Speaker 1: Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to the Bob Less Sets podcast.
Speaker 1: My guest today is the most powerful person in the
Speaker 1: music business, the CEO and president of Live Nation, Michael Rappino. Michael,
Speaker 1: good to have you on. Thank you, Bob Long. Also
Speaker 1: to appreciate the time. Okay, I know you're a voracious
Speaker 1: reader of business books. What are you reading right now?
Speaker 1: Oh that's a good question. Um, what's my latest? Um,
Speaker 1: I'm right now reading, but I'm actually, I won't want
Speaker 1: to say i'm reading. I'm I'm pretty deep into podcast now,
Speaker 1: so I'm I run every day and I'm podcast for
Speaker 1: my game. Um. And I have found this very smart
Speaker 1: Canadian guy, of course, uh Shane Parrish the Knowledge Project.
Speaker 1: I find him fascinating. He goes very deep all amongst
Speaker 1: a lot of different, uh kind of strains of life.
Speaker 1: So he's he's been my latest obsession and I've been
Speaker 1: going deep on him on YouTube and podcasts. What do
Speaker 1: you learn from him? He's a real thinker. So his
Speaker 1: whole his whole business is about The Knowledge Project is
Speaker 1: just a lot about how do you make decisions? How
Speaker 1: do you think about life? How do you how do
Speaker 1: you make the tough uh life decisions, business decisions. So
Speaker 1: he he kind of uses that framework amongst all the
Speaker 1: different candidates whoever they they're interviewed. So I like his
Speaker 1: real methodical thinking. Okay, there's been uh talk recently that
Speaker 1: the head of Google the lays decisions to the company's detriment.
Speaker 1: How do you make a decision? And how fast or
Speaker 1: slow do you make a decision? Uh? No, that's I
Speaker 1: think that's a really valid point I have. I've been
Speaker 1: all about the speed of decisions since my early days.
Speaker 1: I had a young as a young young executive, I
Speaker 1: had a great mentor who really drilled in that idea
Speaker 1: that you know, a seventy good fast decision moves the organization.
Speaker 1: Um so so so do it. So I'm a pretty
Speaker 1: good distiller. So I'm pretty obsessed with making fast, quick
Speaker 1: decisions with enough information, enough detail, um to keep things moving.
Speaker 1: So fully agree with you. That would be an ongoing
Speaker 1: pet peeve of mind. Make make make enough, make the
Speaker 1: decisions with enough information to keep things moving. We can
Speaker 1: fail fast. What's the worst decision you've made? Probably the
Speaker 1: same ones that I made too fast? Um listen, and
Speaker 1: Italian blood inside of me gets the emotion going. So
Speaker 1: I'm probably like everyone else. The decision I've made that
Speaker 1: was probably fueled on emotion and didn't spend a few
Speaker 1: extra hours or days um thinking that one through was
Speaker 1: probably the ones that have gotten me in trouble. So
Speaker 1: anything that was emotion driven and I didn't digest enough, uh,
Speaker 1: is the ones that got me in trouble over my days.
Speaker 1: And do you find you should trust your instincts or
Speaker 1: after you gather more infer information, do you ultimately make
Speaker 1: a different decision which is better? No? I think I
Speaker 1: don't live in a lot of regrets, so I I
Speaker 1: believe still in the end of the day, the speed
Speaker 1: of the decision process wins out long term. We now
Speaker 1: none of us hit you know, a hundred percent. So
Speaker 1: if you get seventy percent of those decisions right, but
Speaker 1: you're moving everyone forward. I mean my organization, the employees,
Speaker 1: you see it. They just want decisions good, bad, or
Speaker 1: and different. They want they want direction and decisions and
Speaker 1: they want decision makers. And most of the time that's uh,
Speaker 1: that's the part that that they look for. So jeez,
Speaker 1: over the last eighteen months, it was all about decisions.
Speaker 1: I didn't know which ones are going to be right,
Speaker 1: and wrong, but they wanted answers and we had to
Speaker 1: make decisions, and we got probably seventy percent of them. Right. Okay,
Speaker 1: let's talk about the last year and a half. What
Speaker 1: do we know March Live Nation the long with the
Speaker 1: stock market in general crashes, it ultimately rebounds, but then
Speaker 1: it goes through the roof. But there were no shows.
Speaker 1: Why does the stock go through the roof when there
Speaker 1: are no shows and no income? Right? The great question? Right?
Speaker 1: The uh, the the anticipation, you know, listen, I don't
Speaker 1: want to get into all the math, but I think
Speaker 1: the real reality was. You know, Live Nation has been
Speaker 1: public for fifteen years, so I'm gonna say for ten
Speaker 1: of those years we were eight dollars. People didn't quite
Speaker 1: understand us. Um, they didn't get the market. And I
Speaker 1: had been preaching experience economy for for many years and
Speaker 1: how important the live show was and that that we
Speaker 1: were this these social creatures and getting gathering for these
Speaker 1: two hours were magical. Um. And only the last three
Speaker 1: or four years did my start my stock start to
Speaker 1: respond as we kind of produced good results in the market.
