Speaker 1: Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to the Bob left Stetts Podcast.
Speaker 1: My guest today is CEO and President of Blave Nation,
Speaker 1: one and only, Michael Rapino. Michael, good to have you
Speaker 1: on the podcast. You just announced this new effort, Vibe.
Speaker 1: What exactly is it?
Speaker 2: Biby is a destination event company. As you know you've
Speaker 2: probably read over the years, there's more and more of
Speaker 2: these on location companies where they're kind of taking the
Speaker 2: current events doing a special package VIP. Maybe it's a
Speaker 2: destination to see Lionel Richie just in Cabbo for a
Speaker 2: thousand people. So anyway, you can kind of create above
Speaker 2: and beyond special experiences around an artist event. So it
Speaker 2: could be a current event, meaning we could do it
Speaker 2: at La La Lose and do a jet in a
Speaker 2: backstage and a VIP package. But most of it is
Speaker 2: trying to create destination events for artists and fans to
Speaker 2: have kind of an exceptional VIP experience.
Speaker 1: So what is already booked for Vibe?
Speaker 2: Well, we got a few going on. We've got a
Speaker 2: hotel in can Kun, Mexico, Moon Palace. Luke Bryan the
Speaker 2: Grateful Dead have done it there where it's a kind
Speaker 2: of a three thousand limited package for three thousand people,
Speaker 2: take over the hotel special two days live performance just
Speaker 2: for those fans merchandise parties. We've got a couple ship
Speaker 2: ideas that we've been working on, Holy Ship, where you
Speaker 2: can go on to an Insomniac DC ship for three days.
Speaker 2: So you've seen some of these before where the artists
Speaker 2: take over the ship and kind of have that destination idea.
Speaker 2: So we've got three or four ship projects right now
Speaker 2: with DC Insomnia, got some Cabo Mexican, Luke Bryan, Grateful
Speaker 2: Dead Adventures, and now we've got Lallapalooza we launched today,
Speaker 2: and some of Vegas ideas that I think they'll launch
Speaker 2: this week around special Formula one concert VIP experiences, So
Speaker 2: just taking the experience VIP above and beyond what you
Speaker 2: currently can buy at a typical concert and delivering a
Speaker 2: higher end experience to the fan.
Speaker 1: You know, just staying on this. It appears most people
Speaker 1: don't know, but the most expensive tickets go first on
Speaker 1: most of these conferences. Is there any limit to what
Speaker 1: people will pay for a VIP experience?
Speaker 2: You know, I think it's all new territory. You were right,
Speaker 2: the house always sells front to back, so you've never
Speaker 2: heard me say, you know, I can't sell the front,
Speaker 2: but the back sold out. So it's always front back.
Speaker 2: And what you see a lot of artists doing today,
Speaker 2: even though they get a little bit of press from it,
Speaker 2: is charge a bit more for the front. So the
Speaker 2: real theory is you can actually charge a bit less
Speaker 2: on the back and make sure that last row does
Speaker 2: sell out. But right now, Bob, we've seen coming out
Speaker 2: of COVID price resistance is not We haven't seen it
Speaker 2: anywhere yet. As crazy as some of the secondary stuff
Speaker 2: you see online where there are two three hundred times
Speaker 2: what a face value is. Those things are selling out instantly,
Speaker 2: So we have not seen yet. I don't think the
Speaker 2: top end of what does a concert VIP platinum experience
Speaker 2: look like if you want to go see that show.
Speaker 2: I think this is new. You know, as I say
Speaker 2: to my team, we've kind of been operating like American
Speaker 2: airlines for a long time. One price not that much
Speaker 2: of a variance from top to bottom. Probably a warm
Speaker 2: beer and a cold hot dog and good luck. But
Speaker 2: the idea that a concert is a memorable experience and
Speaker 2: and fans will will pay for an upgraded experience all fans,
Speaker 2: not just this isn't just for the rich the one
Speaker 2: or two times a year you'll go to that show.
Speaker 2: Our fans want a better experience, they want a higher
Speaker 2: end experience, and they'll pay for it if we can
Speaker 2: deliver it.
Speaker 1: Okay. Needless to say, ticket Master is a hot topic
Speaker 1: in the news and Washington DC. You are literally at
Speaker 1: the epicenter, So let's kind of drill down explain for
Speaker 1: the average person how ticket fees are established.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'd say it's definitely been the year to start
Speaker 2: talking about this because it's been As you you point
Speaker 2: out on your newsletter, you kind of understand the inner work.
Speaker 2: So if you step back in the simplest context, a
Speaker 2: venue wherever you are decides who is going to be
Speaker 2: their ticketing company. Generally that venue and the irony of
Speaker 2: this idea that we have control generally that venue is
Speaker 2: a billionaire that is building a billion dollar plus arena
Speaker 2: or stadium, SOFI stadium here in LA. You name the place,
Speaker 2: the San Francisco New Arena, So you're the you're you
Speaker 2: have a sports team generally, and you call us, you
Speaker 2: call seak Geek, you call Access and say I want
Speaker 2: an RFP to be who's going to be the exclusive
Speaker 2: ticketing company for my business?
Speaker 1: Not not everybody knows what's an RFP is.
Speaker 2: They're gonna they're gonna call all of us and say,
Speaker 2: we want you to bid on the rights to be
Speaker 2: the exclusive ticketing company for our venue. And generally ninety
Speaker 2: percent of time, here are the terms you're We don't
Speaker 2: get paid on season tickets. That's a big unknown to
Speaker 2: the industry. So we do all that one hundred and
Speaker 2: twenty five million tickets that are season tickets. Uh, we don't.
Speaker 2: We don't get paid on as a ticketing company. And
Speaker 2: you get paid on the single ticket, the the one
Speaker 2: off ticket for the game or the concert, and the
Speaker 2: van You then dictates how much of the ticket fee
Speaker 2: they're going to keep and how much they'll pay you,
Speaker 2: and how how big the ticket fee will be. And
Speaker 2: that's kind of the let's let's go a little bit slower, right.
Speaker 1: They stand out the RFP request request. We are basically bidding, Yes,
Speaker 1: what would typically be in that bid and what would
Speaker 1: the varying competitors put in the bid such that then
Speaker 1: you might choose one one or the other.
Speaker 2: Well, there's a there's a fundamental technology, basic program to it.
Speaker 2: Can you do these things for my team, my venue.
Speaker 2: Maybe it's multiple teams and and every team. Uh geez,
Speaker 2: we're dealing with the Clippers right now. That's a very
Speaker 2: technical r f P because Balmer and Microsoft background is
Speaker 2: very different. Are working with Mark Cuban in in Dallas.
Speaker 2: So it usually a technical basic basis to the to
Speaker 2: the to the bid what they want to get done
Speaker 2: with that. With the ticketing company, they's got to work
Speaker 2: with this CRM company, it's got to work with their
Speaker 2: food and beverage, it's got to work with their access,
Speaker 2: it's got to work with their charity. So they kind
Speaker 2: of a long technical spec on can your ticket company
Speaker 2: deliver all of these different needs we have amongst our businesses.
Speaker 2: That's the that's probably the fifty percent of it. Then
Speaker 2: the next part is going to be how are you
Speaker 2: going to how are you going to market and sell
Speaker 2: incremental tickets for us? How are you going to help
Speaker 2: us deliver our business? And again that's going to vary, Bob,
Speaker 2: as you know, if you're the hot team that sells
Speaker 2: out in a minute, that's different. If you're the Phoenix
Speaker 2: hockey team, you're looking for the best marketing partner you
Speaker 2: can to help you sell tickets. So again it'll vary
Speaker 2: on how much the marketing and the and the marketplace
Speaker 2: you have matters to the team. And then let's call
Speaker 2: the final piece the financial. How much how low will
Speaker 2: you deliver the business for? Will you give us an
Speaker 2: advance against that a bonus? And is it three five years?
Speaker 2: They'll they'll usually dictate those kind of terms. So it's technical, marketing, marketplace,
Speaker 2: and then financial.
Speaker 1: Okay, most venues, if not all, do want an advance,
Speaker 1: isn't that correct?
Speaker 2: Yeah, most of them are going to ask for some
Speaker 2: version of an advance or a bonus based on getting
Speaker 2: the contract.
Speaker 1: Okay, And an advance would be recoupable and a bonus
Speaker 1: would not be. Yes, okay. So going back to where
Speaker 1: we were earlier, the venue is telling you how much
Speaker 1: the fee is going to be. Yes, yeah, the venue
Speaker 1: is going to define. You know, it's kind of evolved
Speaker 1: over the last five ten years. It used to be,
Speaker 1: you know, when Fred was on your call. You know,
Speaker 1: it was easy in Fred's days. They would just say,
Speaker 1: you know, add another dollar to the service fee and
Speaker 1: we'll split it fifty to fifty. Today it's kind of
Speaker 1: working backwards, where the venue says, I'll pay you three
Speaker 1: four dollars a ticket, and then we're going to keep
Speaker 1: all the upside and we're going to charge forty six
Speaker 1: thirty seven whatever the service fee is. So it's still evolving,
Speaker 1: but generally the net number is determined by the venue
Speaker 1: because the venue has a net takeaway that they want
Speaker 1: to take home from the ticketing business, whether it's a
Speaker 1: percentage or whether it's a fee. Okay, and they established
Speaker 1: it themselves and ticket Master has no negotiation with that
Speaker 1: to raise it or lower it.
Speaker 2: No, and again I'm you know, we can. We can
Speaker 2: come to the part where I am the venue Live Nation,
Speaker 2: so I can I can walk in that shoe later.
Speaker 2: But no, it is a you know, although it doesn't
Speaker 2: seem like it on Twitter at times, it's a competitive process.
Speaker 2: I mean, you have you know, we're just we just
Speaker 2: lost the stadium in Washington. The seat geek. So what
Speaker 2: they ask for someone will pay, whether it's US AEG
Speaker 2: access to stub Hub seat geek. So if they want
Speaker 2: to pay someone two dollars and fifty cents a ticket,
Speaker 2: I can go back and say no, I want four
Speaker 2: and I want the service fee to be lower, but
Speaker 2: they'll go someone else will be standing next door to
Speaker 2: me that says we'll do it for two fifty and
Speaker 2: charge thirty six bucks.
Speaker 1: So okay, if I own an arena in a major market,
Speaker 1: generally speaking, what is the advance in dollars?
Speaker 2: You know, on a it's the team part that's important
Speaker 2: that drives most of the economics. So could be a
Speaker 2: multi million dollar advance, anywhere from zero to ten million dollars,
Speaker 2: could be over for longer term contract.
Speaker 1: Okay, so they're telling you what the fee is going
Speaker 1: to be. But if someone is buying, let's focus on
Speaker 1: concert tickets, where most of the controversy is the fee
Speaker 1: is not the same for every ticket. Usually more expensive
Speaker 1: tickets have a higher fee. Can explain that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think historically it's been a percentage. If you
Speaker 2: look at Macro, the ticket percentage is somewhere in the
Speaker 2: twenty to twenty five percent on average, So you're right.
Speaker 2: If it's a ten dollars ticket, it's two fifty. If
Speaker 2: it's a two hundred dollars ticket, it's twenty percent of that.
Speaker 2: Sometimes it can scale from twenty to maybe thirty thirty
Speaker 2: percent on the top end. But it's a percentage scaling
Speaker 2: that's set out from the beginning, and it goes up
Speaker 2: as the ticket price goes up.
Speaker 1: Okay, so let's just say that you have round numbers
Speaker 1: and this would be extremely low. The fee is out
Speaker 1: of that ten dollars they are going to pay ticket
Speaker 1: Master a certain number which is negotiated in advance. Yes,
Speaker 1: and okay, so I buy a ticket.
Speaker 2: Which, by the way, because republic we say it loud,
Speaker 2: we would typically get two of that ten dollars. They
Speaker 2: would get eight, right, which is the real unknown. Right,
Speaker 2: that's where the you know you you would assume because
Speaker 2: we have to take the punch that says it's the
Speaker 2: ticket Master service fee, that we get more of it.
Speaker 2: And that's the biggest kind of unknown to date.
Speaker 1: Okay, when I buy a ticket, there are multiple fees.
Speaker 1: There is you know, the convenience fee and other fees.
Speaker 1: So typically under this paradigm where you have given it
Speaker 1: advance to an arena, what would be all the fees
Speaker 1: in the ticket as a percentage?
Speaker 2: No?
Speaker 1: No, when you have negotiated with a building. We're using
Speaker 1: the example of ten dollars, which is low, you get
Speaker 1: two dollars. Let's say but when the customer goes to
Speaker 1: buy the ticket, there are more fees than ten dollars.
Speaker 1: There are additional fees.
Speaker 2: What are those could depend You could have a facility
Speaker 2: fee which the venue would charge. That would be all
Speaker 2: of their fee. So venues have a facility fee. Credit
Speaker 2: card fee is separate. That's a small percentage that is
Speaker 2: exactly what it is. It goes to the credit card company,
Speaker 2: and it might there might be or it might be
Speaker 2: dressed in a ordering fee which covers the ordering fee,
Speaker 2: which would be the credit card fee within that that
Speaker 2: might be three four percent as an ordering fee where
Speaker 2: covers a credit card fee, and the venue and ticket
Speaker 2: master would split that on that same kind of percentage.
Speaker 2: So facility fee, ordering fee, service fee would be your
Speaker 2: three typical fees.
Speaker 1: And since the building is really at the heart of this,
Speaker 1: why would there be a facility fee in addition?
Speaker 2: I think that's just another way the venues have looked
Speaker 2: to say, how can I get some revenue per ticket?
Speaker 2: And we could. We're going to come later to whether
Speaker 2: this is just or not, but I'm so now we'll
Speaker 2: just talk to the technical part. But I think it's
Speaker 2: a revenue stream that the venues put in place years
Speaker 2: ago to gather revenue per ticket.
Speaker 1: And that is determined in advance. And is that a
Speaker 1: percentage number?
Speaker 2: Now that's the venue add on.
Speaker 1: That would be with the venue of charge, and that
Speaker 1: would be across all events sports, concerts, rodio.
Speaker 2: Generally. Yes, you know, again there's always going to be
Speaker 2: someone going to tweet exceptions to the rules to all
Speaker 2: of this, but yes, in generality, generally you would have
Speaker 2: a facility fee on all your events. If you were
Speaker 2: charging facility fees.
Speaker 1: Okay, using this ten dollars, ticket master gets two dollars.
Speaker 1: Doesn't the promoter also share in the fees?
Speaker 2: No? Now you know this is like pulling one block
Speaker 2: of jingle right, where does one? Where? Does? Where? Does
Speaker 2: one get paid? Typically the venue is paying the promoter,
Speaker 2: so you can in theory say did he pay the venue?
Speaker 2: Did he pay the promoter out of his eight dollars,
Speaker 2: or did he pay it out of his facility fee,
Speaker 2: or did he pay it out of his parking fee?
Speaker 2: But generally a venue has to incentivize the promoter to
Speaker 2: bring shows, so there would be a promoter fee at
Speaker 2: some sometimes that the venue would pay that would come
Speaker 2: out of some version of their of their fees or
Speaker 2: their revenue line, but we don't see it. And you know,
Speaker 2: when you're doing a settlement at the end of the night,
Speaker 2: the promoter doesn't have a cut of the fees. That's
Speaker 2: that goes to the venue direct, and then whatever rent
Speaker 2: and venue deal you have with the venue is separate.
Speaker 1: Okay, but the rent in the there's rent, right, But
Speaker 1: you're also saying there's another line item where essentially the
Speaker 1: building is paying you to have your concert in that building.
Speaker 2: They're called rebates. You've probably heard of them over time.
Speaker 2: You know. The way the venue would work is if
Speaker 2: you have a big arena and probably three arenas maybe
Speaker 2: in town, it's competitive. So you would come to me,
Speaker 2: you'd come to aeg, you would come to any promoter,
Speaker 2: and you would try to incentivize them and say, listen,
Speaker 2: if you could bring ten shows a year, we'll pay
Speaker 2: you five dollars a ticket. If you could bring twenty
Speaker 2: shows and thirty shows. So they're going to try to
Speaker 2: provide an incentive or rebate to bring scale and more
Speaker 2: shows to their venue if you can as an added incentive.
