÷× (Mathematics) tour will officially extend to a fourth year after the star confirmed a final slate of 2025 European stadium dates.
The singer-songwriter will play 28 shows in Spain, France, Italy, Germany, Switzerland, Belgium, Poland, and Denmark between 30 May and 7 September 2025.
The tour sold 600,000+ tickets in 60 minutes during the 10 July general sale, prompting promoter FKP Scorpio to add additional dates.
Sheeran is represented by agents Marty Diamond and Ash Lewis at Wasserman Music for the US and Canada, and Jon Ollier at One Fiinix Live for the rest of the world.
SUPERSTRUCT BOUGHT BY GLOBAL INVESTMENT FIRM
American global investment firm KKR has acquired festival giant Superstruct Entertainment from Providence in a reported €1.3bn deal.
Superstruct was founded in 2017 by Creamfields founder and former Live Nation president of electronic music James Barton and Providence’s Roderik Schlösser.
The company owns and operates more than 80 music festivals across ten countries in Europe and Australia and generates annual revenue of more
than €100m.
Its network includes Elrow (ES), Sziget (HU), Wacken Open Air (DE), Mysteryland (NL), Hideout (HR), Sónar (ES), Flow (FI), Øya (NO), Parookaville (DE), and Tinderbox (DK).
Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed, but the Financial Times reports it as €1.3bn, citing people familiar with the matter.
CAA HIRES VETERAN AGENT CHERYL PAGLIERANI
Veteran music agent Cheryl Paglierani, who has helped guide the live careers of artists such as Post Malone, 21 Savage, and Dominic Fike, has joined CAA.
Paglierani joins the company’s global touring department from UTA, where she most recently served as a partner.
She has played a pivotal role in the rise of clients including 21 Savage, who sold more than 140,000 tickets for his recent 30-date North American amphitheatre tour and has also worked with Post Malone throughout his development to become a worldwide superstar.
Los Angeles-based Paglierani served a stint at CAA, as well as William Morris, earlier in her career and went on to work for The Agency Group prior to its acquisition by UTA in 2015.
SINGER
DIES
AFTER BEING ELECTROCUTED BY HUG
A Brazilian rock singer was killed in freak circumstances after being electrocuted during a concert.
Ayres Sasaki, 35, was performing at a hotel in Salinópolis, Pará, on 13 July, when a fan jumped onstage and hugged him while drenched with water, causing him to suffer an electric shock through a nearby cable, which killed him instant-
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Ed Sheeran © Jeff Pabroquez
GLOBAL IT OUTAGE & WEATHER WREAK HAVOC ON FESTIVALS
The European festival season took an unexpected turn when Romania’s Electric Castle, Latvia’s Positivus, and Austria’s Poolbar were impacted by one of the worst IT outages in history.
On 19 July, a faulty security update by cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike caused 8.5m Microsoft Windows computers to crash around the world, with businesses, banks, hospitals, and airlines among the worst-hit.
Thousands of flights were cancelled due to the glitch, causing some artists to miss their scheduled sets at the weekend’s festivals.
Electric Castle’s tenth edition was hit with 14 cancellations by artists including Sleaford Mods, Hospitality Night, Sasha, Dov’è Liana, Jayda G, Ron Trent, Zack Fox, Hoax, PVC, Anaïs, Inja, Un-
glued, Voltage, and Kings Of The Rollers.
“It was crazy… the most difficult edition to handle,” Electric Castle’s Renate Rozenberg tells IQ. “What happened turned us upside down, but we are so grateful because, once again, we were shown that we really are a community – not only with our team and the festivalgoers but with the artists and their teams.”
A handful of artists even arrived minutes before their sets, adds Rozenberg.
“Everybody tried really hard to solve an unsolvable situation, but you couldn’t book a new flight or even open airlines’ websites,” she continues. “But the artists were so patient and some even waited in the airport for 12 hours or so. It was amazing how hard they tried to attend the festival.”
Latvia’s Positivus was hit harder, with two of
its three headliners, Offset and Nothing But Thieves, having to cancel their performances due to the outage.
“In its 16 years of existence, the Positivus Festival has never faced such immense challenges,” say organisers.
Austria’s Poolbar Festival, meanwhile, was forced to reschedule Bombay Bicycle Club’s show from Friday to Sunday, as the band’s flights were affected by the glitch.