Speaker 1: Went I get this thing called experience economy and live
Speaker 1: the live events very powerful so we were already on
Speaker 1: our way up, you know, seventies six or whatever before
Speaker 1: the crisis. So we had already got good investor credibility
Speaker 1: that we had delivered what we said we're going to deliver,
Speaker 1: and they started to really understand this thing called live.
Speaker 1: As you know, Bob, the market had talked about recorded
Speaker 1: music for fifty years, so we were always kind of
Speaker 1: the step child to the story. Only the last five
Speaker 1: years I think that the market go. You know, this
Speaker 1: thing called live at Live Nation is a is a
Speaker 1: real credible big business and it's is important to the artist,
Speaker 1: as is the record business. So we had already built
Speaker 1: up the credibility. You're right, Mark, the market crashes, everybody
Speaker 1: drops and we do no shows. So why does our
Speaker 1: stock go up? Well at that point, you know, a
Speaker 1: few interesting things happened. You know, when the when the
Speaker 1: crisis happened, there were people on the wall street and
Speaker 1: elsewhere that we're saying, oh my god, no one's gonna
Speaker 1: ever gather again. It's over. We're all going to be,
Speaker 1: you know, living in our houses forever. No one's going
Speaker 1: to go to a movie, theater or a concert. And yeah,
Speaker 1: I always remember it was the May long week end,
Speaker 1: and there was the CNN reports from late I think
Speaker 1: was the Ozak Lakes where everyone was partying like crazy
Speaker 1: and in the middle of this crisis with no vaccine,
Speaker 1: that that moment still showed that no matter how dangerous
Speaker 1: it was, people still wanted to gather, people wanted to
Speaker 1: get out. And so the market started to realize, Wow,
Speaker 1: this is really gonna be a pent up demand situation.
Speaker 1: When when we can gather, it's clear people want to gather,
Speaker 1: They're gonna run back, They're gonna want to come back.
Speaker 1: Two shows, um Disneyland, all the good things they do.
Speaker 1: When when when knife normal? So I started, so we
Speaker 1: started to see that. The second big news was when
Speaker 1: the crisis happened. We modeled out probably fifty to seventy
Speaker 1: percent refund rate. We assumed that the world was gonna
Speaker 1: want their tickets back, given the economy was about to
Speaker 1: take a hit again. Two months later, I got an
Speaker 1: earnings call and I tell the Wall Street that we've
Speaker 1: only had I think at that point was seven percent
Speaker 1: refund rates. This idea that you would sell all these
Speaker 1: tickets in the middle of a crisis, and people held
Speaker 1: onto that ticket. That was probably the most important fact
Speaker 1: that if you were an investor, you went, there must
Speaker 1: be something magical about a live show that while everyone
Speaker 1: is unemployed, sitting at home, worried about gathering there holding
Speaker 1: onto that Billie Eilish ticket, they're not gonna sell it.
Speaker 1: So this, this must be a magical moment in their lives.
Speaker 1: This must be important to them, Um and um. So
Speaker 1: you added that in that started to get investors realized.
Speaker 1: You remember Wall Streets buying the future, not the present.
Speaker 1: So you don't buy your stock today worried about what
Speaker 1: my company is gonna do this month, you buy it there.
Speaker 1: So if you're an investor looking at Live Nation, you
Speaker 1: probably said, wow, I think this live experience business in
Speaker 1: general is going to boom. We're seeing that happen. I
Speaker 1: think that the low refund rate definitely delivers that factual story.
Speaker 1: And then we did our own work. We went in
Speaker 1: and cut a lot of costs, and we were able
Speaker 1: to tell Wall Street that when we do come back,
Speaker 1: we've had the luxury of having some time off, we're
Speaker 1: gonna operate a bit more efficiently. We've We've said to
Speaker 1: the Wall Street will will you know We'll still do
Speaker 1: the same amount of shows but on a smaller cost basis.
Speaker 1: So if you're an investor and you're already valued me
Speaker 1: at seventy five dollars going into the crisis, you sat
Speaker 1: here and said, what do I think about the future.
Speaker 1: I think they're gonna be leaner than than they were
Speaker 1: before they went in, so they'll make a bit more money.
Speaker 1: I think there's a boom happening, and this thing called
Speaker 1: live must be really really valuable to customers because there's
Speaker 1: not even cashing it in in one of the greatest
Speaker 1: crisis is in history. I want to bet on this category,
Speaker 1: and I want to bet on the market leader, so
Speaker 1: that I think of anything. Sometimes the digital reality of
Speaker 1: everyone staying home had happened proved to a lot of
Speaker 1: investors how important that the social uh concert experience really
Speaker 1: is and how endearing it is to the customers. And
Speaker 1: we're seeing that playoff. What do you think the value
Speaker 1: of Live Nation is? Is her head room? Yeah, I've
Speaker 1: always believed that, you know, we're we're this incredible listen.