Speaker 1: Okay, So let's just use the concert example. Ticket Master
Speaker 1: revenue stream other than the percentage other than a couple
Speaker 1: of dollars on the then you feed, are there any
Speaker 1: other income streams for ticket Master?
Speaker 2: No, that's the complete business model is a percentage of
Speaker 2: the fees.
Speaker 1: Okay, needless to say what you have saying, these are
Speaker 1: costs that are going to be built in. The costs
Speaker 1: are never going to go away. Just for some people, understand,
Speaker 1: even though you and we have discussed this, the position
Speaker 1: of ticket Master Live Nation is you're all for an
Speaker 1: all in ticket price.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I would say that if you were a you know,
Speaker 2: whether you're a small club owner or a Live Nation
Speaker 2: you have a venue or these arenas that are spending
Speaker 2: a billion dollars on their venues. The reality is the
Speaker 2: artist has done a great job over the last ten
Speaker 2: years or taking more of the door as you know,
Speaker 2: so there's not any dollars left on the gross ticket.
Speaker 2: The ticket goes to the artist. So as that kind
Speaker 2: of has expanded. In order to pay for the venue,
Speaker 2: to pay for the staff, to pay for your costs,
Speaker 2: the service fees have become the revenue line. But you're right,
Speaker 2: if you you couldn't take the service fee away and
Speaker 2: then stay to the venue. Let's put the show on
Speaker 2: the venue would say, well, who's paying all the costs?
Speaker 2: I got to get paid, so they could crank up
Speaker 2: the rent and stay to the artist. Hey, now the
Speaker 2: rent's going to be a lot more money. And then
Speaker 2: then the artist is going to say, okay, they're not
Speaker 2: to charge higher ticket prices, so you wouldn't net it.
Speaker 2: The same result is there is I think I think
Speaker 2: Garstad at best on stage, there's one pizza to get
Speaker 2: the show done. It isn't forty eight dollars, it's seventy six.
Speaker 2: So the quicker we decide that it's a seventy six
Speaker 2: dollars experience, the better will be as an industry than
Speaker 2: what we're doing today. And you know, I use example
Speaker 2: of Amazon. When I buy that hammer at Amazon, I
Speaker 2: think it's a great deal. Now if I if they
Speaker 2: said to me the hammer's five dollars, but the Amazon
Speaker 2: service fee is four, I would think that's horrible. But
Speaker 2: you know Amazon, Apple charge thirty to fifty percent distribution fees,
Speaker 2: So call this fees the distribution fee the margin. The
Speaker 2: challenge in our industry is we have we have kept
Speaker 2: the margin the distribution cost, if you want to call it,
Speaker 2: outside of the price generally in industries, when you buy
Speaker 2: something at Walmart or Target, it's all built in the north.
Speaker 2: Stroms gets paid that the Calvin client gets paid, the
Speaker 2: distribution costs are paid, and it's ninety nine dollars to
Speaker 2: buy the jenes our business for many reasons, it's stayed outside. So, yes,
Speaker 2: we are, we as an industry think the We don't
Speaker 2: think they're junk fees. We don't think there's service fees
Speaker 2: that are just beautiful add ons to make a ton
Speaker 2: of money. We're a very low margin company, so we
Speaker 2: we we certainly are. Our numbers are public and financial
Speaker 2: show you that we're not. We're not making a ton
Speaker 2: of money on service fees other than the what you
Speaker 2: need to pay for staff costs, structure and then have
Speaker 2: a return on your capital.
Speaker 1: Okay, just to get this nailed down, your position is
Speaker 1: you would go to an all in ticket price. You're
Speaker 1: pro that position.
Speaker 2: Yes, we're we're happy pro Jam announced it today on
Speaker 2: their tour. We're we're talking to others. We would we
Speaker 2: would tomorrow go all in pricing. We need we would
Speaker 2: love the industry to do it. I mean New York
Speaker 2: went to all in pricing. We're the only person doing
Speaker 2: all in pricing right now, no one's monitoring it. You
Speaker 2: go go to New York right now and try to
Speaker 2: buy a ticket at subhub or seek geek, No one's
Speaker 2: No one's following the all in pricing mandate law that's
Speaker 2: been put in place there. Because we know, if you
Speaker 2: one guy says it's seventy six dollars and one person
Speaker 2: said it's forty two, but really seventy six, check out,
Speaker 2: you're going to win on Google every day of the
Speaker 2: week on the forty two dollars ticket. So to be
Speaker 2: to be a level playing field for everybody, you would
Speaker 2: want everyone to have to show the right price upfront.
Speaker 2: So yes, we think that. We think showing the fan
Speaker 2: the real price to go to the show upfront is
Speaker 2: better for everybody.
Speaker 1: Okay, what is impeding this process? Why can't it happen?
Speaker 2: Well, I think, you know, I think his StubHub tried
Speaker 2: it a few years ago, five years ago, six years ago,
Speaker 2: you know, and they ended up pulling out of it
Speaker 2: and inciting that their business went down fifteen to twenty percent.
Speaker 2: I think that's scared most people. You looked at that
Speaker 2: and went, geez, if I'm going to be the only
Speaker 2: solo player moving. That's a big hit. So I think
Speaker 2: the date we all have probably been scared of. Do
Speaker 2: I want to absorb any of the leakage in that
Speaker 2: mission because you're going to do it on your own.
Speaker 2: The artists aren't going to give you a break. Then
Speaker 2: no one's going to give you a break that the
Speaker 2: venue's not going to say that's too bad. Will help
Speaker 2: you out here? If you're going to go, you're going
Speaker 2: to go. I think we've been scared to date, and
Speaker 2: then obviously COVID came. We all just had to get
Speaker 2: ourselves back together and back on the horse. So I
Speaker 2: think to date it's been the fear of the unknown.
Speaker 2: Will it hurt your sales? Will the agent artists ask
Speaker 2: for more money because they now say it's all one?
Speaker 2: Is it better to keep it separate? I think the
Speaker 2: sports teams have always done it separate for different reasons too,
Speaker 2: So I think to date there's been a fear of
Speaker 2: the unknown if you went all in. I think at
Speaker 2: this point though, we have to start acting more like
Speaker 2: the leader and standing stronger and taking some of the
Speaker 2: short term pain for the longer term win.
Speaker 1: Well forgetting the resale market, which is where stub Hubbs
Speaker 1: experience was and still is. You have all these acts
Speaker 1: using round numbers, once again saying I said the price
Speaker 1: was fifty dollars, but the checkout price was eighty dollars,
Speaker 1: and that's terrible. So to what degree do the artists
Speaker 1: not want all inke at pricing.
Speaker 2: I think it's I think it's split. I mean, as
Speaker 2: you know, there's no one artist. There's you know, some
Speaker 2: want the money and and some want twenty dollars tickets.
Speaker 2: And there's a spectrum, right, there's no there's no I
Speaker 2: wish I always joke I wish I saw Adam Silver yesterday.
Speaker 2: I wish I had a I wish I was a
Speaker 2: commissioner and can mandate a few a few few things
Speaker 2: here and there. But we're dealing with fifteen hundred different
Speaker 2: managers and artists a year, and they all have different
Speaker 2: agendas and different parts of their life cycle. And and
Speaker 2: so you're right, there are going to be some artists
Speaker 2: that say, no, screw you. I'm not going to say
Speaker 2: it's an eighty dollars ticket, it's fifty. Some artists like
Speaker 2: Pear Jam, we're gonna say, I get it, let's let's
Speaker 2: let's make it fair and do what's right. So you're right,
Speaker 2: it hasn't been something to date. You know, this is
Speaker 2: an industry we talk about is Live. It's very very unorganized.
Speaker 2: As you know. The recording side is a bit more organized.
Speaker 2: They've got you know, they got lobbyists, they've got kind
Speaker 2: of organized, the Grammy's, the Riria. There's really no there's
Speaker 2: no organization and Live we always joke the only actual
Speaker 2: organization is the Ticket Broker Association. We're a really good lobbyists,
Speaker 2: but there is not even a lobbyist group for us
Speaker 2: as an industry, so we don't do well as an
Speaker 2: industry making smart moves holistically. You're right. So I think
Speaker 2: we're going to have to just move forward Live with
Speaker 2: some short term pain of some artists or others, but
Speaker 2: I think it's right for the fan and the experience overall. Now, Bob,
Speaker 2: I would say, I don't want to you know, let's
Speaker 2: go to the second part. I don't want to say
Speaker 2: that there aren't times when the service fee is too
Speaker 2: high and that doesn't have to be addressed too. This
Speaker 2: isn't just jam all the service fees in. Put it
Speaker 2: in one price so we can hide it there are
Speaker 2: as you saw with the Cure. I think we do
Speaker 2: have to look at some of our businesses on the
Speaker 2: lower end ticket prices, the clubs, theater. I do think
Speaker 2: as an industry we probably do have to absorb a
Speaker 2: bit better and think a little smarter at what is
Speaker 2: the add on fee because I think I think although
Speaker 2: it's justified, I don't think it's justified probably at every
Speaker 2: ticket price point. So we probably as an industry need
Speaker 2: to be smarter there.
Speaker 1: Okay, let's be very specific since you brought it up,
Speaker 1: what exactly happened with the cure because ten dollars were
Speaker 1: given back, which is a first, right, you.
Speaker 2: Know, it was again when you you know, the system
Speaker 2: isn't really built for artists like Robert the cure, right,
Speaker 2: We're usually do a running fast put the ticket on sale,
Speaker 2: and we kind of are proud of the ticketmaster's side.
Speaker 2: We did a ton of work with Robert making sure
Speaker 2: it was a non transferable, that it would be then
Speaker 2: face valued exchange, and we kind of got verified and
Speaker 2: doing all we could to put all the roadblocks to
Speaker 2: help him deliver his ticket price to the fan. But
Speaker 2: he's so active on Twitter, as you know, there was
Speaker 2: a screenshot of a venue which wasn't even a Live
Speaker 2: Nation venue. It was an amphitheater that we don't own
Speaker 2: that showed a the ticket service fee of the twenty
Speaker 2: on the twenty. Which it doesn't matter whether we justify
Speaker 2: that the service fee is a good idea or not.
Speaker 2: We have an industry where we got to build some
Speaker 2: credibility back. So Robert reached out to me. We talked
Speaker 2: about it. I couldn't defend that in any version of life,
Speaker 2: we were going to add a twenty dollars service fee
Speaker 2: to a twenty dollars ticket. So I made the decision
Speaker 2: that we would go in, spend some money and help
Speaker 2: on this case, give back the ten dollars, and get
Speaker 2: it to a reasonable place for those fans.
Speaker 1: Okay, let's be very specific where did the ten dollars
Speaker 1: come from? Because using the earlier paradigm on the fees,
Speaker 1: the venue takes most of the money.
Speaker 2: Right, we went to the venues and said we're going
Speaker 2: to reduce it by ten and we will eat the
Speaker 2: car if you don't want to join us well as
Speaker 2: a one time hit, we'll take the cost to make
Speaker 2: this right. And I'd say half the venue said listen,
Speaker 2: will help you out. The other other half said good luck,
Speaker 2: eat it. So it was a fast, moved, fast decision,
Speaker 2: and we thought it was worth the million dollars or
Speaker 2: so to say, let's let's let's make the right message
Speaker 2: with an artist that does care to this level.
Speaker 1: But if you leave all emotions out, is it reasonable
Speaker 1: to expect to see the Cure for twenty dollars in
Speaker 1: an arena which only holds fifteen to twenty thousand people.
Speaker 2: No, I think you're I think the you know, I
Speaker 2: think the pricing of concerts in general, I don't think
Speaker 2: we should. I think there's this fine line between yes,
Speaker 2: we want it accessible, but I think it's a great
Speaker 2: art and I think there's a price to it, and
Speaker 2: I don't think we should fool ourselves. The fans will
Speaker 2: not pay, especially the cure age fans that will not
Speaker 2: pay for the great show. But as I said, my
Speaker 2: job isn't a debate whether the artist wants to take
Speaker 2: all the money or give or or or or or
Speaker 2: Zach or Cure want to charge too little. I'm just trying.
Speaker 2: My job is just deliver that platform for them. In
Speaker 2: this case, I think I think we were we thought
Speaker 2: we'd be better off to respond and address it than
Speaker 2: leave it. Leave it as is.
Speaker 1: Okay, now Live Nation owns, clubs and smaller venues. Based
Speaker 1: on what you just said, you believe in your owned
Speaker 1: venues that you should address the fees because in some
Speaker 1: cases you think they're inappropriate and too high.
Speaker 2: Yeah, listen, I think as a I think we are.
Speaker 2: If you look at our fee structure, we're no different
Speaker 2: than AG or Independence anywhere else. Sports concerts, nine to thirty,
Speaker 2: club AG, We're all in the same ballparks. We're all
Speaker 2: charging facility fee, service fees. We all have the same
Speaker 2: economic challenge of running a venue, paying staff and as
Speaker 2: you read about inflation, staff costs up, insurance costs, So
Speaker 2: we're all in the same predicament. But I do think
Speaker 2: as the leader, we probably have to make we have
Speaker 2: to start acting and moving a little bit more on
Speaker 2: the younger developing artists club and low ticket price. So yes,
Speaker 2: I do look at my twenty dollars amphitheater tickets or
Speaker 2: a twenty dollars ticket in general, and I don't care
Speaker 2: if it's rational right now that we got to pay
Speaker 2: staff and we have costs and the service fees should
Speaker 2: be what it should be to a fan right now,
Speaker 2: We've got to build some trust back, So I think
Speaker 2: we got to go all in pricing. But I do
Speaker 2: think at Live Nation we'll look at the lower end
Speaker 2: ticket prices in the theater and clubs and say, can
Speaker 2: we also scale them back and make sure or we're
Speaker 2: a defendable fee on a service on a ticket price. Okay, well,
Speaker 2: now we might have allay other ways Bob to get
Speaker 2: revenue to pubblement that. But I think it's been too
Speaker 2: easy to add a dollar to the service fee. And
Speaker 2: I think I think at a certain point of fans
Speaker 2: says listen, I get it. I even get a twenty percent.
Speaker 2: We've done the research. I understand the service fee paid staff,
Speaker 2: and I understand it. One, don't surprise me at the end.
Speaker 2: Please tell me upfront. Two if it's more than twenty percent,
Speaker 2: I don't understand it. Where's it going doesn't seem fair.
Speaker 2: So I think we are looking at we got to
Speaker 2: do a better job of saying where it's going and
Speaker 2: how it's broken out. That would be a start. But
Speaker 2: if we go all in pricing, I do think we
Speaker 2: still also have to look at the bottom end of
Speaker 2: the lower end and make it more accessible.
Speaker 1: Okay, as I say, a lot of people listening to
Speaker 1: this are emotionally invested but don't know all of the process.
Speaker 1: So let's start with the process of how Live Nation
Speaker 1: gets a date or a tour and how the money
Speaker 1: is established, both the paybact and what the ticket prices
Speaker 1: will be.
Speaker 2: So an artist has an agent, and whether they are
Speaker 2: selling a local date to an arena or a club
Speaker 2: show in Philadelphia, or maybe the agent is trying to
Speaker 2: sell twenty or thirty dates together as a tour. That
Speaker 2: agent's going to call the promoters. Whether it's Live Nation,
Speaker 2: it's going to be aeg, it's going to be the
Speaker 2: local promoter, seth another planet. There's always a local promoter.
Speaker 2: So the agent's going to call three promoters and say,
Speaker 2: bandex wants to play October one in Chicago. Make us
Speaker 2: an offer, and they might you know, they might say
Speaker 2: here's the ticket price or not at the beginning, it'll
Speaker 2: depend on the artist. But we want to an arena
Speaker 2: or a theater on October one in San Francisco. Make
Speaker 2: us an offer. We'll come in, we'll come we'll run
Speaker 2: the math. Look at the arena. Thirteen thousand seats what
Speaker 2: did they do last time, sixty nine, thirty nine, one
Speaker 2: hundred and ten. Look at their scaling, they sold out,
Speaker 2: didn't sell out. Put that math together and say, you know,
Speaker 2: we think we think there's this business that is going
Speaker 2: to sell eighty percent of the tickets. We think it's
Speaker 2: a four hundred thousand dollars guarantee. And we'll send back
Speaker 2: that guarantee and say four hundred thousand dollars against a
Speaker 2: thirty fifty and one hundred and ten dollars scaling agent
Speaker 2: will take all three of those. Generally come back to
Speaker 2: all three of us and say we want four fifty.