The previous weekend, Slovakia’s Pohoda was curtailed after one of its large tents collapsed due to a severe storm, injuring 29 festivalgoers.
Organisers of the 11-13 July festival at Trenčín Airport initially suspended its second night, before cancelling the remainder of the event. Evacuation buses were arranged to transport people from the site.
“The safety of everyone at Pohoda is our priority, so we believe ending the festival on Friday was the right decision, and we stand by it,” say the event’s promoters. “We are grateful for the way our visitors handled the Friday storm, and we know of many powerful stories where the Pohoda community showed its resilience.”
Austrian festival Electric Love was also forced to shut down for half a day due to the threat of severe weather. The 70,000-capacity event in Salzburg was scheduled for 4-6 July, but its final day was hampered due to forecasted strong winds, heavy rain, and lightning.
Other events that were impacted by severe weather include Gazebo Festival, Sueños Music Festival, Lovers & Friends, and Sol Blume in the US, and Slam Dunk in the UK. .
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Positivus Festival in Latvia was one of a number of events to suffer artist cancellations due to airlines struggling with IT issues
As one of our most anticipated features each year, The New Bosses – in association with Futures Forum – relies upon you, our readers, to nominate those people, aged 30 and under, who are impressing you most with their approach to the industry. The 2024 crop of winners is stellar, representing a fantastic and diverse array of the talent that is ensuring that the future of the live entertainment sector is in very capable hands.
The individual profiles on the following pages are heavily edited versions of the full interviews we conducted with our class of 2024 New Bosses. We will be publishing the full Q&As on Iq-mag.net throughout August and September, so keep an eye on the website to learn more.
Congratulations to everyone selected as one of this year’s New Bosses!
AUSTIN SARICH (US)
Senior tour director, Live Nation
Austin’s upcoming projects include Usher’s global, 80-date Past Present Future Tour, which includes ten sold-out nights at The O2 Arena in London and shows across Paris, Amsterdam, and Berlin; and Shakira’s highly anticipated, sold-out Las Mujeres Ya No Lloran World Tour. Recently, he oversaw Doja Cat’s global Scarlet Tour, selling over 300,000 tickets and Travis Scott’s Utopia – Circus Maximus Tour, which shifted 685,000 tickets and grossed over $95m in North America and is currently playing off in Europe with over 200,000 attendees, grossing $23m thus far.
Your first three years in the business were on the ticketing side. Was switching to touring always your plan?
Booking was always my long-term goal for working in the industry –starting in ticketing gave me a great knowledge of the fundamentals of the business as it relates to pricing, operations, and maximising revenue for clients.
Where is your favourite venue?
Seeing a show at the Hollywood Bowl is always special to me – the iconic setting, atmosphere, and historical significance makes it one of a kind.
Do you have a mentor?
I’m fortunate to work in a division with many talented and brilliant promoters, but Colin Lewis has always been a mentor to me since my first days in the industry – his dedication to his clients, staff, and craft creates an environment for many to achieve and thrive.
CERYS VAUGHAN (UK)
Senior assistant, ATC Live
Cerys began her career as a teenager, running the shows at a small venue, Firebug, while also stage managing at Handmade Festival in Leicester. While at university, she interned at the Association of Independent Festivals, helping to run their Festival Congress event in Cardiff in 2014. Post degree, she landed a job as a promoter assistant at DHP Family, before moving to ATC Live six years ago.
You’ve been involved in live music since you were a teenager – what prompted your interest?
I was working in a bar that had a venue attached. The venue booker, John Helps, asked one day if I’d like to try out show repping to get some events experience before going to university. It turned out that I loved it and ended up repping all the gigs and running the door before, during, and after university.
In terms of expanding your network of contacts, are there any events you would recommend to others?
IFF, The Great Escape, and Futures Forum are great events to attend early in your career. Many international industry professionals travel to these, giving you the opportunity to put some faces to your ever-growing network of email addresses.
As a new boss, what one thing would you change to improve the live music business?
We need further diversity in the workforce across race, gender, religion, sexual orientation, disability, and socio-economic backgrounds. It’s our duty to make sure every person along the way feels safe, comfortable, and fully able to enjoy themselves, and that’ll only be possible when all corners of society are represented in the planning.