Speaker 1: I believe in Live for a long time. So I've
Speaker 1: been saying this, you know, for many many years. Um,
Speaker 1: I think recorded has its side of the world. But
Speaker 1: I think live is is very very unique. It's if
Speaker 1: you think about live music, it's the only unduplicate herble
Speaker 1: asset that's really survived this entertainment revolution. Everything else is
Speaker 1: pretty much got duplicated and digitized, UM and and and
Speaker 1: that's great. But two hours, Bob as you know those
Speaker 1: goose bumps you get when you watch the Eagles, um,
Speaker 1: you don't get that on an iPad. So we have
Speaker 1: this very unique industry that is non duplicatable um in
Speaker 1: in a in a world where everything else has become duplicate,
Speaker 1: herble and commoditized. I think this category has a long life.
Speaker 1: It's been you know, since the Caveman days. We've been
Speaker 1: dancing around music. I think my ten year old, my
Speaker 1: eight year old can't wait to go to a concert.
Speaker 1: And now they find them differently. They you know, the
Speaker 1: YouTube TikTok, all the different ways they're discovering it has changed.
Speaker 1: But they still want to go see post Malone um
Speaker 1: at a live show. They still want to see it.
Speaker 1: So I believe that the future of live is stronger
Speaker 1: than ever two is. You know this from your record days.
Speaker 1: Live was really unexploited because it wasn't a global business.
Speaker 1: Live followed the record business, so for thirty or forty years,
Speaker 1: you only toured where you sold records, which basically meant
Speaker 1: you were a US Western Europe business. That's all the
Speaker 1: labels cared about in generally for thirty or forty years.
Speaker 1: The minute the Internet unlocked, the fan um was everywhere.
Speaker 1: So Rihanna has two hundred million followers regardless of where
Speaker 1: her record was sold. She's got, you know, thirty million
Speaker 1: followers in Brazil, so now we can go to Brazil
Speaker 1: and sell out stadiums. We weren't able to be a
Speaker 1: global business before because we really could only go tour
Speaker 1: where the record label was selling the record, promoting the album,
Speaker 1: buying the airplay. Overnight that nineteen year old and Mala
Speaker 1: and Cape Town uh Is discovered the artist on their own,
Speaker 1: and now that fan is global. So our business has
Speaker 1: been booming because as big as you think Live Nation is,
Speaker 1: we're market share on a global basis. Were we got
Speaker 1: lots of markets that are on fire and going to
Speaker 1: grow over the next ten years that are just finally
Speaker 1: getting great venues in South America, South Eastern Europe, Asia, UM,
Speaker 1: so it'll be a global business. UM. Lots of growth
Speaker 1: globally for the next you know, multiple years, as as
Speaker 1: the infrastructure gets built and the artist goes global. So
Speaker 1: this industry has got a lot of upside in it.
Speaker 1: So who owns Live Nation stock? Can you break it
Speaker 1: down us generally? Yeah, it's so it's obviously a public
Speaker 1: company traded uh, you know, freely stock. The Liberty Media,
Speaker 1: which the Liberty Media was an investor in I a c.
Speaker 1: Which was ticket Master, so they owned fifteen percent of Ticketmaster.
Speaker 1: When we merged with Ticketmaster, we uh we inherited the
Speaker 1: Liberty Media, uh, which is John Malone, Greg Mfei. So
Speaker 1: they've been there now the last I don't know eight
Speaker 1: years or so. They've increased their stake and they currently
Speaker 1: own thirty of Live Nation and then seventy percent of
Speaker 1: Live Nation is freely traded amongst uh, you know, the
Speaker 1: public and institutions. Okay Malone and the name of the
Speaker 1: company has changed a few times, but he made his
Speaker 1: money in the cable business and has had great success.
Speaker 1: His right end person is Greg Maffey, who's chairman of
Speaker 1: the Live Nation board. So what does he do or
Speaker 1: what input would he might have that would influence the
Speaker 1: direction of the company or you're thinking, well, listen, I
Speaker 1: don't want to undersell or oversell. You know a board,
Speaker 1: Liberty has been incredible shareholder and John Malone and Greg
Speaker 1: I give them full credit because they play long um
Speaker 1: and UM and they they always let the operator and
Speaker 1: the CEE do his job. And John's history has been
Speaker 1: clear on that. Whether you've seen the recent days David
Speaker 1: zaslof move that John controls Mike Freeze most most of
Speaker 1: his history is about backing good CEO s um and
Speaker 1: letting them do what they do. So they've been incredible shareholders.
Speaker 1: I mean again, when we were eight bucks and ten bucks,
Speaker 1: not once would gregor John talk about the stock price.
Speaker 1: So we just talked about how we're going to grow
Speaker 1: the company. So they've been great, real long term shareholders.
Speaker 1: That's the best thing you can help for in any
Speaker 1: equity or any debt you have, is that they're playing
Speaker 1: long along with you. UM. Given I'm playing long my
Speaker 1: entire equity since I started this company fifteen years ago,
Speaker 1: and what public has been about my equity, not my
Speaker 1: pay So I'm only playing for long term equity, and
Speaker 1: you want your shareholders playing for that. So they've been great.