Speaker 2: Highest bid is four fifty, And now the ticket prices
Speaker 2: gets rescaled based on the guarantee. So now your ticket
Speaker 2: price will go to one twenty and seventy nine and
Speaker 2: sixty nine. So you can look to scale and gross
Speaker 2: that number at the door.
Speaker 1: So in your original bit, your original offer, you do
Speaker 1: put in ticket price points.
Speaker 2: As I said, it's it's it's both ways. Sometimes the
Speaker 2: artist is clear on what. The agent will say, you know,
Speaker 2: here's what we here's the maximum he'll charge. Here's the
Speaker 2: ticket prices he'll charge it. Usually only the top end
Speaker 2: they worry about. So they'll probably say, listen, historically he's
Speaker 2: never gone above one twenty for a P one, so
Speaker 2: come back with the scaling. There's some version of a
Speaker 2: of a top end established by the artist, so we'll
Speaker 2: come back with that scaling in it. Typically that scaleing
Speaker 2: will spit out a number less than they want, and
Speaker 2: we'll all probably sharpen our pencils, the eight promoters and
Speaker 2: come back and say, listen, if you go to one forty,
Speaker 2: we can pay you a four to fifty a night.
Speaker 2: And that tends to be how it gets defined. So
Speaker 2: the guarantee drives the ticket scaling. It's just math. Just back,
Speaker 2: you're just dividing thirteen thousand seats by the guarantee and
Speaker 2: then debating how many are each in each level.
Speaker 1: Well, let's be very clear, at the end of the day,
Speaker 1: the act, through his agent, establishes the price of the ticket.
Speaker 2: Yes, why the cure decided he would have a low price, right,
Speaker 2: he would have. We wouldn't have we wouldn't have put
Speaker 2: an offer in those low prices. That wouldn't have been
Speaker 2: historically what you do that would have came back and said,
Speaker 2: I want to charge twenty dollars and I'll live with
Speaker 2: a lower gross and a lower walk out, or other
Speaker 2: artists will say, agents will say I want I want
Speaker 2: a million dollar guarantee. Come back with the math.
Speaker 1: Okay, so let's just assume, based on your example, you're
Speaker 1: paying the act four hundred thousand dollars. Now, just for
Speaker 1: the newbies, there is a potential back end, an additional payment.
Speaker 1: Explain that.
Speaker 2: Again. I'm going to use generalities, but typically you're going
Speaker 2: to pay an artist a guarantee versus a ninety ten.
Speaker 2: Maybe it's a ninety five to five. So if you
Speaker 2: sell out whatever tickets you sell that night, you're going
Speaker 2: to get your total gross. And if you grossed five
Speaker 2: hundred and ten thousand dollars after at the top end,
Speaker 2: you're going to take expenses out rent local, local ushers,
Speaker 2: local security, local venue costs, and then you might end
Speaker 2: up at four hundred thousand dollars net after venue costs.
Speaker 2: If you guarantee them four fifty, you write to check
Speaker 2: for four fifty, regardless if after costs it's five hundred,
Speaker 2: they're going to get ninety percent of that five hundred
Speaker 2: versus their guarantee of four fifty, So they're going to
Speaker 2: get four seventy five and you'll make your your ten percent.
Speaker 2: So at minimum they got a floor. Their job is
Speaker 2: then to push us to keep expenses down, sell as
Speaker 2: many tickets as we can, and try to get that
Speaker 2: artist to what they call percentages.
Speaker 1: Okay, overall, what is Live Nations profit percentage? And where
Speaker 1: do you actually make the money since the acts get
Speaker 1: most of the ticket revenue.
Speaker 2: Well, listen at the core. This is a scale business, right,
Speaker 2: you know, I had to build this over the last
Speaker 2: fifteen years because you don't get rich on any one show.
Speaker 2: It's the service global business. We're going to do forty
Speaker 2: thousand shows in one hundred cities and forty countries. So
Speaker 2: I remember an analyst wayback said it's the river and nickels, right,
Speaker 2: So you have to build a business that has a
Speaker 2: lot of ongoing nickels of revenue streams around that flywheel
Speaker 2: called the show. So you know, if you kind of
Speaker 2: look at our model, we're going to do forty thousand shows,
Speaker 2: We'll spend about ten billion dollars on guarantees or those
Speaker 2: walkouts at midnight. We'll make a bit. We'll make a
Speaker 2: small percentage on that so called door where we're going
Speaker 2: to make our money now is okay, we have one
Speaker 2: hundred million people walked into the door, so we're going
Speaker 2: to one We have one hundred and thirty one hundred
Speaker 2: and fifty of our own venues, amphitheaters, clubs, theaters, three
Speaker 2: hundred festivals, so in those places will be the venue
Speaker 2: we're going to make the food and beverage, the parking,
Speaker 2: the service fees, and the sponsorship. So you're kind of
Speaker 2: vertical on the non live nation shows. We're going to
Speaker 2: make money on those rebates as we talk about bring
Speaker 2: our content to the arena, bring them forty to fifty
Speaker 2: shows and get paid a rebate. And then third is
Speaker 2: we're going to spoil our global sponsorship business just in
Speaker 2: general delivering global sponsorships to our shows, our festivals, our venues,
Speaker 2: our access, image programs, pre sale programs, all of those
Speaker 2: ways that we can deliver sponsorships to big brands. And
Speaker 2: then Ticketmaster service fees those twenty percent that they're going
Speaker 2: to make on that side. So those are the main
Speaker 2: buckets that you're going to put together that deliver your
Speaker 2: profitability above your on your forty thousand shows.
Speaker 1: And at the end of the day, what's the margin
Speaker 1: we're at.
Speaker 2: You know, we're a combined basis. We're a ten eleven
Speaker 2: percent margin business. Concert business is a low margin two
Speaker 2: two percent margin, could be four. Sponsorship is a high
Speaker 2: margin business. And ticketings it's thirty five percent business. But
Speaker 2: you're netting out to a ten eleven percent margin business overall.
Speaker 1: And compared to other companies. Apple strives for thirty percent margin.
Speaker 2: Yeah, if you're a tech company, you're going to be
Speaker 2: in your thirty forty plus percent margins. You would You
Speaker 2: wouldn't find a monopoly in history that had a ten
Speaker 2: eleven percent margin, if you want to kind of use
Speaker 2: that analogy. Typically, monopoly means you've exerted, you have enough
Speaker 2: power and pricing power, et cetera. You probably have a
Speaker 2: very high margin return. So you're right, it is a
Speaker 2: low margin business. At the core. You have to have
Speaker 2: global scale like we built ultimately deliver a consistent, global
Speaker 2: good business. But it's a it's a hand to hand combat.
Speaker 1: How much of the income is from sponsorship.
Speaker 2: You know what is ballpark? Were about forty percent sponsorship.
Speaker 2: It's a big business for us in our festivals.
Speaker 1: Okay, let's talk superstar acts and I'm gonna speak English.
Speaker 1: Here there are a number of superstar acts, some of
Speaker 1: them who used to be with AEG eight. But Live
Speaker 1: Nation pays more, and sometimes the act goes with Live
Speaker 1: Most of the time the act goes with Live Nation.
Speaker 1: How can Live Nation pay more?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't. I don't go the pay more route.
Speaker 2: I wouldn't say that's fair fair all the time as
Speaker 2: I went to that earlier bidding process. When there's a
Speaker 2: big global tour that AG and Live Nation are bidding on,
Speaker 2: I can't remember the last latest one. We're both we're
Speaker 2: both neck to neck. I mean, there's never a version
Speaker 2: that a G they're calling me saying, oh god, you
Speaker 2: so overpaid. It's yours. I mean, god, we're just we're
Speaker 2: just too good as a company as is a G.
Speaker 2: Nor are they overpaid. I mean, you're literally going to
Speaker 2: win by a dollar either way. You're you you at
Speaker 2: that point though, you're you're selling your global business, you're
Speaker 2: selling your relationships, you're selling your marketing, you're you know,
Speaker 2: so you're you're you're selling a bundle. But I wouldn't
Speaker 2: tell you that we There would be no version that
Speaker 2: we are waking up and stealing a tour from them
Speaker 2: or winning a tour from them because we dramatically overpaid.
Speaker 2: It's an inside baseball negotiating.
Speaker 1: Wait wait, wait, wait, there's a lot of dollars involved here,
Speaker 1: and I certainly know specific cases. At the end of
Speaker 1: the day, Live Nation paid more than AG was willing
Speaker 1: to pay, and the act went with Live Nation, let
Speaker 1: me let me, let let me go to a different spot.
Speaker 2: And while addressed, well, just I joke with my team,
Speaker 2: right when we lose a tour, Age overpaid when we
Speaker 2: went a tour for geniuses, right, So I deal with
Speaker 2: this every day when when when we losed AG, my
Speaker 2: promoter will come to me go, oh my god, they
Speaker 2: so overpaid. They didn't you know. That's that's that's what
Speaker 2: competitively wise, that's typically what you do is the only
Speaker 2: way you must have lost is the other guy must
Speaker 2: have dramatically overpaid. Most of us are every negotiation with
Speaker 2: that agent, it's inside baseball. That agent is calling you
Speaker 2: saying Age's at forty one million and you're at thirty
Speaker 2: nine eight These calling Age saying they're at thirty nine Like,
Speaker 2: it's not like we're at fifty and they're at forty two.
Speaker 2: There's there's no version of that we're all it's none
Speaker 2: of us and Nora's age. When they beat me, it's
Speaker 2: not because they dramatically overpaid. You know, they won the
Speaker 2: Luke Combs tour. They's got a good relationship with Capian
Speaker 2: won that in the US, and and and and and
Speaker 2: you know, there's kind of a combination of relationship meets
Speaker 2: money meets you know, their package. But so I just
Speaker 2: say that because I definitely don't believe that when we
Speaker 2: win it's because we overpaid. We typically win because we
Speaker 2: have a global business different than theirs. We have been
Speaker 2: able to generally make artists more money overall, which really
Speaker 2: matters not what you pay them. What the artist cares
Speaker 2: about is what's the walkout in the end. And we
Speaker 2: were the author of platinum and Dynamic Pricing and and
Speaker 2: and VIP. So I do believe we've been able to
Speaker 2: help deliver for the artists, but wouldn't say we overpay
Speaker 2: to win. I think we both win on price, but
Speaker 2: but there's always a package around it.
Speaker 1: Okay, let's talk specifically about Ticketmaster. Ticket Master is also
Speaker 1: a secondary platform, okay, meaning the ticket's already been sold,
Speaker 1: it can be resold on ticket Master. Let's start first,
Speaker 1: the fact that the ticket cannot be resold at less
Speaker 1: than in the original price. Is that a Ticketmaster policy
Speaker 1: or is that an act policy?
Speaker 2: That's Ticketmaster. So when I took over Ticketmaster, our biggest
Speaker 2: challenge of Ticketmaster and the reason it was to declining
Speaker 2: five years in a row, Well, stubbub was kicking its
Speaker 2: ass at ten o'clock. When you went to ticket Master
Speaker 2: to buy that Tour of the Day ten years ago,
Speaker 2: we said no tickets available, literally, and I followed it
Speaker 2: one day and for the next six months, like eighty
Speaker 2: six million people came to the page which we basically said,
Speaker 2: go to stubhubb. So our sports clients then also our team,
Speaker 2: team owners, NBA, NHL adopted exchanges and secondary fully at
Speaker 2: that point. So number one reality was we need to
Speaker 2: be able to say we need to open our platform
Speaker 2: and let secondary dots live. We can't keep telling customers
Speaker 2: we have no tickets at ten am. Well Secondary is
Speaker 2: alive and well down the street.
Speaker 1: But one of the.
Speaker 2: Realities was what were we going to do that we
Speaker 2: believe for the team and the artist would still be
Speaker 2: something that is right for their business. Things we don't
Speaker 2: do which hurt us overall market share is we don't
Speaker 2: do spec selling and we don't underprice face. That probably
Speaker 2: means at any given time we have fifty percent less
Speaker 2: inventory than sea geek and stub Hub because, as you see,
Speaker 2: a lot of this game that go on now is
Speaker 2: spec selling where they don't have the seats, they don't
Speaker 2: really have the ticket. They're masterful, they're very good marketers.
Speaker 2: They'll put three seats together at eight hundred dollars and
Speaker 2: two seats at two thousand, but they don't have any
Speaker 2: of those. But if you buy the eight hundred because
Speaker 2: it seems cheaper than the two, they'll email you and
Speaker 2: they'll find seats a row difference and you'll buy them. Anyways,
Speaker 2: So we don't do spec selling, and we decided that
Speaker 2: we would always say we don't ever think content should
Speaker 2: be underpriced from whatever the artist or team said it at.
Speaker 2: So that's been our philosophy and we've stayed true to
Speaker 2: that so far.
Speaker 1: Okay, what is the payment to ticket Master when a
Speaker 1: ticket is re sold on its platform.
Speaker 2: It's the same. So the secondary has to be approved
Speaker 2: by the venue because the venue, again when they select
Speaker 2: a ticketing company, they mandate what the secondary is or
Speaker 2: isn't so it's the same split basically the secondary. I
Speaker 2: can't turn on the secondary and that venue without the
Speaker 2: venue approving it. And the third thing that we do
Speaker 2: that scalpers I guess don't do is we get approval
Speaker 2: from the artist. So again, a lot of times if
Speaker 2: the artist says I don't want TM to turn on secondary,
Speaker 2: we don't, even though Seekeek and others will, well, you know,
Speaker 2: we'll fill up Taylor Swift for example, we didn't turn
Speaker 2: on DM plus and Seekeek and others made a fortune.
Speaker 2: But but the ultimate is the reality is the venue
Speaker 2: controls the ticket secondary and turning on and turning off
Speaker 2: for their teams.
Speaker 1: Uh So on a concert, if the on a secondary
Speaker 1: is the split similar to the.
Speaker 2: Primary, similar prime? Yeah, they're all the similar.
Speaker 1: And then to what degree does the fee change based
Speaker 1: on the price of the ticket?
Speaker 2: I would assume it has the same up scales up
Speaker 2: as the ticket goes up twenty, twenty five, thirty, whatever
Speaker 2: the actual.
Speaker 1: St Okay, So Nicholas to say, on the secondary, the
Speaker 1: venue is making the majority of the money's supposed a
Speaker 1: ticket master, but.
Speaker 2: Just the fees, not the yes, just for the unknown
Speaker 2: there for the people out there it's not. The face
Speaker 2: is the third party person making the real money. The
Speaker 2: fee is then just split between the venue and TM.
Speaker 1: Okay, there are many events the ticket master is the
Speaker 1: ticketing company, but Live Nation is not the promoter. Yes, correct, Yes,
Speaker 1: So if I am a promoter and Ticketmaster is the
Speaker 1: platform I'm using for the gig, I would say, hey,
Speaker 1: if their secondary market, why can't I share in that
Speaker 1: income because Live Nation is sharing in the upscale upsell
Speaker 1: on Live Nation shows, but they're also making money on
Speaker 1: my show.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but you, as the promoter can say I don't
Speaker 2: want to turn it on. So typically AG won't turn
Speaker 2: it on. They'll say it's my show and we don't
Speaker 2: want to turn on secondary in that venue. So the
Speaker 2: promoter has the right with his show in that venue
Speaker 2: to determine if if if TM does get turned on
Speaker 2: for the platform and well and the promoter. You know,
Speaker 2: remember the promoter is always going to go to the
Speaker 2: venue and say, in general, I want to get paid
Speaker 2: my rebate. So you know, his motive is always going
Speaker 2: to be whether however much money the venue makes. Your
Speaker 2: job is the promoter is to figure out how to
Speaker 2: increase your rebates.
Speaker 1: So theoretically, if you know it's an in demand show.
Speaker 1: The promoter would be aware of this and say I
Speaker 1: want to payment that in essence would be percentage of
Speaker 1: your fees that you're making on the resale.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I just want to make clear we don't get
Speaker 2: that misstated. The promoter in general isn't specifically saying give
Speaker 2: me The artist or the promoter aren't specifically saying give
Speaker 2: me some of that eight dollars or two dollars. That
Speaker 2: conversation doesn't happen. The venue has already got a relationship
Speaker 2: with the venue or the promoter, and the promoter is
Speaker 2: getting his five, eight, nine dollars rebate as a business overall.