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LA BICHOTA
REWRITING REGGAETON’S RULES
Derek Robertson looks behind the scenes of Karol G’s record-breaking, year-long Mañana Será Bonito tour to find out how her crew and advisors cope with the evergrowing fanbase and the demands they make on Latin America’s newest megastar.
Is there any doubt that Karol G – the Latin superstar who recently tore through Europe – is truly a bichota? That term – a riff on the Puerto Rican slang for a big boss and adopted as a rallying cry by her legions of fans –perfectly encapsulates the singer’s take-noshit persona and current dominance as reggaeton’s numero uno global star. With a rise as rapid as it has been stratospheric, it’s no surprise she’s been described in glossy magazine profiles as “blowing up reggaeton's boys' club.”
The proof? There’s her signature hit, Tusa, recorded with Nicki Minaj, that’s blown past a billion streams. In 2022, she became the highest-grossing Latin female artist in North America. She was named Billboard ’s 2024 Woman of the Year. And then there’s most recent album Mañana Será Bonito (Tomorrow Will Be Beautiful). The first Spanish-language album by a female artist to hit No. 1 on the Billboard charts, it also spawned a tour that shattered records and sold over a million tickets in Latin America – a tour that’s now doing likewise this side of the pond. “She has been building towards this moment for years,” her worldwide agent Jbeau Lewis tells IQ. “And the success of Mañana Será Bonito provided the perfect moment.”
To say that Karol G’s (real name Carolina Giraldo Navarro) ascent has been unprecedented is something of an understatement. As recently as autumn 2021, she was playing theatres in the US – her last UK appearance was in 2018, headlining the 1,500-cap Electric Brixton – but with her streaming numbers constantly exceeding expectations, alongside wave after wave of critical acclaim, her team knew that something special was brewing.
La Bichota
In 2022, on the Bichota tour, Karol G’s Costa Rica show set a record for the highest attendance ever in the history of the Coca-Cola Amphitheater at Parque Viva. “This experience allowed us to do it again for this year’s Mañana Será Bonito tour,” says promoter Andrés Guanipa of Move Concerts. Indeed, far from the usual challenge of selling enough tickets, Guanipa notes they had precisely the opposite problem.
“The issue for the first show at the National Stadium was to strengthen the sales system to prevent it from collapsing,” he says. “This was achieved, and in less than three hours, we sold 52,500 tickets. For the second show, we sold 32,000 tickets on the first day of sales, and the remaining 20,000 were sold over the sales period, for which we did some promotional work.”
In total, an absolute record was set, with 104,686 fans – breaking Coldplay’s record – attending her two Costa Rican dates, a figure that represents a staggering 2% of the country’s entire population (“An extremely unusual statistic,” notes Guanipa. “And she now holds the attend-
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BLUE SWEDE SHOWS
As one of the world’s songwriting strongholds, Sweden has been a Nordic powerhouse for live music for decades. But nowhere is immune to the challenges of post-pandemic cost increases, and as Adam Woods discovers, the festival market in particular is going through seismic changes.
If the comeback from the pandemic meant it was party time in Sweden, as gig-goers poured out of confinement to rediscover the sensation of live entertainment, there is just a touch of a hangover in the air in 2024.
Sweden has had a wobbly time of late, its economy contracting last year and the Swedish krona slipping against not only the dollar and the euro but also the krone of neigh-
bouring Denmark.
Although there is probably no need for a whip-round just yet as Sweden remains one of Europe’s wealthier, more mature markets and a strong destination, even if its buying power has diminished slightly –but for now, Sweden at large is paying close attention to the price tags when it goes shopping.
“Basically, we are having a good year. We have a fair number of inter-
national tours – not as many as last year but that’s understood,” says Thomas Johansson, Live Nation’s venerable chairman, international music, who is also chairman of the Nordics and Baltics.
“But the business on some shows – not just Live Nation shows – reflects the fact that people are more aware of ticket prices; basically, because the Swedish krona, not dissimilar to the Norwegian currency,
has been at an all-time low versus the pound and the euro and the dollar, so prices are relatively high.”
The combination of the weak krona, stagnant wages, and high interest rates means the Swedish demand for live fun in 2024 has started to find its elastic limit.