Speaker 1: Greg is is that. You know, we've had multiple chairman
Speaker 1: now Greg has been the chairman. He's been very supportive UM.
Speaker 1: But Liberty does not bother me in any operational part
Speaker 1: at all, and and a board doesn't do that, that's
Speaker 1: not their job. We we meet four times a year
Speaker 1: and we talked about long term strategy. How are we
Speaker 1: going to grow the company. What are the opportunities to
Speaker 1: grow it? What do I need? What does the company need?
Speaker 1: What resources? UM to help grow our vision? So we
Speaker 1: set the strategy internal. We we show up at board
Speaker 1: meetings with our vision, our long term plan, and their
Speaker 1: job is to ask the tough questions to make it
Speaker 1: a better plan and then ultimately support it. But zero
Speaker 1: operation input, only long term resource input. Now, one thing
Speaker 1: you know, we live in the era of disinformation and
Speaker 1: misinformation is we've discussed previously, Liberty cannot literally take over
Speaker 1: all the stock. There's a limit on their percentage. Can
Speaker 1: you explain that? Yeah, I mean it's we We ended
Speaker 1: up inheriting a shareholder agreement that was the Ticketmaster I
Speaker 1: A C to sharehold agreement. So when we when they
Speaker 1: merged in with us, we inherited it. Liberty two board
Speaker 1: seats and maximum equity ownership UM. And that's that's kind
Speaker 1: of where they are at, and we've been thrilled to
Speaker 1: have them at that UM. So they can't buy more
Speaker 1: stock in theory under the shareholder agreement UM. And that's uh,
Speaker 1: you know that's kind of been in place now for
Speaker 1: ten plus years and and we'll will exist as long
Speaker 1: as as the board and and Liberty think it makes sense. Okay,
Speaker 1: need let's just say Live Nation is a public company.
Speaker 1: Do you do have quarterly earnings reports? To what? How
Speaker 1: much of your time is based on servicing Wall Street?
Speaker 1: Obviously you're on the calls, but and you have a CFO,
Speaker 1: how much of your time does it take? Doesn't take
Speaker 1: much of my time. I got a great team, and
Speaker 1: you know, you build a great team around you. You know,
Speaker 1: we've been public for fifteen years now, so this is
Speaker 1: this is not a new skill to us, if you
Speaker 1: want to call it. It's uh, it's baked into our
Speaker 1: DNA and corporate staff. So Joe, Joe Burtof is my
Speaker 1: president CFO. His team is amazing. They do all the
Speaker 1: hard work, all the audit work, all of the financial work,
Speaker 1: all the preparation for the reports. I have limited UM,
Speaker 1: you know, input into all of that. In terms of
Speaker 1: the governance of it. My job is to set the
Speaker 1: vision and deal with the future of the business and
Speaker 1: the strategy of the business. So it doesn't take a
Speaker 1: lot of my time. It absolutely takes a lot of
Speaker 1: their time. And if you worked in their department, they
Speaker 1: would tell you that's a that's a lot of work.
Speaker 1: But it's a contained corporate group that works with them
Speaker 1: to get those reports done and are earning earning is done.
Speaker 1: But you know, listen, a G I'm sure is no different.
Speaker 1: I'm sure Phil is not letting them off the hook
Speaker 1: very easily. I'm sure they're preparing week monthly and J
Speaker 1: and others are answering to Denver and preparing um whatever
Speaker 1: they've got to prepare in a monthly and a bi
Speaker 1: monthly basis to to keep growing their business. So anytime
Speaker 1: you get to a certain state big someone is asking
Speaker 1: where the where the businesses and looking for ongoing reports.
Speaker 1: So I just say that in the sense of I've
Speaker 1: never I always have said I don't don't find public
Speaker 1: being a negative on my business. I I've always said
Speaker 1: I think being public has been a great, great advantage
Speaker 1: to my business. For the last fifteen years, UM, because
Speaker 1: it does take you out of the bubble that you
Speaker 1: live in in the music business, and it makes you
Speaker 1: better because ultimately, when you're dealing with Wall Street or investors, UM,
Speaker 1: they don't care that I know, UM, you know, Bano.
Speaker 1: What they care about is what's the business all doing?
Speaker 1: What what what's the prospects of the business. How are
Speaker 1: you going to grow the business. So it does get
Speaker 1: you out of that bubble of music relevance that we
Speaker 1: all think we live in. And then you have to
Speaker 1: cross that street and talk to adults about what is
Speaker 1: your really your business and what's the core of your
Speaker 1: business and how are you going to grow your business?