Speaker 2: So if you are the venue and you want to
Speaker 2: turn it on, the promoter isn't going to worry about
Speaker 2: that one revenue stream that night. You're playing for the
Speaker 2: full year, and there are some days where the show
Speaker 2: loses money and the venues are great partners and help
Speaker 2: you out on the rent or help you out on
Speaker 2: you know, it's the bad shows. You want to save
Speaker 2: the good days for the venue, not the days they
Speaker 2: can make some money.
Speaker 1: Okay, let's talk about ticket prices. You know there have
Speaker 1: been some amplified examples like Springsteen. Okay, you mentioned Pearl Jam.
Speaker 1: It's a non transferable ticket. They're establishing the price. That's
Speaker 1: what it costs. But there are other acts. Let's use
Speaker 1: Springsteen who went over one hundred dollars, and people say,
Speaker 1: I am a die hard fan, i am entitled to
Speaker 1: be in the building. I'm entitled to get a good
Speaker 1: seat at a low price. These are the same. No,
Speaker 1: these are boomers mostly going to a Springstein show. If
Speaker 1: they go to dinner, it's one hundred dollars a person. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but for somehow to go to see Springsteen, one hundred
Speaker 1: dollars is too much. What's the reality of pricing and
Speaker 1: is it different for younger acts? And is it really
Speaker 1: we should just charge what the ticket is worth.
Speaker 2: It's a it's a really interesting complex problem, right. You
Speaker 2: have this fandom, as you know, that fan is so
Speaker 2: emotionally connected to that artist. They've listened a thousand times
Speaker 2: and they really believe they have rights. It's very different
Speaker 2: than sports, which is a badge of honor to say
Speaker 2: this court side's cost sixteen thousand dollars. You know, I
Speaker 2: was talking. I was talking little bron James the night
Speaker 2: he broke the record and ticket on points and I said,
Speaker 2: you know, lebron tonight to sit courtside Laker games ten
Speaker 2: to twenty thousand dollars, but they're mad. Beyonce's charge in
Speaker 2: eight hundred for one tour every five years. But it's
Speaker 2: a you know, the super Bowl. The sports business is
Speaker 2: kind of embraced. It's expensive and for some reason that
Speaker 2: Diehart fan doesn't get on Twitter and say that team
Speaker 2: owner is an asshole because I can't see the Lakers
Speaker 2: for sixty six dollars. So you're right, the fan is
Speaker 2: very mostly connected. They've got great outlets now on Twitter
Speaker 2: and other ways. They really believe that they have the
Speaker 2: right to see that artist. But the reality, as you said, Bob,
Speaker 2: then in this scarcity world of birkin bags and lbmhs
Speaker 2: that you wrote about last week, the live experience is
Speaker 2: a absolutely special moment in time. That front row is
Speaker 2: a birkin bag and more. It's a an exceptional product.
Speaker 2: And you're right, I do think the quicker the artists
Speaker 2: figure out that we got to charge closer to market
Speaker 2: for some of the seats. You know, Springsteen was a
Speaker 2: great example. It was only one percent of the seats
Speaker 2: were over one thousand dollars. All we did was transfer.
Speaker 2: Last tour, the tickets went right to the scalper and
Speaker 2: resold to the fan for two thousand dollars. So this
Speaker 2: time we just took those same tickets and said, Bruce,
Speaker 2: you should actually get the money, but let's make sure
Speaker 2: we keep the rest of the house cheap. But the
Speaker 2: stories don't get that headline. You know, ninety eight percent
Speaker 2: of my shows don't sell out. Most shows are very affordable,
Speaker 2: but you're going to have some burking bags in the
Speaker 2: Beyonces and the Drakes and the bad Bunnies and these
Speaker 2: these artists and the front rows are scarce business commodities.
Speaker 2: And I do think that, well the secondary exists free
Speaker 2: and free and clear in America, that you do have
Speaker 2: to start saying, then, if the fan is buying it
Speaker 2: from stub hub, they are fans, why wouldn't the artists
Speaker 2: participate in that art and have more of it? So
Speaker 2: I do think I think that they have to slowly
Speaker 2: start charging closer to market at the front end. Now
Speaker 2: you know, you know, we launched a fare ticket act,
Speaker 2: and I'm sure you'll mention all that, you know. I
Speaker 2: do believe that the reality is the Digital ticket is
Speaker 2: a great tool that could help us out in this mess.
Speaker 2: I mean, the mess we have right now is that
Speaker 2: creates the Twitter storms, is that fan comes at ten
Speaker 2: am and they're pissed off because at ten oh one
Speaker 2: it's sold out and there's ten pages of scalpers selling
Speaker 2: tickets for three hundred times face and I get the
Speaker 2: d ms and the hate mail and the and the
Speaker 2: death threats that say, you know you asked whole you
Speaker 2: must have given all those tickets to the scalper at
Speaker 2: ten o'clock. It's not fair. That's the drama that we created,
Speaker 2: right and we do our best with verified fan and
Speaker 2: speed bumps and it's but it's a it's an arms
Speaker 2: race because it's five billion dollars in secondary of vail
Speaker 2: to make a very very very high margin business. So
Speaker 2: while we're letting that run wild, then you either have
Speaker 2: to control it or you have to price to it.
Speaker 2: But I think if we let it run wild like
Speaker 2: we are today and then it's silly of us then
Speaker 2: not to let the artists participate in some of that
Speaker 2: and price it better. Or we got to control it,
Speaker 2: and we could with digital ticketing. We could tomorrow just
Speaker 2: say there's a cap on it, or there's some rules
Speaker 2: around it. A lot of countries in the world have
Speaker 2: figured out this is probably not a great idea to
Speaker 2: run wild and have fans have to pay these prices.
Speaker 2: So I do think that it should be some control
Speaker 2: put in place, so we could put some limits on it.
Speaker 2: I don't have a lot of faith that we can
Speaker 2: get much done in the government probably right now, or monitored,
Speaker 2: or actually execute it properly. So I think you do
Speaker 2: then have to say, probably have to price closer to
Speaker 2: market for some of those front rows and some of
Speaker 2: those seats. So the artist who's already paying that anyways,
Speaker 2: they're paying it today. It's not that it gets not
Speaker 2: being paid, it's just not being monetized by the artist.
Speaker 1: Would you say people complaining about excessive ticket prices is
Speaker 1: more of a boomer gen X phenomenon as opposed to
Speaker 1: younger acts.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's this. It's an interesting you know, to see
Speaker 2: that which ones do flare up? As you're right. I
Speaker 2: sat at the Bad Bunny Stadium show here in La
Speaker 2: credible show, credible performer with the third highest grossing stadium
Speaker 2: in history. He broke most records, and I said, I
Speaker 2: said to his manager, credible. The fans are, they're dancing,
Speaker 2: they're having their blast, they dressed up. This is a
Speaker 2: party tonight. And the tickets were you know, price well,
Speaker 2: but there was no social about it. But but definitely
Speaker 2: the the Springsteen fans seem to get really upset, even
Speaker 2: though it was probably much older and richer. So it
Speaker 2: did seem a bit ironic that week.
Speaker 1: The other thing that people don't realize is the very
Speaker 1: expensive tickets are not only going to the rich. The
Speaker 1: hardcore fan will pay that price, even if I hear
Speaker 1: from them all the time, even I'm stubum, and they're
Speaker 1: very happy about being that close.
Speaker 2: I so agree with you, Bob. I said this to
Speaker 2: an artist last week who went on this low ticket price,
Speaker 2: and I just like you, just you know, you're missing it.
Speaker 2: I came from no money and I remember going to
Speaker 2: my Robert Plant tour in uh In, Toronto from Thunder
Speaker 2: Bay on a bus and yes, I saved my money
Speaker 2: and I worked hard and it was all my money
Speaker 2: for that month or whatever it was. But that was
Speaker 2: a great experience. And you know, I get these emails
Speaker 2: now from someone that says, oh my god, I had
Speaker 2: to work two jobs to get to the Bad Bunny Show.
Speaker 2: And yeah, you know most most people look at concerts
Speaker 2: as a really special moment in their kodact life. It's
Speaker 2: it's magic moment maybe twice a year. Way cheaper than
Speaker 2: Disneyland or the super Bowl, or the NFL or the
Speaker 2: NBA playoffs or or an expensive night out. So it's
Speaker 2: really cheap overall considering. And you're right, this is not
Speaker 2: that the that the this just the rich people. This
Speaker 2: is a great, great product that people will buy as
Speaker 2: they're going to buy the Gucci bag. They're going to
Speaker 2: buy moments in life where they will step up and
Speaker 2: spoil themselves at the big screen TV or whatever it
Speaker 2: may be. But you're right, this is a business where
Speaker 2: we can charge a bit more. I'm not saying excessively,
Speaker 2: but it's it's a great two hour performance of a
Speaker 2: lifetime that happens once every three four years in that market.
Speaker 2: You don't have to underprice yourself. Low low to middle
Speaker 2: income we'll we'll, we'll, we'll make their way to that
Speaker 2: arena for that special night.
Speaker 1: About twenty years ago, the concept of platinum started. You
Speaker 1: got a seat very close to the stage, you might
Speaker 1: get to eat meat, a member of the band, you
Speaker 1: might get to hear a sound check, whatever. We learned
Speaker 1: that the extras weren't what we're selling the tickets. People
Speaker 1: just wanted the good seats. But when it came to Springsteen,
Speaker 1: the term platinum was used for tickets that were not
Speaker 1: right up front, and in addition, those were dynamically priced.
Speaker 1: How did we get there?
Speaker 2: Yeah, you're right, the platinum, the VIP tickets, no different
Speaker 2: ways where there were higher ticket prices outside of thep ones,
Speaker 2: And you're right, they all got bought, regardless of whether
Speaker 2: it was a cocktail, shrimp and a laminate. It was
Speaker 2: just the good seats and they bought them. So recently,
Speaker 2: over the last five years a those sound checks and
Speaker 2: meet and greets and VIPs, especially through COVID, before and
Speaker 2: after it started to wean out, they were the cost
Speaker 2: to execute. They weren't that special anymore, and the business
Speaker 2: converted to more of a platinum ticket. Let's just charge
Speaker 2: for those good seats. Let's put some seats into an
Speaker 2: allocation where they're more than the pre ones and we
Speaker 2: can price them better. Started five eight years ago, band
Speaker 2: started to embrace this idea that there was an idea
Speaker 2: and again, artists are always just looking at the other
Speaker 2: side of the equation. As everyday secondary got more sunlight
Speaker 2: and went from the streets to the internet, and you
Speaker 2: could start seeing what they were paying the obviously the artist,
Speaker 2: the manager of the agent, promoter. We all looked at
Speaker 2: that and went, geez, look what's happening over here. How
Speaker 2: are we going to get the artists to charge closer
Speaker 2: to market on some of the good seats. So that
Speaker 2: that's when Platinum launched. It's done really well. Dynamics started
Speaker 2: same thing eight nine years ago when you started just
Speaker 2: we started with price Master, where you started to say,
Speaker 2: there's different you know, this scaling shouldn't be the same
Speaker 2: most dynamic products, hotels, airlines aren't sergeant the same on
Speaker 2: the last day, in the first day of the middle seat.
Speaker 2: So we started price Master years ago to say to
Speaker 2: the artist, you know, a Friday night in New York
Speaker 2: should not be the same ticket price as a Tuesday
Speaker 2: in Cleveland. The aisle seat's worth more than the middle
Speaker 2: You can monetize the house smarter, you can sell it out,
Speaker 2: set charge less for the back seats more for the front.
Speaker 2: Said it as three scalings, which was always kind of
Speaker 2: the thirty years of doing three scalings and same markets
Speaker 2: all the time. So dynamic price Master had been used
Speaker 2: for the last probably eight years. And I think coming
Speaker 2: out of COVID dynamic platinum adding more increasing the allocation,
Speaker 2: the dry got a little sexy, and more and more
Speaker 2: artists started putting and promoters we started putting more in
Speaker 2: the platinum allocation to increase the gross and I think we're, uh,
Speaker 2: you know, I think we're learning now. H We've we've
Speaker 2: got to watch. If the definition of platinum is going
Speaker 2: to be platinum, we better make sure it's a platinum seat.
Speaker 2: And if we're gonna dynamic, we better put better rules
Speaker 2: in place on when we change ticket pricing, not not
Speaker 2: not in the price sale not or not in the
Speaker 2: on sale. So we're I think we're I think we're
Speaker 2: as an industry or learning how to price dynamic tickets
Speaker 2: to demand. And that's kind of what's been going on today.
Speaker 2: I think we're slowly putting better rules in place to
Speaker 2: figure out how to do it smartly.
Speaker 1: Let's use Springsteen as an example. Demand was heavy and
Speaker 1: tickets in the platinum area spike to momultiple four figures.
Speaker 1: Anybody experienced in the business knows. No one's buying those
Speaker 1: tickets at those excessive prices. They're waiting for them to
Speaker 1: come down. What happened there was that purely a program,
Speaker 1: an algorithm. Was that something Spreedsteam was aware of in
Speaker 1: advance how expensive the ticket should be. Is this something
Speaker 1: that needs to be done by hand? Was it done
Speaker 1: by hand? Yeah?
Speaker 2: Again, artists are you know, as you and I talked
Speaker 2: about there, there's nothing done in price in that a agent,
Speaker 2: artist manager aren't agreeing too. There's no no promoter gets
Speaker 2: to just run the clock. It's all part of your plan. Listen.
Speaker 2: I think we're as an industry, we're still learning what
Speaker 2: it means to dynamic and platinum. And you're right, there
Speaker 2: are a few tours where you put a few tickets
Speaker 2: in this twenty five hundred up to five thousand dollars
Speaker 2: limit and said, let's put some platinums at that price.
Speaker 2: Reality is ten of those sell. It's not a smart
Speaker 2: strategy because the headline's so bad, but the volume is
Speaker 2: not there. I think that's a lesson quickly learned. I
Speaker 2: don't think you're seeing a lot of platinum now. That's
Speaker 2: probably more than a thousand seems to be the quick
Speaker 2: learning curve. I know we did it in Vegas and others,
Speaker 2: So I think the imperfect science of how do we
Speaker 2: manage the secondary business that's going to boom instantly at
Speaker 2: ten o'clock, how do we get some of that captured
Speaker 2: on this side of the ledger. The pricing isn't perfect
Speaker 2: right now, and it is manually done, not complete algorithms.
Speaker 2: You're looking at algorithms to figure out the pricing of
Speaker 2: secondary and demand to come up with a range. But
Speaker 2: I think we're quickly learning on platinum. Any major tour,
Speaker 2: whether you can really sell a thirty three hundred dollars
Speaker 2: ticket or a twenty seven isn't worth the small upside
Speaker 2: You probably should just put some good platinum somewhere in
Speaker 2: the five to one thousand dollars range seems to be
Speaker 2: the sweet spot right now where you can sell a
Speaker 2: decent scale of those in the good seats and the
Speaker 2: good sections and be happy with that uplift that didn't
Speaker 2: go to the secondary.
Speaker 1: Okay, conventional wisdom is that ticket Master is a monopoly.
Speaker 1: You hear this from elected officials, you hear this from
Speaker 1: ticket buyers. What is your response to that.
Speaker 2: You know, it's a it's a business that when we
Speaker 2: merged ten years ago, the DOJ in there. I think
Speaker 2: IRV and I spent eighteen months going through that process
Speaker 2: of the DJ digging in deep. So and when the
Speaker 2: DOJ digs in deep, I mean there's ten thousand emails later.
Speaker 2: So they did that when we merged and let the
Speaker 2: let the let the acquisition go through. They let the
Speaker 2: merger happen. So that that's step one that says they
Speaker 2: didn't believe it was a monopoly. You know, it couldn't
Speaker 2: find facts that said Ticketmaster was a monopoly, or they
Speaker 2: wouldn't approved it. We agreed to a dissent degree for
Speaker 2: ten years that said we will absolutely then if there
Speaker 2: is concern, we won't leverage. We won't punish any venue
Speaker 2: that doesn't use Ticketmaster. And that went on for ten years.