“If you push the ticket price, people will not buy because they can’t afford it,” says Johansson. “You need to be careful with ticket prices
– I have always thought that, not just now.”
When you factor in historically high touring costs – not to mention the fear of military engagement with Sweden’s easterly next-door neighbour but one – it all adds up to a slightly delicate moment.
“This is a good year for us,” says AXS general manager Jay Sietsema, adopting the positive-yet-nuanced tone of most Swedish executives just
terity. Pink, Bruce Springsteen, and Taylor Swift have been through Stockholm’s Strawberry Arena this year – pre- and post-name-change from its Friends Arena incarnation – along with numerous other international and local tours. Sweden Rock in Sölvesborg went off well in June, and another Live Nation event, August’s Luger-promoted Way Out West in Gothenburg, has plenty of well-earned cachet.
But equally, festivals such as All Things Live’s Big Slap in Malmö and Live Nation’s Lollapalooza Stockholm have opted out this year – the former for good, the latter for a period of reflection. Festivals, of course, are struggling across the continent, but Sweden is too small a market to simply put the show on and hope for a miracle, and consequently, its portfolio of major events remains a little fluid.
“Sweden must be the country that has had the most big festivals close down,” says All Things Live’s David Maloney. “There’s really only Way Out West and Sweden Rock still going strong after all these years. All the other festivals are gone.”
So, by all accounts, this is a year of adjustment, with plenty of decent business being done against a backdrop of realism. As Svensk Live operations manager Joppe Pihlgren points out, a marginally slower year in Sweden represents a return to normality, coming after two years that were supercharged by consumer savings and unbridled supply and demand. If the going seems a little tougher now, he suggests that’s because the bounce couldn’t go on forever.
ASM Global’s Avicii Arena is out of action this year for a major refurb and will return in 2025; meanwhile, Eurovision came and went in Malmö, striking a blow for gender inclusivity even as it became another conduit for anger at the war in Gaza.
Economic prognoses suggest that the worst has passed for Sweden and that strong fundamentals will keep it clear of further recessionary aftershocks. A slightly cloudy day may already be brightening up.
“There has been a negative perception, with the high interest rates, the inflation, the war, and I think that has stabilised,” says Sietsema. “And we're seeing that there's still a huge interest in music, in theatre and events and sports, and that the crowds continue to grow. The demand has not lessened. The challenge is to not let inflation run away with everything so the prices get too expensive. But I'm optimistic for the Swedish market. As I said, the demand is still looking good.”
Promoters
The powerful Live Nation Sweden sits at the heart of the live giant’s Nordic and Baltic network – roughly 90 of its 200 staff in the region are based in Stockholm. Its operations reflect the fact that, while Sweden is a perennially formidable touring market, it also remains one of the world’s most productive pop music hubs.
“Before we did Live Nation,” says Johansson, giving a history lesson few people need, “we looked after a band called ABBA. After that, we did a band called Europe, and after that, we did Roxette worldwide, and we did fantastic business.”
now, “but it’s been up and down across the market. Sweden came out of the pandemic really strong, and then inflation went crazy, and the market really flattened for a while, and now I think we've hit a stable point. What I'm hearing from the promoters is that it's more and more expensive for the artists to come, but I think demand remains steady.”
On the face of it, this is not obviously a market in the throes of aus-
“At the end of ’22, when we got free from the pandemic, everybody was very enthusiastic for live shows, and people had saved a lot of money, there was a lot of support, the market was very boosted,” says Pihlgren. “But, if you have a record year, everything has to go up the next year, such as artist fees, and the market can’t support that.”
In the meantime, Sweden marches on – not quite booming but still pretty good. In the three key cities of Stockholm, Gothenburg, and Malmö, there are plenty of shows;
These days, Johansson’s focus is broad, but Swedish talent remains a priority, from Ghost to the newly rebooted Roxette. “One act in particular that we have worked with for a couple of years is Benjamin Ingrosso,” he says. “We are doing nine outdoor shows for his tour starting the end of July, and he is headlining one of the Way Out West dates. We have sold about 95% of the tickets, sold out the [Olympic] stadium in Stockholm at 31,000, and it’s looking like every show will be sold out at various capacities. But again, the tickets
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FKP Scorpio promoted Håkan Hellström at Stockholm Stadium in August 2023 © Annika Berglund