Speaker 1: And I think that's made us healthy because we've been
Speaker 1: able to keep one ft in the core of what
Speaker 1: the business is about, but also step outside of the
Speaker 1: echo chamber of Hollywood and the music business and talk
Speaker 1: about our business from a more strategic perspective. UM. And
Speaker 1: I think that's made us good. UM. And also you know,
Speaker 1: as you you've seen, we gotta wake up four times
Speaker 1: a year and and deliver and talk out loud about
Speaker 1: what we're gonna do and actually deliver that UM. So
Speaker 1: that accountability um, his, I think made us, made us
Speaker 1: a much better company. Okay, Now the average punter would say,
Speaker 1: you want a company with no debt. I remember when
Speaker 1: Irving was still working at Live Nations says, you know,
Speaker 1: if you have no debt, you have a lazy balance
Speaker 1: sheet and you're right for a takeover. How much debt
Speaker 1: does Live Nation have? And what's its philosophy and debt?
Speaker 1: For those who really don't understand, can you play that
Speaker 1: out a little bit right? Yeah? That was my famous
Speaker 1: first earnings call when we went public in two thousand five,
Speaker 1: I was and we spun out of clear channel. They
Speaker 1: were gonna I remember going to add add four or
Speaker 1: fion in debt to us, and I convinced Randall and
Speaker 1: Mark May's that we didn't want that debt. I wanted
Speaker 1: to start with a fresh, clean slate so we could
Speaker 1: build our business. And Randall Mace was still on my
Speaker 1: board was supportive. So I'm very proud that I have
Speaker 1: no debt. And my first earnings call, an analyst gets
Speaker 1: on and says, you have a lazy balance sheet, and
Speaker 1: I had no idea what he was talking about. Only
Speaker 1: on on the earnings call would you find out that
Speaker 1: no debt was a bad thing. Um So, yes, that's
Speaker 1: the famous lazy balance sheet. UM No. So you know
Speaker 1: that the prospect of debt is simple. You're you're gonna
Speaker 1: grow a company, um and you're gonna ultimately need to
Speaker 1: borrow debt to grow your business as you're building your
Speaker 1: business um. And you know, depending on what error you're
Speaker 1: and what's the cost of debt, and debt historically has
Speaker 1: been fairly cheap. So we look at we look at
Speaker 1: Live Nation. Most companies look at what is your your
Speaker 1: kind of your leverage rate against your profit, your ibada,
Speaker 1: and you never want to be, you know, two over leveraged.
Speaker 1: We've always been somewhere around three times leverage. So that
Speaker 1: would mean whatever my IBADA is, we would have three
Speaker 1: times that in debt. That would be considered a very
Speaker 1: very safe balance sheet, a smart balance sheet because if
Speaker 1: you could borrow to three dollars to help grow your
Speaker 1: company and you can get a better return for that
Speaker 1: debt than what the cost is, you should do that. UM.
Speaker 1: So we've always been on that. We're living right now
Speaker 1: even through this crisis, because we had a conservative balance
Speaker 1: sheet going in. We're probably leveraged that four times and
Speaker 1: at the time we get through twenty two twenty two,
Speaker 1: will start putting paying back down our debt and will
Speaker 1: live somewhere in the three times leverage debt, which would
Speaker 1: be very very conservative. On Wall Street companies you hear
Speaker 1: about that get in trouble would be seven eight time
Speaker 1: leverage on their on their ebitda um. But we've always
Speaker 1: been very conservad it Evan, we'll stay in that same range. Okay,
Speaker 1: let's leave the finance behind for a moment and go
Speaker 1: more down to the street and the consumer level. What
Speaker 1: we hear is America's open for business. Live shows are returning.
Speaker 1: Generally speaking, very few live shows have played of a
Speaker 1: major caliber, not small club shows and not socially distant shows.
Speaker 1: So we had the food fighters at MSG. Certainly Vegas
Speaker 1: is open, but as we talk, the Delta variant is
Speaker 1: raging now. Of the people who are getting that are
Speaker 1: the unvaccinated. But the first question is when can we
Speaker 1: expect or is it still in the balance full playing
Speaker 1: of shows. Well, last weekend was really the start for us.
Speaker 1: Our amphitheater season open last last Friday, so that would
Speaker 1: have been you know, Jimmy Buffett's Luke Bryant sold out
Speaker 1: Amphitheater shows from Boss then all the way down Nashville, etcetera.
Speaker 1: So that that was our first weekend of full twenty seven.
Speaker 1: Amphitheater tours started last weekend, so we're fully kind of
Speaker 1: committed now on across the board. Amphitheater season is full open,
Speaker 1: full capacity UM and our first big festival is in
Speaker 1: two weeks that is Rolling Loud in Miami, a couple
Speaker 1: hundred thousand people. So as of now we're fully open.
Speaker 1: The UK opens on Monday, and we have eleven large
Speaker 1: festivals happening in the UK in the month of August.
Speaker 1: So aside from all of the Delta UH, recent news
Speaker 1: UH seemed to be full, full steam ahead and in
Speaker 1: all states and in the UK. The rest of the
Speaker 1: world looks like it's gonna gonna be a few months
Speaker 1: up until maybe six months behind, depending on where they are.