Speaker 2: I think it was the ninth year. DJ opened up
Speaker 2: the case again four or five years ago now said
Speaker 2: we have a couple of cases where we think you
Speaker 2: threaten threaten the venue and front of the venue means
Speaker 2: you know, a random promoter. And of my nine said
Speaker 2: you should renew a Ticketmaster. You're not going to get
Speaker 2: a show. I mean, this isn't like you know of
Speaker 2: thousands and thousands of shows, and nine years later, this
Speaker 2: isn't as we always said, this isn't an ongoing structural
Speaker 2: reality doesn't happen. And by the way, those venues when
Speaker 2: you looked at him, they didn't actually get reduced. Show
Speaker 2: camp facts didn't support that, so there was no real
Speaker 2: actual venue that got punished. We just decided at that
Speaker 2: point that we would extend the decree for five years,
Speaker 2: as you always do, to make sure you just kind
Speaker 2: of simplify this case and move on. But they spent
Speaker 2: a year deposing me and going through it again. That
Speaker 2: was the three or four years ago. So again I
Speaker 2: would say to you, if we were the monopoly a
Speaker 2: year after the DOJ probing, you trust me, if there
Speaker 2: was real structural legal data that said Live Live Nation,
Speaker 2: Ticketmaster together, single or momopoly, they would have sued us,
Speaker 2: done something, gave us a five year extension, and moved on.
Speaker 2: So you know, it's not like we haven't been already
Speaker 2: investigated deep and haven't seen every email I've ever written
Speaker 2: and everyone else's and all of our promoters and ticket Master,
Speaker 2: they've been down the deep dive many times. So I
Speaker 2: say that in the sense of, you know, that's kind
Speaker 2: of a clean bill of health to date. Now I
Speaker 2: understand why it's easy to jump on the wagon. The
Speaker 2: ticket master and the service fees and what you and
Speaker 2: I've been talking about. We haven't done a good job
Speaker 2: as an industry, especially on my front as Live Nation Ticketmaster,
Speaker 2: explaining out loud what happens to fees, how they're set,
Speaker 2: what happens. It hasn't been a It hasn't been a
Speaker 2: big motive historically for me to kind of go out
Speaker 2: loud and say, hey, the venue, my client has taken
Speaker 2: most of the money, or the artist is setting the
Speaker 2: ticket price. I'm a B to B business. I serviced
Speaker 2: the artists and venue and Ticketmaster's job is to been
Speaker 2: to take that punch in the head for the industry.
Speaker 2: That's been part of what people do why they hire you.
Speaker 2: There's no glory in being the ticketing company who no
Speaker 2: matter who you are, Sea Geek, Access, anyone, they all
Speaker 2: have the same challenges when there's ten million fans that
Speaker 2: want a million tickets and then secondary So I understand
Speaker 2: why the flurry of energy can be spent on it
Speaker 2: because it looks big and it looks like there's service
Speaker 2: ticket master fees and challenges, but we don't think there's
Speaker 2: any basis to a legal challenge that says in any
Speaker 2: way we're monopoly. Our margins prove that our daily battles
Speaker 2: to win that venue or lose that venue or win
Speaker 2: that tour are live and well that's well documented. There's
Speaker 2: nothing wrong with being big, nothing wrong with being great,
Speaker 2: nothing wrong with offering a great product and being better
Speaker 2: than the other guy and winning. We don't set ticket prices.
Speaker 2: We're not harming fans. Artists have all the options in
Speaker 2: the world. Do you know that as well as I do.
Speaker 2: There's only one aerosmith that has one hundred dates of
Speaker 2: a and a thousand venues that want those dates and
Speaker 2: every promoter and partner that wants it. So the business is,
Speaker 2: you know, widely misunderstood. As you know outside of the industry,
Speaker 2: big as big as an easy target. Ticketing is an
Speaker 2: easy target. But on the fundamentals on a monopoly, no,
Speaker 2: we're We're far from that.
Speaker 1: So let's go a little deeper here. Administrations change, and
Speaker 1: presently under Biden, the woman who's head of the FTC
Speaker 1: lead at Khan is very active. Everything that she has
Speaker 1: tried to uh get through has not ultimately passed. But
Speaker 1: inside the business, it's well known that she is looking
Speaker 1: at ticket Master in Live Nation questions of monopoly antitrust?
Speaker 1: Are they asking you for information? Do you have a
Speaker 1: team at Live Nation who is dealing with this?
Speaker 2: Yeah, just to be clear, though they there tends to
Speaker 2: be you tend to either deal with the FTC or
Speaker 2: the DOJ, and they kind of split it up. If
Speaker 2: they're going to probe, it's the DOJ that are doing
Speaker 2: the investigation on us right now, not the FTC. So
Speaker 2: that wouldn't be in not that she couldn't, but she
Speaker 2: wouldn't be doing it if they're doing it. So right now,
Speaker 2: we have been working with the DOJ since November, providing
Speaker 2: them all of the data. They want to take a
Speaker 2: look at our business and see if there's any new
Speaker 2: data that would support any thesises around our ticket monopoly
Speaker 2: or descent decree. So we're working with them and that's
Speaker 2: that'll be an ongoing process and somewhere in the next
Speaker 2: somewhere this year. The sad part about the DJ is
Speaker 2: they get to kind of leak when they're looking at you,
Speaker 2: but you don't really get a final date when you're
Speaker 2: going to be done with it. So we'll live that
Speaker 2: this year and be cooperative with them, But we don't
Speaker 2: we think legally. Dan Wall, who now works for US
Speaker 2: full time, has not a great great article on kind
Speaker 2: of the technical legal part the DOJ and the case.
Speaker 2: So we think we're complying and we'll we'll get through this.
Speaker 1: What do you say to the people who say, since
Speaker 1: you have an excess of fifty percent market share, you're
Speaker 1: inherently a monopoly.
Speaker 2: Yeah, don't. I don't you know the market share? You know?
Speaker 2: I could go down a whole bunch of you're a lawyer,
Speaker 2: so I could go down a whole bunch of paths
Speaker 2: on how big a market how big is the competition
Speaker 2: today versus when we merged. I don't have fifty percent
Speaker 2: market share with you, and I can debate how to
Speaker 2: define market share. There's thousands of venues, there's lots of promoters.
Speaker 2: The math will say on promoting side, I don't have
Speaker 2: fifty percent in America. And when you look at the festivals,
Speaker 2: the ticketing, the arenas, the theaters, the clubs, there's more
Speaker 2: competition ticketing today than there was ten years ago. Seakeek
Speaker 2: today announcing going public. Stub Hub Access didn't exist. I
Speaker 2: mean when we merged this company, there was nobody. We
Speaker 2: had to white label our software to AEG for three
Speaker 2: years so we could start a competitor called Access. That
Speaker 2: was the mandate from the DOJ. But that was at
Speaker 2: a time when they didn't think we're and they didn't
Speaker 2: think we're operly. Then there wasn't even close to the
Speaker 2: competitive nature there is today. So I would say to
Speaker 2: you we we have grown globally really well. In America.
Speaker 2: Our market share since we merged to today has gone down.
Speaker 2: Sea Geek, Access have taken more venues because they didn't
Speaker 2: exist when we merged. So today, if you're a venue bob,
Speaker 2: you're going to have no there's no debate. You're going
Speaker 2: to be able to say, I got three great competitive
Speaker 2: options that I can get the best deal I want
Speaker 2: from Access, see Geek or ticket Master. I don't have
Speaker 2: to pick ticket Master. Take Master maybe better than the
Speaker 2: other ones that might have better technology. They may they
Speaker 2: may they may have a better product, and that's where
Speaker 2: we tend to win. But you don't have to pick
Speaker 2: us as the Washington Redskins or Commanders just picked Seakeeek
Speaker 2: for their stadium. So, you know, we think it's still
Speaker 2: a really competitive business. Our margins are the best ultimate
Speaker 2: dictation of that. If you're if you have margins of
Speaker 2: where we are, you're you're not exerting or leveraging any
Speaker 2: power against your your your your, your user base. So
Speaker 2: we think the artists have great options. We think venues
Speaker 2: have great options. We think we've been able to demonstrate that,
Speaker 2: and we think the market's more competitive today than it
Speaker 2: was before. Even as big and strong and great as
Speaker 2: our businesses globally, we still think there's competition.
Speaker 1: Okay, in other territories ticketing is different and the you
Speaker 1: k there are multiple ticket sellers for venues. Can you
Speaker 1: explain a how that works and how you're involved in that,
Speaker 1: and b you have your competitors who I speak with
Speaker 1: who want that model in the US, so if you
Speaker 1: could address that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the UK, I think, you know, Germany is not
Speaker 2: really like that a little bit. But yeah, So historically
Speaker 2: outside of America, it was an allocation market. If you
Speaker 2: were the venue, you allocated to multiple ticketing companies. The
Speaker 2: exclusive venue model was a US red model. I would
Speaker 2: say to you though, that if you look at where
Speaker 2: the trend is going internationally. Generally, as the new buildings
Speaker 2: are being built, they're looking to go to a more
Speaker 2: exit exclusive model because they're you know, think about the
Speaker 2: difference in internationalist. They didn't have NBA, NHL arenas they
Speaker 2: have soccer stadiums, so not a lot of things were built.
Speaker 2: As the new buildings were being built, whether it's a
Speaker 2: soccer or or a hockey arena, they tend to now go,
Speaker 2: you know what, if I'm building a billion dollar arena
Speaker 2: or a football stadium, I should go monetize my ticketing rights,
Speaker 2: and I probably could get somebody to pay me more
Speaker 2: money to have exclusive ticketing rights than three people have
Speaker 2: the rights. So that's where the model grows out. So
Speaker 2: you look now at some of the businesses in the UK,
Speaker 2: the football businesses, they tend to go exclusive. Now SEEKIK
Speaker 2: had a few, We have a few. So I would say,
Speaker 2: you know, I think the venues as they get built,
Speaker 2: and you build a building, your job is to figure
Speaker 2: out where am I going to get paid the most
Speaker 2: for all of my revenue streams. And I think you're
Speaker 2: starting to see some of those venues say I actually
Speaker 2: think I can monetize it differently. Now, I'll back up up.
Speaker 2: I'm not you know, the golden child that says that
Speaker 2: all has to be exclusive. That's the model I inherited.
Speaker 2: It's been working in this industry for long before my time.
Speaker 2: It's the model we run to date. I'm not telling
Speaker 2: you that I think the future needs to be exclusive.
Speaker 2: I could Ticketmaster could operate on an allocation model as
Speaker 2: well as an exclusive model and do really well. The
Speaker 2: irony is the double side of the venue is if
Speaker 2: you go back to the venue and say, great, you're
Speaker 2: not going to be exclusive, we don't have to pay
Speaker 2: as much. I'll be happy to sell sixty percent of
Speaker 2: your tickets without having to buy exclusivity. If that's the
Speaker 2: model we want to market. So it's a balance, right,
Speaker 2: I don't have to be exclusive. The cost of exclusive,
Speaker 2: so in the industry is expensive. Now the venues have
Speaker 2: done a good job charging a very real premium for that,
Speaker 2: and maybe at a certain point the business model is
Speaker 2: better for everybody, meaning the ticket master and companies if
Speaker 2: we don't have exclusive because the best, the best seller
Speaker 2: still wins in the end. Okay, just to be.
Speaker 1: Very very clear for those not in the know in
Speaker 1: the UK, let's just use an example of three ticket
Speaker 1: resellers or ticket sellers actually A do they pay the venue?
Speaker 1: B do they pull inventory from the same database.
Speaker 2: No, you're going to have a you know again, if
Speaker 2: you look what's happening. AE g owns the O two arena,
Speaker 2: So they're gonna in theory, they favor their ticketing company,
Speaker 2: just like CTS does in Germany. So they're going to
Speaker 2: run the They're going to run their database, the central database.
Speaker 2: They're going to give most allocation to their own ticket companmpany,
Speaker 2: and then they're going to give as limited amount of
Speaker 2: as tickets as they can to us and others to
Speaker 2: kind of finish off the market. But it's not a
Speaker 2: free for all allocated. How to three companies equally access
Speaker 2: that venue. I could give you the opposite there where
Speaker 2: we're not getting paid or have the same allocation as
Speaker 2: the venue because they're allocating to their own company, but
Speaker 2: it's off one database, and they would the venue would
Speaker 2: pay a piece of the service feed to the ticketing companies,
Speaker 2: So the ticket companies would get a piece of the
Speaker 2: service fee for the tickets they sold.
Speaker 1: But there's no advance from the other companies to the venue.
Speaker 2: It's starting now. Yes, there are because your job because
Speaker 2: what really happens now is you want to be the
Speaker 2: You want to get a higher percentage of the allocation.
Speaker 2: So you're now going to start paying to be in
Speaker 2: pollpase position of the good seats and more of them.
Speaker 2: So that's where it's morphine. The venue is now figured out.
Speaker 2: Oh someone will pay me. You know, you can us
Speaker 2: to wake up and say here here ticket companies for free,
Speaker 2: take all my tickets. Good luck. You're going to start going.
Speaker 2: Someone wants the good seats and so we'll pay me
Speaker 2: for it. So we are now competitively doing that as
Speaker 2: an industry, and festivals tend to be more one one company.
Speaker 1: Let's talk about traditional new building arena meaning they have skyboxes, etc.
Speaker 1: Inside there's always an issue of all the tickets are
Speaker 1: not on the manifest. You reference this earlier, but can
Speaker 1: you explain from my audience.
Speaker 2: Yeah, generally a venue in America, I'm you know, we're
Speaker 2: going to talk arenas and stadiums. You know their primary
Speaker 2: business is to sell that sports team season tickets, sweet
Speaker 2: spotship and as you're selling those eighty games whatever the
Speaker 2: sport is, the sponsorship, you know, your your box and
Speaker 2: your premium seats are only you know, exciting for how
Speaker 2: many of those eighty games. So the best way to
Speaker 2: deliver that box season ticket sponsor is to say, listen,
Speaker 2: spend this much money. You're going to get the season
Speaker 2: tickets for the hockey team. You're also going to get
Speaker 2: it for the thirty five concerts that come to the
Speaker 2: venue a year. You're going to you're going to get
Speaker 2: first assets those tickets. So that's generally every arena is
Speaker 2: going to have some level of a club box system.
Speaker 2: One thousand and two, three thousand tickets that are within
Speaker 2: that venue system sold to their current client base, which
Speaker 2: is a lot of reasons why people say, word its
Speaker 2: scalpers get tickets. That's another big leaky bucket. But that's
Speaker 2: so that's why when you sell, when you put this
Speaker 2: inventory on sale, it's not the fourteen thousand seats in
Speaker 2: that venue and then there's club seats and then there's boxes.
Speaker 2: It's not everything in that venue is going for sale.
Speaker 2: Some of it has already been pre sold or held
Speaker 2: back for customer basis.
Speaker 1: Let's talk about the secondary market. You reference that. Yes,
Speaker 1: they do get it from the people who receives and
Speaker 1: ticket holders, To what degree are the bots a problem
Speaker 1: on the on sale and to what degree can it
Speaker 1: be addressed or possibly eradicated?
Speaker 2: Yeah, the bots are you know, it's an arms race.
Speaker 2: It's it's an impossible mission right now because again as
Speaker 2: an industry, you really only have ticket Master even trying
Speaker 2: to stop them. There's no one else, you know, Access
Speaker 2: isn't spending much money on it, and Seekik and stub
Speaker 2: bubber obviously that's with their businesses. So right now, when again,
Speaker 2: when you have that the famous tailor scrift moment, but
Speaker 2: when you have that level of you know, if you
Speaker 2: looked in the tailor script moment, there you go on
Speaker 2: the dark web right now, you can buy a whole
Speaker 2: bunch of software to try to hack the latest on sale.
Speaker 2: You know, it's a very organized and unorganized kind of
Speaker 2: underweb of five billion dollars that people are trying to access.
Speaker 2: So there's bots, there's tons of software on the dark
Speaker 2: web to how to break the code, what's the password?
Speaker 2: That's what happened on Taylor. So you have a lot
Speaker 2: of a lot of global parties trying to break and
Speaker 2: allocate that on sale to try to get those tickets
Speaker 2: and put them on a secondary platform. The Bought Act
Speaker 2: has never been enforced, which is our big complaint. As
Speaker 2: much as all everyone loved tweeting Taylor Swift and their
Speaker 2: tweet to get a lot of likes, none of them
Speaker 2: want to address the challenge, right. It's the challenge at
Speaker 2: the end of the day is you know, I use
Speaker 2: the example of when you see those videos of someone
Speaker 2: breaking in the protest store on Beverly Hills stealing the purses.
Speaker 2: You know, people go, oh, what's going on with the
Speaker 2: Beverly Hills police department. We got to staff up. They
Speaker 2: don't blame product. Well, what happened in Taylor Swift was
Speaker 2: the product story, right is they broke they tried to
Speaker 2: break the doors down. Really does we stopped them. Now,
Speaker 2: we had to slow the system down, but we kept
Speaker 2: them out and they didn't steal one bag. And we
Speaker 2: still ended up by the end of the day delivering
Speaker 2: two million tickets to Taylor Swift fans. And then you
Speaker 2: have the congressmen putting their hands up, going, oh my god,
Speaker 2: what's going on, And we're going, well, you're doing nothing
Speaker 2: to enforce the Bought Act. We had a bought attack,
Speaker 2: we had a cyber attack, we did our best to
Speaker 2: fight it off ourselves. We're the protest store, so we're
Speaker 2: now start to enforce the bought police, or you have
Speaker 2: to enforce the plice. So you know, we kind of
Speaker 2: get in that circle. Right. If you're gonna let if
Speaker 2: you're gonna let Second run wild like we are today,
Speaker 2: then you've got to just forget about even blaming anybody
Speaker 2: for what happens on on sales. It's a free for all.
Speaker 2: Or you have to then decide are we going to
Speaker 2: legislate anything, Are we going to try to limit bots?
Speaker 2: Are we going to try to limit that on sale mess?
Speaker 2: And right now we have it, so right now the
Speaker 2: on sale is going to be a mess. On a
Speaker 2: high profitable show, the bots will end up getting seats
Speaker 2: and they screw up the system and they try to
Speaker 2: break the system for the hours. It's all part of that.
Speaker 2: All their job is is to figure out give a mess,
Speaker 2: scare you that they're all sold out fast, right. They
Speaker 2: try to hold tickets forever. That's the big game they
Speaker 2: play is get on the map and hold all the
Speaker 2: dots so you only see a few dots for sale,
Speaker 2: and you'll buy them, or you'll go to stubbub and
Speaker 2: buy them. Then they release the dots later and that's
Speaker 2: why you end up seeing at the end of the day,
Speaker 2: why is there more tickets available? Because the they got
Speaker 2: in and held tickets, you got scared. You went to
Speaker 2: seat Geek bought tickets for two thousand dollars because you
Speaker 2: thought it was sold. When you come back to ticket
Speaker 2: Master and go, oh, there's tickets available, what happened. So
Speaker 2: it is a big challenge, it's a big mission. Again,
Speaker 2: we haven't been that vocal historically. We've we've stayed on
Speaker 2: the sidelines and tried to battle it. But now we're
Speaker 2: we're being pretty vocal on the Fair Act and we
Speaker 2: do think that you got to start there. And I
Speaker 2: think there's a bill coming up from NIVA and others,
Speaker 2: so I do think it's time we do. Let we
Speaker 2: do think about legislation around the secondary in some sense,
Speaker 2: as a start we went to all in ticketing and
Speaker 2: some legislation on secondary. The experience starts to get real,
Speaker 2: bit real different.
Speaker 1: Okay, just going back to the Taylor Swift on sale,
Speaker 1: the perception was every buddy's got an uh got a
Speaker 1: computer at this point, and everyone knows if there's an
Speaker 1: incredible demand. Even with Apple products, the system slows down.
Speaker 1: Are you saying you intentionally slowed the system down? In
Speaker 1: two you said you made it so the bots didn't
Speaker 1: get tickets. Is that really what happened with Taylor's with
Speaker 1: the bots really didn't get tickets?
Speaker 2: No, they didn't one hundred percent. Yeah, I mean you know,
Speaker 2: I'm you know again, some some percentage I'm sure slip
Speaker 2: in because bots can dress up as Taylor fans pretty
Speaker 2: good too, But generally on a verified fan percentage wise
Speaker 2: is we do a really good job of knowing the
Speaker 2: difference between a bot and a fan, and the result
Speaker 2: is you end up knowing instantly on what's on sale
Speaker 2: on the secondary is if it's successful, right, if there's
Speaker 2: less inventory on secondary, you absolutely cut out a lot
Speaker 2: of the bots. So no, that was a that that
Speaker 2: was about not letting the bots in. The bots didn't
Speaker 2: get in for the bad guy didn't get the tickets.
Speaker 2: But unfortunately it was a bad consumer experience for the
Speaker 2: day as the system needed to get needed to operate
Speaker 2: at a slow level to ultimately get those two million
Speaker 2: tickets out. The single biggest ticket day in history was
Speaker 2: nine hundred thousand tickets. So the mission that day and Tigamaster,
Speaker 2: we actually sold one million pink tickets that day too.
Speaker 2: So if you want to talk about the load that
Speaker 2: that was able to deliver by the end of the
Speaker 2: day was a huge, huge, deliverable although readily so the
Speaker 2: fans jumped on and we're not happy, but but no,
Speaker 2: we were proud at the end of the day that
Speaker 2: the tickets didn't get the purse, didn't get stolen. We
Speaker 2: were able to limit that and make sure that the
Speaker 2: tickets got to the hand of the verified fans' hands
Speaker 2: in the end.
Speaker 1: Okay, go back to Miiley Cyrus. She went on tour
Speaker 1: this about twelve to fifteen years ago. All the mothers complained, Hey,
Speaker 1: we can't get tickets. The next tour was totally paperless
Speaker 1: and didn't sell out instantly. If we go back to
Speaker 1: Taylor Swift, the last time she went on tour pre COVID,
Speaker 1: she did not go clean in every market. So we
Speaker 1: have all these competing interests that changed the perception of
Speaker 1: the fan as to availability. Hey, can we say that
Speaker 1: some acts want to put on a lot. I want
Speaker 1: to create this demand which will incentivize people to buy
Speaker 1: tickets and two. If another superstar came to you today
Speaker 1: and said, I have thirty stadium dates unless they Taylor
Speaker 1: Swift wanted them all on sale on one day. But
Speaker 1: as the ticketing company, if the act was opened to
Speaker 1: another take, would you say, let's not do it that way.
Speaker 1: Let's do it market by mar market or fifty one day,
Speaker 1: fifty the next week.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I think the lesson, obviously is we should we
Speaker 2: should spread the load. That's the given. But Bob, I
Speaker 2: want to just state something so we don't get it wrong.
Speaker 2: I am not against secondary, just to be clear where
Speaker 2: I stand, because you are right. Secondary is an incredible
Speaker 2: distribution platform right now. Meaning you're right. They buy a
Speaker 2: lot of tickets and they help out a lot of
Speaker 2: on sales, and in the sports business, it's it's very
Speaker 2: valuable because that's how a lot of people sell their
Speaker 2: eighty games. I'm not against I'm not saying that we
Speaker 2: should outlaw secondary, although that would be the simplest way
Speaker 2: to fix it, all right, as Gar said on stage,
Speaker 2: just outlaw but that's not going to happen in America.
Speaker 2: I'm fine on the idea that tickets should be exchanged.
Speaker 2: I'm first though, big believer that the artists should have
Speaker 2: the ability to decide. And I know that sounds not
Speaker 2: as simple as it is. But right now, as you said,
Speaker 2: some artists don't care, some do. Right now, I can't
Speaker 2: you know, as you know that secondary lobbyists are doing
Speaker 2: any great job state by state, dressed up in fancy
Speaker 2: bills around service fees, to say, don't let transferability get changed,
Speaker 2: right that's the core challenge right now, And they've convinced
Speaker 2: a lot of people that we must be the bad
Speaker 2: guy because we want to limit transferability and we only
Speaker 2: want the ticket a ticket master and resold a ticket master.
Speaker 2: That's not the agenda at all. I believe that the
Speaker 2: PDF that used to be on the airline and used
Speaker 2: to be you know, in the hotel went digital, and
Speaker 2: just like you used to be able to walk up
Speaker 2: on the airline, the digital ticket, when it went to
Speaker 2: PDF went to digital, means you can do things with
Speaker 2: it now, you can have some level of control. And
Speaker 2: I do believe when Pearl jam or an artist says,
Speaker 2: you know what, I don't want my secondary ticket resold
Speaker 2: at a premium, execute that or I don't care, you
Speaker 2: know what, I want it sold. I want I only
Speaker 2: want a twenty five percent uplift on the secondary. I'm
Speaker 2: fine if people make money, but I don't want to
Speaker 2: make in three hundred percent. We could deliver that as
Speaker 2: an industry, not just Ticketmaster and or I don't care,
Speaker 2: exchange it wherever you want free for all, great, then
Speaker 2: then let the market deliver it. But right now, you
Speaker 2: if we don't stop some of this legislation, the legislation's
Speaker 2: moving towards, you know, this idea that you can never
Speaker 2: have a non transferable ticket rule. And I've never said
Speaker 2: that I want this to happen because I only want
Speaker 2: the ticket resold. Ticket Master should I'm fine if it's
Speaker 2: resold everywhere. You know. The NFL, I think, is the
Speaker 2: great example on what we delivered on exchange. So the
Speaker 2: NFL used to have a system where we would pay
Speaker 2: the NFL to be the secondary preferred partner, but it
Speaker 2: meant nothing because ticket Master would have secondary tickets, but
Speaker 2: so would everyone else. So I was paying the NFL
Speaker 2: a lot of money, but you could go get all
Speaker 2: your same tickets at subub seat geek. They just didn't
Speaker 2: have the NFL logo or they didn't have a few things.
Speaker 2: So NFL smartly sat with us five years ago and
Speaker 2: said how do we capture it all so it's more organized,
Speaker 2: and we put a system forward that said, listen, we
Speaker 2: should deliver an exchange for you. We should make sure
Speaker 2: that c g Can, Stubbub and others have to abide
Speaker 2: by the exchange rules and then that way they're authorized
Speaker 2: and everyone should be able to sell the tickets. But
Speaker 2: they're all authorized, they're playing by the NFL rules, and
Speaker 2: the NFL can take a percentage of those fees. So
Speaker 2: the NFL exchange today is an exchange where if you
Speaker 2: seek Geek, StubHub have been authorized, they pay the NFL
Speaker 2: an advance versus a percentage. And all of these platforms
Speaker 2: are authorized NFL resellers now like an authorized Rolex reseller,
Speaker 2: but it means they have to play by the rules.
Speaker 2: They can't spec some they can't put Super Bowl on
Speaker 2: sale before it's announced. Play let's all play by the
Speaker 2: same rules, so the NFL fan and knows what they're doing.
Speaker 2: Now there's a couple exchanges like Vivid that don't participate
Speaker 2: in the program and still do it on their own.
Speaker 2: But it's a big move forward where you had multiple
Speaker 2: platforms playing by the same rule addressed by the NFL.
Speaker 2: That's the model I think we should get to, right
Speaker 2: where Access Seak, Geek, stub Hub, Live Nation, Ticketmaster. You know,
Speaker 2: if the artist says this is the rule, I want
Speaker 2: to play a twenty five percent premium on my ticket,
Speaker 2: then we should all all execute that on our digital
Speaker 2: ticket an honor written be authorized to do it. Or
Speaker 2: if there's no exchange, like seat geek did with with
Speaker 2: the cure, great, then let's all none of us got
Speaker 2: to turn on the exchange. None of us made money
Speaker 2: on the secondary business. But that's what the artist wanted.
Speaker 2: We played that way other times artists won't be that
Speaker 2: obsessed with it. Let the market exchange, let the market
Speaker 2: run free. Great. So I'm not against secondary I don't.
Speaker 2: I think we're an American market free enterprise. We're never
Speaker 2: going to get to a place where you're going to
Speaker 2: ban it. I don't want to pretend we have fake
Speaker 2: rules around bots and it doesn't work. I'd love spec selling.
Speaker 2: I would love all these deceptive websites and all of
Speaker 2: these things to go away and be cleaned up. You
Speaker 2: could get that done by FTC tomorrow. And I do
Speaker 2: I do believe that content should have the right on
Speaker 2: the ticket. Just like the sports teams get to do
Speaker 2: whatever they want. They define the rules of the game
Speaker 2: for their sports league. I think the artists should be
Speaker 2: able to say this tour, I want it my way,
Speaker 2: this way. If I'm Zach Bryan, I want to do
Speaker 2: it this way, or I don't care, or I do care,
Speaker 2: but right now so I'm a big fan of that.
Speaker 2: I think content and the artists should control and put
Speaker 2: the rules. We have the technology as an industry in
Speaker 2: digital now to be able to do that. So I
Speaker 2: want to state that I'm not an anti secondary I may.
Speaker 1: Want to. I want to weigh in here too, because
Speaker 1: the public does not have clean hands. They want to resell,
Speaker 1: and unfortunately they get caught up in what the secondary
Speaker 1: legislation is uh saying. The other thing is if you
Speaker 1: make it too tight, the public isn't happy.
Speaker 2: You're right.
Speaker 1: The public wants to know if I decide that I
Speaker 1: want to go to the show tomorrow and there's no
Speaker 1: limit to what I I will pay, there will be
Speaker 1: a ticket for me.
Speaker 2: It's it's you're dead right. It's the challenge of you know,
Speaker 2: the voices on Twitter versus the reality of the marketplace. Right,
Speaker 2: and as you think you've written about me. I had
Speaker 2: a fan rate me last week about some Taylor Swift
Speaker 2: show and I'm like, I went onlines to this thoughts.
Speaker 2: Tickets available at a decent price. You can still go
Speaker 2: to see Taylor. So you're right, want it their way
Speaker 2: when they want it. They've been accustomed to that on
Speaker 2: every other platform and marketplace today, So you're right. It
Speaker 2: is a It is a double edged sword right now
Speaker 2: on how do you how do you try to deliver
Speaker 2: some level of secondary legislation or rules that would simplify
Speaker 2: the system for the on sale really all you're trying
Speaker 2: to solve. But you're right, the free enterprise of the
Speaker 2: American market says, I want to do whatever I own
Speaker 2: that ticket, and I want to do whatever the hell
Speaker 2: I want with it. The challenge we have, though, Bob,
Speaker 2: is it's not you know, I'm not worried about Billy
Speaker 2: that you know, the lobbyists are so great at doing.
Speaker 2: You know, Billy in Texas just he's going, he's paying
Speaker 2: for school by selling a couple of tickets. We're not
Speaker 2: worried about him. That's not the problem being created at
Speaker 2: ten am. It's the bots at ten am. That is
Speaker 2: the challenge right now. So if we can address that
Speaker 2: part at least, then the ca acsual secondary seller or
Speaker 2: the seller, we're less worried about him. But we have
Speaker 2: to address the first part on the ten AM free
Speaker 2: for all right now is not being done by you know,
Speaker 2: Billy who wants to sell a couple of tickets. It
Speaker 2: is industrialized.
Speaker 1: Your CEO of the company, how much of your time
Speaker 1: is dedicated to managing your stock price? And your stock
Speaker 1: price now is a little depressed from where it was.
Speaker 1: To what degree do you pay attention to that? Address that?
Speaker 2: Yeah, he listen. I don't want to sound like that
Speaker 2: guy that says I don't ever look at it. Of
Speaker 2: course I do. I've lived long enough now from when
Speaker 2: we went public, I've been two dollars, I've been twenty eight,
Speaker 2: been one hundred. I do say that. You know what
Speaker 2: what I spend most of my time on is ultimately
Speaker 2: what matters in any company, whether it's my stock or
Speaker 2: AG's private company or your own, is the business growing.
Speaker 2: How's the fundamentals of the business, Because the stock price
Speaker 2: will ultimately follow performance, and you're always going to have
Speaker 2: when you're as big as we are, and been doing
Speaker 2: it this long, there's going to be moments of you know,
Speaker 2: we'll have a little DJ overhang for a few months
Speaker 2: or this year. While they will the investors debate what
Speaker 2: that means or doesn't mean. All I really care though,
Speaker 2: I obsess around the performance. That part is what really matters.