Speaker 1: But we still still are unscheduled and opening up right
Speaker 1: now across America. Okay, let's just say, if you print
Speaker 1: a disclaimer, let's start from the threshold. Some of these
Speaker 1: acts are printing disclaimers vaccinated people only. Okay, we all
Speaker 1: know that in the honor system there are people who
Speaker 1: slipped through. What is Live Nations feeling about this? And
Speaker 1: where does the liability lie? You have lawyers who say,
Speaker 1: ultimately your disclaimers work where they think they're gonna work,
Speaker 1: or you buy insurance? Is it the act? Is it?
Speaker 1: Live Nation? Amplify that please? I mean it's all it's
Speaker 1: all new territory as you know, Uh, you know what
Speaker 1: I what I like everyone to be vaccinated? Absolutely? Um?
Speaker 1: Is it? Is it? As you know in America, no
Speaker 1: simple system right now from federal to state. Everyone is
Speaker 1: making their own decisions, um and um. And it's you know,
Speaker 1: as you know, it started six months ago where we
Speaker 1: thought everyone was gonna have to vaccine passport. May be
Speaker 1: there're gonna be some minimum requirements to everyone just kind
Speaker 1: of dropped, dropped all requirements and and in a in
Speaker 1: a state to open has opened. So right now we're
Speaker 1: we're in you know, we're following whatever the latest government
Speaker 1: state mandate is. Um. And also as you know, many
Speaker 1: of I work for the artist and many of them
Speaker 1: have some some have different opinions on what they want
Speaker 1: or don't want in terms of vaccine requirements. UM. So
Speaker 1: we've been we're open up now. We don't think that
Speaker 1: the liability is is going to be a factor. Um.
Speaker 1: In the big picture, it's very very you know, everyone's vaccinated,
Speaker 1: everyone has the opportunity to get vaccinated everyone. No one's
Speaker 1: forced to go to a concert. Um. All all of
Speaker 1: those things that happened at that concert or well well disclosed.
Speaker 1: So we don't think right now that there's any not any.
Speaker 1: We don't think there's large liability issues overall. Okay, who
Speaker 1: decides if it's vaccinated? Only show the artist or live
Speaker 1: nation or the building. Pretty much the states right now,
Speaker 1: so as you know, it's Florida, Texas, most states you
Speaker 1: can't demand vaccine requirements. Um. So other than right now
Speaker 1: New York and California, those are the only two states
Speaker 1: who are still some regulations over five thousand seats in
Speaker 1: terms of vaccine. Every other state is pretty much open
Speaker 1: for business, not requiring passports, are not requiring vaccines for
Speaker 1: for large events. So we're following whatever the state regulation
Speaker 1: is is what we've been following. Okay, now talking about
Speaker 1: your SHED shows that played, how was attendance last weekend?
Speaker 1: Was great? We were you know, we really saw after
Speaker 1: July four any of the SHED stuff that wasn't popping
Speaker 1: on the on sale really got a big kick after
Speaker 1: July fourth, and we assume after everyone either saw it
Speaker 1: on TV or felt they were opened up and saw
Speaker 1: the world opening up. That seemed to be kind of
Speaker 1: the next level of validation for customers saying this is real,
Speaker 1: the show is happening, buy a ticket. So last weekend
Speaker 1: we had a record uh kind of weekend, and um,
Speaker 1: we're seeing every day now the raps are doing better
Speaker 1: and better on the amphitheater shows that were some of
Speaker 1: them were stalled, and I think that's a lot of
Speaker 1: confusion in the marketplace and customers weren't sure is it
Speaker 1: going to happen not I have to be vaccinated, don't
Speaker 1: So I think some of that confusion has slowly lifted
Speaker 1: as these shows are actually playing now and people believe
Speaker 1: that there there, we are open for business and what
Speaker 1: is the future of the shed. Certainly when you took
Speaker 1: over and you inherited the buildings, a lot of them,
Speaker 1: a lot of people felt that many of them were
Speaker 1: built on the cheap and they were tired. Where we
Speaker 1: at with this sheds, you know, they continue to be
Speaker 1: an incredible good experience. I mean, they're they're not a
Speaker 1: billion dollar indoor arena like the latest San Francisco arena
Speaker 1: by far. But they are a beautiful place for eighteen
Speaker 1: thousand people to sit outside under the stars and uh
Speaker 1: drink a beer and um smoke a joint if they
Speaker 1: want and watch a show. So we still see the
Speaker 1: vitality of the amphitheater has not waned at all. We've
Speaker 1: had record years coming out of nineteen. Um, so we're
Speaker 1: still you know, we we still believe our fifty amphitheaters
Speaker 1: are real vibrant. We did a lot of work. Really,
Speaker 1: where we had to do the real work, Bob, was
Speaker 1: the programming of them. We had to make sure that
Speaker 1: they weren't just old classic rock. Um. So, I don't know,
Speaker 1: five six years ago we made sure we really you know,
Speaker 1: went after a younger artist, pop artist, hip hop artists,
Speaker 1: make sure we expanded the portfolio and that was successful.