Speaker 2: You don't want to be having a depressed stock and
Speaker 2: having a business that isn't growing and healthy and has
Speaker 2: a great future ahead of it. So I'm I'm blown
Speaker 2: away at the resilience of this business, Bob. Coming out
Speaker 2: of COVID, I mean, I'm I get that, you know,
Speaker 2: we had a little bit of a kent up demand,
Speaker 2: but seeing the continuation of it on a global basis,
Speaker 2: it's just just mind blowing. Whether that's truly that experience
Speaker 2: economy on steroids, your point of content being free everywhere
Speaker 2: and driving all these customers, globalization of it overnight where
Speaker 2: you know, we're doing ten sold out river stadiums for
Speaker 2: Coldplay right now. By middle of the road festivals are
Speaker 2: selling out bands more than ever want to have a
Speaker 2: have a great experience. So that's that's the part that
Speaker 2: your stock is. You know, you're kind of in your
Speaker 2: mind debate the stock price is only relevant if you
Speaker 2: if you if you don't think your business is going
Speaker 2: to deliver, then that's a those those those kind of
Speaker 2: companies are in trouble. This is a business where this
Speaker 2: is an industry forget my own agenda, this is an
Speaker 2: indituative for the next five to ten years is going
Speaker 2: to have an incredible boom. Yes, we're going to live
Speaker 2: with some pr realities at the ticket price, and the
Speaker 2: artists are going to start charging a bit more and
Speaker 2: right sizing their product and and and and and taking
Speaker 2: some of that secondary and there'll be some news around that.
Speaker 2: But this is an industry that is I think still
Speaker 2: massively underpriced, still doesn't do a great job experientially. So
Speaker 2: lots of great venues are going to be built, better venues,
Speaker 2: better experiences, higher end premium experiences. I think there's a
Speaker 2: lot of upsiding upsize in this industry. When I look
Speaker 2: at the sports industry and almost how well they've done.
Speaker 2: Look at the Masters four hundred and ninety dollars per
Speaker 2: head spent that weekend sports has really done a much
Speaker 2: better job at you know, the high end. It's not
Speaker 2: and I mean again it doesn't mean the rich people
Speaker 2: experience the just if I want to go to the Masters,
Speaker 2: or I want to go to the super Bowl, I
Speaker 2: want to go to the NBA All Star Game, or
Speaker 2: or just the new Arena for the end for the
Speaker 2: Chargers game. That's a beautiful arena with a lot of
Speaker 2: great clubs and VIP rooms. We've been you know, I
Speaker 2: think it's an industry. We've been playing backwards, behind on
Speaker 2: the ball and all that. So I think as an industry,
Speaker 2: you're going to see better venues built, better new products
Speaker 2: being built around experiential stuff, more globalization more than ever,
Speaker 2: and more of these great artists that you know, bad
Speaker 2: money and international where it didn't it didn't matter before international.
Speaker 2: I've been in forty countries and for most years there
Speaker 2: was always a tragically hip in that market, but it
Speaker 2: didn't matter. They weren't really going to break. What mattered
Speaker 2: was Springsteen coming to the market, and you just been
Speaker 2: able to see my local markets now where that's that
Speaker 2: tragically hip does matter now because they get a TikTok
Speaker 2: hit or they get some exposure and everyone knows who
Speaker 2: they are now they're not they're not limited by that
Speaker 2: kind of domestic media agenda. So I think you got
Speaker 2: a huge supply of artists that are going to surprise
Speaker 2: us from all over the world. So stock price will
Speaker 2: will ultimately follow the performance of our company. And I
Speaker 2: think this is an industry worth betting on.
Speaker 1: Okay, you we talk generally about the industry, but specifically
Speaker 1: where are the growth opportunities for Live Nation and Ticketmaster.
Speaker 2: I've said it for a while, you know, it's a
Speaker 2: global is our biggest kind of you know, I've always
Speaker 2: been obsessed with outside of the American growth. We've got
Speaker 2: a great US business. There's great opportunities to still do things,
Speaker 2: but just grow. You know, this business is Latin America
Speaker 2: has just been a huge new growth area. Obviously, we
Speaker 2: bought Osessa in Covid. That was the big promoter we've
Speaker 2: We've obviously can have a bunch of businesses in Brazil.
Speaker 2: We just launched a new festival this week in Brazil
Speaker 2: called the Town from our Rock and Real Company. So
Speaker 2: one hundred and thirty thousand tickets on its opening day,
Speaker 2: brand new festival Rock and Rio. So we like international.
Speaker 2: I think you're going to see a lot of a
Speaker 2: lot of expansion in South America Asia. We continue to
Speaker 2: expand in so globalization there are tons of markets, Bob,
Speaker 2: where there's crappy arenas, there's maybe a festival, there's an
Speaker 2: under probably a crappy ticketing system, maybe no sponsors, you know,
Speaker 2: so kind of professionalize these businesses when you roll in.
Speaker 2: You launch Live Nation Brazil and we just launched our
Speaker 2: Ticketmaster Brazil. We upgraded the festival team there. We're going
Speaker 2: to build an arena there and a club there. We launched.
Speaker 2: We brought a lot of palooza to those markets. So
Speaker 2: we look ran Lollapaluza to India, launching them some new
Speaker 2: businesses in Cape Town and Africa. So all about international
Speaker 2: tons of great growth opportunity. Uh. Number two is we've really,
Speaker 2: through COVID, really put a front foot forward on our
Speaker 2: venue development. And it's something we had not historically been
Speaker 2: as aggressive in on the higher end. We'd been more
Speaker 2: a club theater amphitheater business. And then we stuck our
Speaker 2: toe out in Austin with OVG and and that building
Speaker 2: in Austin, that arena. It's been a home run success.
Speaker 2: So we've been looking at markets where outside of mostly
Speaker 2: outside of America, where you don't have that NBA, NHL
Speaker 2: beautiful arena, we have a. We have an arena now
Speaker 2: in Dublin, one in Copenhagen, Portugal. I've got a few
Speaker 2: others in the pipe with OBG and Latin America and Asia.
Speaker 2: So I think venue development is a is a big opportunity.
Speaker 2: Going back to our math earlier, Bob, you know, it's
Speaker 2: a vertical business, right, So the more the more vertical
Speaker 2: you are with the content and the food and the
Speaker 2: beverage and the peanuts, the better your businesses. So you'll
Speaker 2: see us continually like a Netflix analogy, I guess is
Speaker 2: you want to rent a lot of shows and put
Speaker 2: them on other venues, but you got to have a
Speaker 2: lot of your home grown brood shows in your own
Speaker 2: venues and festivals where they're higher margin. So we'll keep
Speaker 2: expanding our global venue platform, so in ant national global expansion.
Speaker 2: And you know, every time you put a new venue,
Speaker 2: you open up a bigger sponsorship opportunity and a ticketing
Speaker 2: opportunity in those markets. So I think you'll see for
Speaker 2: the next five years. We told the market, jeez, we
Speaker 2: did about fifty million fans four or five years ago.
Speaker 2: We're over one hundred and twenty five million, meaning they
Speaker 2: went to a live nation show in twenty two, like
Speaker 2: we've now told them, we're we can see one fifty
Speaker 2: to one seventy five over the next five years of
Speaker 2: fans going to our show. So we think the pie
Speaker 2: gets bigger globally, our market share just growing. If the
Speaker 2: pie gets bigger, we get bigger and before we have
Speaker 2: to even take more market share in entering new markets
Speaker 2: that we're not in. So we think this is a
Speaker 2: global business that will grow, and we'll obviously grow as
Speaker 2: the tide goes up.
Speaker 1: Now North America is pretty myopic. They don't really know
Speaker 1: what's going on in these other countries. What is the
Speaker 1: market and who are the competitors of live Nation around
Speaker 1: the world.
Speaker 2: Well, you have CTS in Germany, they're done a good
Speaker 2: job there, and then most of the markets that you're
Speaker 2: going to go to are going to have let's call
Speaker 2: it the Golden voices, right, they're going to have a
Speaker 2: local and grain promoter. I mean, Japan is a big market,
Speaker 2: big market, second largest market in the world, and we
Speaker 2: have no market share. They're really small and there's four
Speaker 2: historic promoters there that have owned the market. So you've
Speaker 2: got to figure out how to be in business. Is
Speaker 2: one of those four we've launched a live nation in Japan.
Speaker 2: We're bringing artists there. But generally in a market place
Speaker 2: that matters, there's an established Merrick Liberberg, there's a promoter
Speaker 2: that probably owns the market market and has two other competitors,
Speaker 2: so still a local business where they'd probably be a
Speaker 2: festival and a promoter in those markets with their good
Speaker 2: you know, good scale within their current market. Australia is
Speaker 2: the same as you know, three or four old time
Speaker 2: promoters own the market there. We bought one of them, Copple,
Speaker 2: But so you tend to have to go into those
Speaker 2: markets there's probably one or two historic promoters that own
Speaker 2: the market. We tend to try to partner with one
Speaker 2: of them and then help them supercharge their business by
Speaker 2: bringing tours and sponsorship and capital.
Speaker 1: So what's a typical day in the life of Michael Rupino?
Speaker 2: Jeez, stressful now thanks to the check my Twitter feed
Speaker 2: and they see who's see who's mad at me that day?
Speaker 2: But you know, I think it's it's I think listen, let's.
Speaker 1: Slow down there. You're a CEO. How much time do
Speaker 1: you spend on Twitter? And what's your feeling about musk
Speaker 1: running it and where it's going.
Speaker 2: Well, that's a loaded one in Twitter. You know, it's
Speaker 2: an addiction you hate, right because you know, you know,
Speaker 2: you know, they don't go on there and say thank
Speaker 2: so thankful, I got great tickets today. So it's it's
Speaker 2: only the pissed off that are going to go hit
Speaker 2: you up. But I do think it, you know, it
Speaker 2: is a you know, as Kara Swisher and Prophergy who
Speaker 2: we both like talk about, you know, it's still a
Speaker 2: damn good lightning rod to figure out what's going on
Speaker 2: in the world, right. I mean, you still go to
Speaker 2: that I go to that trending Explore page and just
Speaker 2: quickly go what's going on? And I still think it
Speaker 2: is an incredible lightning rod and a quick way to
Speaker 2: figure out whatever the drama of the day is going
Speaker 2: on in the world. So I think I think he's
Speaker 2: you know, I think he's a you know, obviously a genius.
Speaker 2: But I can't imagine why he wanted this this mission.
Speaker 2: This is a this is not a fruitful mission to
Speaker 2: come back to. But I think so, you know, I
Speaker 2: was my job, I would say, you're the reality is
Speaker 2: the one thing that has changed is in the world
Speaker 2: it's much more complex to run a comp business today.
Speaker 2: I mean there's a lot of voices right every day,
Speaker 2: So I think that's a new part of the business.
Speaker 2: You have to figure you have to spend time on it.
Speaker 2: You didn't before. You know, mostly it's going to spend
Speaker 2: your time on your strategy and your business and your divisions.
Speaker 2: And we're we've got a credible global team and that's
Speaker 2: where I spend most of my day dealing with my
Speaker 2: team's internal and figuring out what talent we're buying and
Speaker 2: what models and venues and strategy we're pursuing. And I
Speaker 2: think that just right there.
Speaker 1: To what degree do you delegate? To what degree do
Speaker 1: you get your hands dirty?
Speaker 2: Oh? My team, would you know? They know I'm still nuts.
Speaker 2: This is this is my baby. I'm I'm night and
Speaker 2: day here, I'm three feet and thirty thousand feet. I
Speaker 2: you know, I really look at running a business and
Speaker 2: I love it still. You know, one of the realities
Speaker 2: of being a CEO is you know, I always say
Speaker 2: there's kind of three things you can spend time on,
Speaker 2: your family, your business, and a lot of the external stuff.
Speaker 2: And the external stuff is gratifying for for for a
Speaker 2: lot of people, but you can't do all three something breaks.
Speaker 2: So I'm pretty obsessed with my three boys. It's making
Speaker 2: sure i'm a good dad and snowboarding and all the
Speaker 2: things you and I have talked about. And then two,
Speaker 2: as i'm internal focused, I really believe it's it's my
Speaker 2: team needs me. So I'm you know, every Tuesday at
Speaker 2: two and a half hours my concert team, and Wednesday
Speaker 2: is ticketmaster for two hours, sponsorship Thursday and venues and
Speaker 2: so I go. I'm I'm a I'm an active parent
Speaker 2: making sure all these divisions have access to me, help
Speaker 2: them cut through bureaucracy, make good decisions, deal with drama.
Speaker 2: So I'm pretty. I'm pretty. I go deep and stay
Speaker 2: stay very engaged. And as you know one of your
Speaker 2: famous lines about the bunker, I'm an introvert, so I
Speaker 2: don't spend a lot of time on the external. I
Speaker 2: figured that that all comes with good results and all that.
Speaker 2: You know, the good strategy and good results take care
Speaker 2: of the profile and the other things. But so that's
Speaker 2: kind of my day.
Speaker 1: Are you reachable twenty four to seven? Are you working
Speaker 1: twenty four seven?
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, yeah, no, that's the that's the curse for sure. Artists.
Speaker 2: Middle of the night, whoever it is, I'm always available, Yeah, absolutely,
Speaker 2: you know, it's listen to a gift where we run
Speaker 2: an incredible fun industry. I came from nothing and to
Speaker 2: be able to sit here and work with some of
Speaker 2: these great artists and have access and be part of
Speaker 2: their lives and help them deliver it's a pleasure.
Speaker 1: And why are Canadians so prominent and play above their
Speaker 1: weight in the concert industry?
Speaker 2: I don't, oh, you know, I do think this one,
Speaker 2: you know, is so when I was in Toronto, I
Speaker 2: thought Michael Cole and this idea of touring was an
Speaker 2: everywhere experience. I didn't really understand that that was such
Speaker 2: a uniqueness that you bought multiple So when when when
Speaker 2: Steve Herman I started a core audience, and you know,
Speaker 2: we bought tours across the country about the Rod Stewart
Speaker 2: tour for the country. You bought fourteen dates and it
Speaker 2: was you know, huge money for us at that time.
Speaker 2: I remember we remember we bought Janet Jackson from Jack
Speaker 2: remember Jack Usick? What was his name, the guy they
Speaker 2: went to jail jack?
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, Jack Utsick? Yeah yeah, oh man, he was
Speaker 1: a character.
Speaker 2: What a character? Hit off and we bought Janet Jackson
Speaker 2: lost four hundred thousand dollars and we went to Mel's
Speaker 2: diner that night, thought how are we going to pay
Speaker 2: for this? So when you buy tours it was exception.
Speaker 2: Only when I moved to America and then Europe, I
Speaker 2: really realized that the promoter, as rich as he was
Speaker 2: in his great he never left town like Don Law
Speaker 2: made a fortune living in Boston or and whoever they Larry,
Speaker 2: Larry Maggott and Philly Merrick Leberberg in Germany. So their market,
Speaker 2: they were just buying these you know, they were buying
Speaker 2: their market. So this idea that you know that I
Speaker 2: was that that Michael and Canada you were buying tours.
Speaker 2: It just was so foreign to these people because you
Speaker 2: just you never crossed the lines here as you know,
Speaker 2: it was that it was the mafia, right you had Philly,
Speaker 2: you didn't buy a New Jersey, and so I do
Speaker 2: think out of necessity in Canada because you didn't buy Toronto,
Speaker 2: you bought the world. Michael broke that model for me
Speaker 2: and Cole and Jerry Baird and Omar and myself and
Speaker 2: Steve Herman. We just that's the model we thought was right.
Speaker 2: So I think that did excel us because I think
Speaker 2: it when I was sitting in the room, I was
Speaker 2: able to talk about a bit more complexity than just
Speaker 2: one market. And and and in Canada, uh, you know,
Speaker 2: you had Quebec, you had some different geographies. You know,
Speaker 2: you had the second largest landmass in the world, so
Speaker 2: it wasn't like they were close markets. So you were
Speaker 2: mine a gena cross country business. And I think that
Speaker 2: was really really in the concert world that was so decentralized.
Speaker 2: Still that that and still is still there's still a
Speaker 2: fight for for for the local promoters, you know, versus
Speaker 2: the tour. Still that battle exists. So I think I
Speaker 2: think that kind of just unlocked why the concert business
Speaker 2: moved fast with with Michael and that CPI model. When
Speaker 2: he broke that model in the Stones and kind of
Speaker 2: pushed that forward, we all looked at it and thought
Speaker 2: that was business as usual. I didn't realize till I
Speaker 2: moved here how much they hated us and in terms
Speaker 2: of Michael and that and that model and in the
Speaker 2: Stones and that history of breaking that local model. So
Speaker 2: I guess that that was a bit of it.
Speaker 1: Needless to say, to be an artist, people have no
Speaker 1: idea what a backbreaking job it is. So to what
Speaker 1: degree are residencies like Harry styles And to what degree
Speaker 1: is Vegas where the act, where the audience comes to
Speaker 1: the act. Is that just going to be a stasis thing?
Speaker 1: Is that going to grow?
Speaker 2: Well? As a side note, you just hit on one
Speaker 2: thing on going back to pricing, you're dead right these artists.
Speaker 2: First of all, to go on the road right now
Speaker 2: is expensive, and to run a venue is expensive. But
Speaker 2: as you know, everything is increased dramatically. I mean every
Speaker 2: costs went up. If you look at the ticket price
Speaker 2: increases from twenty nineteen to today, know they've gone up
Speaker 2: nineteen percent, but so did labor, rentals, lighting, transportation, and gas. Right,
Speaker 2: so the costs are expensive for these artists. They're all in.
Speaker 2: They all want to have the greatest production arms race,
Speaker 2: so their production costs are intense. Now you can see
Speaker 2: Taylor's show or Beyonce's, but Dona is what they put
Speaker 2: on that stage. It's crazy expensive. So you are right
Speaker 2: there are I think Vegas has unlocked this idea that
Speaker 2: I could I could have a bit of a life
Speaker 2: and still deliver an incredible gross So I think Adele
Speaker 2: really really took it to the next level of being
Speaker 2: a modern artist that could have just done a stadium
Speaker 2: tour and decided to sit in Vegas for a while.
Speaker 2: So I think you're going to see, you know, the
Speaker 2: Harry style fifteen fifteen venue, fifteen amphitheaters or a fifteen arenas.
Speaker 2: But I would back up and say, every artist that
Speaker 2: you talk to knows that ultimately, when they get to
Speaker 2: the market, they make lifelong fans. You don't make a
Speaker 2: lifelong fan on Spotify. You make it when you show
Speaker 2: up at the city and they see you in stage
Speaker 2: and live. So every artist will still talk to me
Speaker 2: about they got to go play the world like they
Speaker 2: get that model now. I think once you've done it
Speaker 2: a few times, yes, then you can start saying do
Speaker 2: I need to go back to South America or can
Speaker 2: I I'm going to do thirty dates and I'm going
Speaker 2: to pick five cities. So I think you're going to
Speaker 2: see a bit of those models where the artists will say,
Speaker 2: you know what, I'll play five markets. I'll play London
Speaker 2: and you know, New York and Miami and Brazil and
Speaker 2: try to do more residency that way. So I do
Speaker 2: think the cost of production, transportation and the wear and tear.
Speaker 2: I think you'll start to see some of those models
Speaker 2: emerge where they won't do the one hundred dates, so
Speaker 2: they'll do sixty, but they'll be in five cities, not
Speaker 2: fifty cities. But I would say it all depends on
Speaker 2: your life cycle, right. Every artist knows Coldplay knows right
Speaker 2: now that they're making worldwide, global fans for life. They'll
Speaker 2: run around the world. Maybe there's a point where they say, Okay,
Speaker 2: we won't run as far now that we've done it,
Speaker 2: but they all know they got to go. They all
Speaker 2: everyone in the touring business, and you know, it has
Speaker 2: the stories of the artists that didn't do it and
Speaker 2: why they're not today able to be that global star.
Speaker 2: And then there's the Metallica model and lars on why
Speaker 2: they're selling and then their brand is so big forever,
Speaker 2: or the U two model, the Stones model. So most
Speaker 2: people look at that model and go, Okay, if I'm
Speaker 2: gonna have longevity, if I'm going to make money forever
Speaker 2: and be a global brand, I got to go actually
Speaker 2: do those one hundred date global tours. But I think
Speaker 2: you're right, there'll be artists now that once you've done
Speaker 2: it three or four times start to say, can I
Speaker 2: still make money doing that sitting down in a city,
Speaker 2: and that's definitely happening.
Speaker 1: Okay, what's the health of the festival mark? You talked
Speaker 1: about that great on sale in Brazil. So we had
Speaker 1: a couple of huge festivals Coachella, Lallapalooza, bon Aru, and
Speaker 1: then there were a million imitators. What's the health of
Speaker 1: the market now?
Speaker 2: You know, if you'd asked me a few years ago,
Speaker 2: I might have said I was worried that there was
Speaker 2: the headline, kind of the big ones that made it,
Speaker 2: and there were a lot in the middle trying to
Speaker 2: be big but didn't have soul. What I see today is,
Speaker 2: you know, if you are the if you've crossed the
Speaker 2: line like Coachella obviously has, or Lollapalooza, Blastonbury, E d C.
Speaker 2: They seem to be passage to rite. So they there
Speaker 2: there's and there's Rock and Rio and Brazil and Rector
Speaker 2: in Belgium. There tends to be one of those in
Speaker 2: every market and they're reading leads. They're fine. I think
Speaker 2: where the market got smart and we're seeing successes. Oh
Speaker 2: quickly the market whoever you are, realized you can't just
Speaker 2: rent this field and put Drake, Billy, Joel and little
Speaker 2: weighing on like that kind of idea that there was
Speaker 2: that was happening everywhere the festivals had, you know, wherever
Speaker 2: they were, we had some, everyone had them. And I
Speaker 2: think quickly those those got killed. Quickly you you realize
Speaker 2: you lost three million bucks who you didn't stand for anything.
Speaker 2: And and then what happened, though I'm seeing now is
Speaker 2: they quickly went to these one and two days, these
Speaker 2: nicher ideas that have more focus, and we're having a
Speaker 2: really really big success with these this year. You know
Speaker 2: when when we were young, last year in Vegas and
Speaker 2: again this year one day, two day festival, but really
Speaker 2: meant to be a one day tim Sweewood's got a few.
Speaker 2: We got this year, C and C. We just did
Speaker 2: one on the weekend. Charlie Walker texted me, I didn't
Speaker 2: even know we're doing in Texas a one day. So
Speaker 2: what I'm seeing is either you were already made it
Speaker 2: to the big big league and you're established and you
Speaker 2: just got to keep reinventing that brand and do what
Speaker 2: you do at the top end, or you're probably playing
Speaker 2: for a local or a niche idea that bottle Rock,
Speaker 2: for example, where or the market or the idea is
Speaker 2: niche enough to be a better experience, But it's probably
Speaker 2: a one day, maybe it's two on a on a
Speaker 2: good day. But so I think you've seen a lot
Speaker 2: of those pop up now where the risk is less.
Speaker 2: You're not betting on a three day, fourteen million dollar
Speaker 2: all in idea that's that's this multi genre festival. I
Speaker 2: think those are dyed. You've got to now be a
Speaker 2: more single shot festival that stands for something. And that
Speaker 2: idea that festivals, you know, that old idea that you
Speaker 2: could you know, put in the middle of anywhere. It
Speaker 2: doesn't work anymore. Like you've got to put that festival
Speaker 2: where you and I want to go on Saturday anyways.
Speaker 2: So why it works in Vegas, why it works in
Speaker 2: Palm Springs. But you can't put them in the middle
Speaker 2: of nowhere anymore. People want to want to want to
Speaker 2: go to either a destination or a town or a
Speaker 2: location where it's already got built in cool factor or destination.
Speaker 2: So so I think it's actually in a good space
Speaker 2: because I think a lot of we had a lot
Speaker 2: in the middle. We had some of those in the
Speaker 2: middle where you're bent and big. You're trying to be
Speaker 2: the next Coachella. You're never going to get there. You're
Speaker 2: trying to be the next Law of Palooza. So you're
Speaker 2: almost stuck in the middle. You don't stand for any
Speaker 2: you know, I always joke with my team, you know,
Speaker 2: a bad logo, a Ferris Will, an artist village and
Speaker 2: free headliners and they think they have magic, right, and
Speaker 2: it was formula, but it wasn't standing for anything. So
Speaker 2: we're seeing in the UK here Europe, if you're starting
Speaker 2: smaller and simpler, you're you're probably going to have success.
Speaker 2: And you're also in our view you can start five
Speaker 2: or six of those a year and if two don't
Speaker 2: make it, you're not You're not going down for ten millions.
Speaker 2: They're simpler to start more and if they got a
Speaker 2: flash like whence we were young. When we were young
Speaker 2: was on you. We put one day on an epssee
Speaker 2: one hundred and forty thousand tickets. If you hit a
Speaker 2: little mark an idea that can run, then you can
Speaker 2: run with it. But you don't start in a multi
Speaker 2: genre big idea. So top Pen seems to be doing
Speaker 2: we Coachella did well We're having a record year in Lollapalooza,
Speaker 2: Bonna rue is roared back, so I'm thrilled. I mean,
Speaker 2: the lawas outside of America are doing really well. Rock
Speaker 2: and rear, so the big boys and kind of the
Speaker 2: established ones seem to be doing really well this year.
Speaker 2: And I think if you're starting something smaller and niche,
Speaker 2: you're probably going to be Okay, what we miss?
Speaker 1: What do you have to tell my audience that we
Speaker 1: didn't cover? Well?
Speaker 2: I think we talked. I mean, listen, I think the
Speaker 2: idea that you know, it's as we're not a perfect business,
Speaker 2: but I think the industry of the venues and the
Speaker 2: cost that they're incurring, I don't think, you know, I
Speaker 2: think people just have not that everyone's going to understand
Speaker 2: or have a sympathy. But being a guy that owns
Speaker 2: a lot of venues, I looked at my venues this morning.
Speaker 2: You know, my amphitheaters. We you and I have talked
Speaker 2: about this before. My Amphitheater's lost one hundred and forty
Speaker 2: three million dollars at the door. So you wonder why
Speaker 2: I have a twenty dollars service fee right That means
Speaker 2: I'm paying not just the one hundred percent of the door.
Speaker 2: I'm paying one hundred and something percent of the door, right,
Speaker 2: So you got to pay for that somehow, right, So
Speaker 2: you got to pay for the perky and the booze
Speaker 2: that you know, the food. So this is an industry
Speaker 2: where your capex is going up, your costs are going up,
Speaker 2: and your artists costs are going up. So guess what
Speaker 2: that means. The fees are going to go up or
Speaker 2: revenue has to be generated to cover the costs. None
Speaker 2: of them are none of them are are evil in themselves.
Speaker 2: They're all part of the plot that says, to put
Speaker 2: a great show on in a great venue with the
Speaker 2: right staff and the and the insurance and the capex
Speaker 2: and all the things that come with putting a show on,
Speaker 2: it costs this much. And I think we're finally as
Speaker 2: an industry ready. I think we will move towards that
Speaker 2: all in because my my point is the artists should
Speaker 2: take all the money they deserve it, they should charge more,
Speaker 2: and the venues deserve to figure out how to pay
Speaker 2: for those venues and put that show on. So I
Speaker 2: just think as an industry, we've got to be presented
Speaker 2: it in a way that we can no longer proceed
Speaker 2: with because it's not defendable the way it's broken out today.
Speaker 2: So I think that's you know, you've been always it's
Speaker 2: a complex problem. I mean, I meet with you meet
Speaker 2: with a Senator, a congressman. They look at you and like,
Speaker 2: oh my god, the service fee, and you try to
Speaker 2: explain why the service fee at this, you know, and
Speaker 2: then you talk about the hockey game down the street
Speaker 2: and why the service fee and who the scalper is
Speaker 2: and why the scalper. I mean, it's a complex industry,
Speaker 2: hard to win any public opinion polls on explaining it.
Speaker 2: So it's a challenge in that front. But I do think,
Speaker 2: you know, we talk about the crisis in the last
Speaker 2: year has been our opportunity to actually start talking about
Speaker 2: it because I think I think will be better for
Speaker 2: it in the end, whether it's all in pricing the fair,
Speaker 2: some legislation will happen around secondary. There's enough movement now
Speaker 2: around that I think there'll be something that'll come around
Speaker 2: all in and or secondary. So I think that's a
Speaker 2: step forward because it's a sideshow to the actual great
Speaker 2: growth that the industry has.
Speaker 1: And what do you look for in hiring somebody, you know, it's.
Speaker 2: It's always a challenger. Your batting rate is fifty sixty percent,
Speaker 2: it's usually the the IQ is easily, it's usually I'm
Speaker 2: looking for EQ. Right. A lot of smart, smart people
Speaker 2: can get things done. But this is a rare industry
Speaker 2: where you can. You can come from Harvard, it don't matter.
Speaker 2: Can you actually get things done with people? You know?
Speaker 2: I joke that I, you know, I went to university
Speaker 2: and got an accounting a psychology degree, and I need
Speaker 2: them both every day here because this is not about.
Speaker 2: This isn't whether I have great strategy. I tomorrow could
Speaker 2: write down the April fruls idea you had, which was fabulous.
Speaker 2: I could give you the thirteen things we should do
Speaker 2: tomorrow to make this a better industry. It's irrelevant because
Speaker 2: I got get a lot. I got to herd a
Speaker 2: lot of cats. We got to move a whole industry
Speaker 2: and a lot of agendas at odds, and we got
Speaker 2: to find like common ground that we can move it
Speaker 2: somewhere forward and move the business forward. So we get
Speaker 2: lots you know, we'll hire them in sponsorship sometime and
Speaker 2: they'll come from somewhere and they have these great ideas
Speaker 2: and you know if we could just get Beyonce it
Speaker 2: on stage to do its like, Okay, that's not going
Speaker 2: to work. So you know, it's a it's an industry
Speaker 2: where you know, you got to understand and bring people
Speaker 2: in that definitely have the IQ. But can they manage
Speaker 2: understand our industry well enough to make sure we can
Speaker 2: move the people, manage the egos involved, put your egos
Speaker 2: and hopefully try to get something done.
Speaker 1: Okay, you're in your mid fifties. How long are you
Speaker 1: going to do this? This is a business where people
Speaker 1: tend to work in touring until they drop, unlike on
Speaker 1: the record side. And as we've discussed before, you know
Speaker 1: Liberty has a position in Live Nation. Greg mcfay is
Speaker 1: active as they have in Serious they have other interests.
Speaker 1: Could you ever be tempted to take a different job,
Speaker 1: another job?
Speaker 2: Well, so you know Greg does read your emails because
Speaker 2: he forwarded me or April Foles. So I didn't He said,
Speaker 2: I didn't think I had any See I must have power.
Speaker 2: Now Liberty has been a Greg and John have been
Speaker 2: incredible shareholders. They've been fabulous shareholders today. No, I think
Speaker 2: this is listen. I think the you got to be
Speaker 2: self aware as the CEOs to trust me, I don't
Speaker 2: take anything for grant in it. I know I'm not
Speaker 2: on the golf course. I get. I I don't do
Speaker 2: this for money. I do it because I love it.
Speaker 2: But I do think I think we have another chapter left.
Speaker 2: So I think there's I think there's another another move
Speaker 2: and another chapter left. We you know, when I launched
Speaker 2: this company, we're a few hundred million dollars market cap.
Speaker 2: We we started to build, we went global. Ticketmaster was
Speaker 2: a huge moment to differentiate our business. I think I
Speaker 2: got a few other moves in the in the playbook
Speaker 2: still that can make us a different business. So I'd
Speaker 2: like I'd like to I'd like to, you know, this
Speaker 2: new five year deal I have, I think we got
Speaker 2: some some moves left in the tank in this five years.
Speaker 2: I'm certainly not going to go run another business at
Speaker 2: this level, you know. I you know, I guess never
Speaker 2: as long and I love Disney and other companies, But
Speaker 2: I don't think I'm I'm I think I got I
Speaker 2: think I got a trick or two left here that
Speaker 2: we can unlock and make this an exciting place. And
Speaker 2: I think that's the way I finished the game.
Speaker 1: Okay, Michael, thanks so much for taking the time to
Speaker 1: speak to my audience. You've been very open and honest
Speaker 1: and forthcoming, and I thank you for that.
Speaker 2: Thank you, Bob, much appreciated.
Speaker 1: Until next time. This is Bob left Sets