Speaker 1: The business has been strong and eighteen and nineteen were
Speaker 1: record years and we assumed twenty two will be a
Speaker 1: record year. So um, they continue to be a strong
Speaker 1: piece of our business. Um overall, and we're still and
Speaker 1: we're still and we're still opening them. I mean, we
Speaker 1: like developing them. They're they're they're good businesses. Okay, are
Speaker 1: those books nationally or locally? About seventy national local on
Speaker 1: the amphitheaters, and then what about live nation in general?
Speaker 1: When is something book nationally and when is something book locally? Well,
Speaker 1: we have if you do macro numbers, we did about
Speaker 1: thirty thousand shows in forty countries in two thousand nineteen.
Speaker 1: If you just did a national versus local, you would
Speaker 1: have out of those thirty thousand shows, you'd only have
Speaker 1: six or seven thousand toured shows and about twenty five
Speaker 1: thousand local booked. So it is still a local business. Globally,
Speaker 1: you know, the Milan, Italy is the Spain, the Australia's
Speaker 1: there's still the majority of that business is still a
Speaker 1: local book business. The tours we do on the national level,
Speaker 1: we would do, you know, we would only do uh,
Speaker 1: we only do a few global tours a year. We
Speaker 1: do a lot of US tours a year. But it's
Speaker 1: still a local business, a national business, and and then
Speaker 1: last a global business. All moving towards national and global.
Speaker 1: In five years from now and ten years from now
Speaker 1: you and I will talk, those numbers will keep moving
Speaker 1: to central as artists are now especially younger managers look
Speaker 1: at the tour as something that they would want to
Speaker 1: lock in on a national and global basis as a partner. Um.
Speaker 1: So we're seeing a lot of that movement. Okay, tell
Speaker 1: me about the revenue streams. How many revenue streams do
Speaker 1: you have at Live Nation? What's the great line that
Speaker 1: one of the investors used were like a river of nichols. Um,
Speaker 1: you have of a lot, But I mean generally you're
Speaker 1: you know the business model is you we spend six
Speaker 1: billion dollars a year at midnight for those thirty thousand shows.
Speaker 1: Those shows put a hundred million people through our through
Speaker 1: the venues. UM. So once at that course six billion,
Speaker 1: that return is the is the low margin piece. Artists
Speaker 1: are making most of that money um. And then our
Speaker 1: job is to monetize the hundred million people that walk
Speaker 1: through the door. So you have advertising as a big
Speaker 1: business for us. Sponsorship advertising, um, that's a huge, big
Speaker 1: business for us. You have the second biggest is just
Speaker 1: all the incilliary revenue, whether it's the food, the beverage,
Speaker 1: the parking, the rebates when we put shows in um
Speaker 1: in arenas, we've got a rebate system if we put
Speaker 1: so many shows in a year, so putting shows in
Speaker 1: you're getting paid either in your building or someone else's um.
Speaker 1: And and then three would be our service fees at
Speaker 1: Ticketmaster would be our our our our third revenue stream.
Speaker 1: So those are the those are the three big pieces.
Speaker 1: And how do they split up in terms of let's
Speaker 1: call it net in to those three streams, what they conduce,
Speaker 1: they're almost let's you could almost call them thirty three
Speaker 1: percent each in a macro level, they're they're all equally important. Ok, okay,
Speaker 1: just thirty three percent for sponsorship, thirty three percent for
Speaker 1: ticket for the actual show, and the other thirty percent
Speaker 1: we would call ticket Master, Yeah, I ticket Master on
Speaker 1: site and sillerary revenue and thirty three advertising very small,
Speaker 1: very small percent at the door. What was the status
Speaker 1: of sponsorship when you took over fifteen years ago, and
Speaker 1: what is it today? And what does it look like
Speaker 1: and what are the opportunities? It's a great line. You know,
Speaker 1: I looked sponsorship. I mean, listen, I looked at Live
Speaker 1: Nation at the time we were sponsorship was a uh,
Speaker 1: you know, a banner at at an amphitheater. It was
Speaker 1: a it was a you know, I think one of
Speaker 1: the things we did right at Live Nations, we we
Speaker 1: took a lot of things away from the promoter in
Speaker 1: a positive sense. Right, the promoter shouldn't be worried about
Speaker 1: sponsorship and venue management and websites. Here's a pee books
Speaker 1: and market shows. So when we put Russell and built
Speaker 1: a sponsorship division, UM, I think that's that's why far
Speaker 1: been our biggest growth because today you know it is
Speaker 1: servicing CMO CEO relationships. It's a we have an incredible
Speaker 1: ad network that we sell across our platform. We've got
Speaker 1: a measurement system to sell it, to validate the sponsorship
Speaker 1: on site offsite UM. We have incredible on site distribution
Speaker 1: system where you can talk to and target customers and
Speaker 1: and UM and use segmentation to to look use our
Speaker 1: data to really narrow down exactly. So a very professionalized
Speaker 1: business versus banners. I mean, our job is ultimately we're
Speaker 1: trying to sell an audience to a brand. And the
Speaker 1: more you know about the audience and the more you
Speaker 1: can convince them that you can target that audience and
Speaker 1: measure it, the better you're going to do in advertising.
Speaker 1: So we look at our business as a hundred million
Speaker 1: audience it's a huge audience. Advertisers, well, they spend a
Speaker 1: lot of money on TV and digital, that's a different world.
Speaker 1: They're always looking to say, well, how do I touch
Speaker 1: customers directly, whether it's through music, sports, events, UM and
Speaker 1: if we can be the leader by saying listen, were
Speaker 1: not not only want to uh be your partner, but
Speaker 1: we know nineteen to twenty four year old, this demo,
Speaker 1: that knows this UM that has appeals to this target
Speaker 1: and we can reach them on Thursdays at scale, we
Speaker 1: can help you sell Evolvo. I mean, the more targeted
Speaker 1: and the more precise our data is, the better our
Speaker 1: businesses were with the brand. So that would be the
Speaker 1: if you want to simplify it. That's the that's the
Speaker 1: core why we're we we do so well in that
Speaker 1: space is we have a very smart data team, a
Speaker 1: very smart segmentation team, and we're selling the audience, not
Speaker 1: the artist. So we can sell you enough scale to
Speaker 1: UM to advertise on our platform, whether it's on site,
Speaker 1: whether it's through a digital through a email, touch through
Speaker 1: our app, through a through their app, through an event.
Speaker 1: You know, there's a host of ways we can reach
Speaker 1: those hundred million people. For you. But most importantly advertising
Speaker 1: is do you know your customer? Can you tell us
Speaker 1: who your customer is? And can we measure and monitor
Speaker 1: if we're if we're really reaching them with success. Um.
Speaker 1: So that's our ongoing work and and and advancement and
Speaker 1: that in that business. Okay, forty years ago this started
Speaker 1: with the Rolling Stones and jove on what did jo
Speaker 1: Van got? They got their name on the actual ticket.
Speaker 1: Then we had a lot of money coming into sponsorship
Speaker 1: and then all Wa Baddison Avenue pulled back and said,
Speaker 1: we're not sure we're getting value for our money. If
Speaker 1: you have a car, CuPy, you have a deep pocket
Speaker 1: potential sponsor, what is the what are you selling them
Speaker 1: that really works? What works today? You know Jet Generally
Speaker 1: a sponsor is gonna come to us, or brand's gonna
Speaker 1: come to us and say I have a I need
Speaker 1: to reach a target. They know who they want to
Speaker 1: reach obviously, So when a brand comes to us and says,
Speaker 1: you know, we really are having a tough time reaching
Speaker 1: you know, forty to fifty five year old boomers who
Speaker 1: we think want to buy the Audi car, because there,
Speaker 1: you know, this is our target. Can you reach them?
Speaker 1: That's how it would start right. Our job then is
Speaker 1: to say, well, actually, let us show you average customer
Speaker 1: that goes to the Grateful Dead, but you know, we
Speaker 1: can give you a whole bunch of shows. We have
Speaker 1: sixteen point one million forty to fifty five year old
Speaker 1: customers that are showing up at our events in our database.
Speaker 1: We could reach them. We want out. So that's the
Speaker 1: first piece. Convince them that we have a big enough
Speaker 1: audience that they care about that seems relevant to them.
Speaker 1: Now too is then let's develop a program that can
Speaker 1: hit those sixty million customers. That's that's good for you
Speaker 1: in the brand. And that's where whether it's as lame
Speaker 1: is putting the car on site, the simplest idea to
Speaker 1: We're gonna email all of those customers. We're gonna offer
Speaker 1: them every time you come in for a free demo
Speaker 1: at the audi dealer, you're gonna get a first access
Speaker 1: to a concert ticket. You're gonna get a access to
Speaker 1: a show, you're gonna get a free ticket. There's a
Speaker 1: hundred different programs you're gonna create the real magic. And
Speaker 1: what we do is we've got a great team in
Speaker 1: New York Customer under Darren Wolfe, who is creating these
Speaker 1: programs to meet that brand's need. So it's every brand's
Speaker 1: gonna be slightly different. They're all got some idea reaching
Speaker 1: customers in the music space on site, uh, in a
Speaker 1: live environment, and then they want to create some branded
Speaker 1: program ROMP for it, and that's what we're we're best
Speaker 1: at doing for them. Needles just say big Star, certainly superstars.
Speaker 1: They say the tour is sponsored by ex company. Do
Speaker 1: they bring that to you or do you sometimes bring
Speaker 1: that sponsor to them? How does that work? I would
Speaker 1: that would be separate. And you're right where you're referring
Speaker 1: to earlier was every brand manager or CMO probably got
Speaker 1: burnt by doing an artist sponsorship a tour deal, probably
Speaker 1: didn't get the value they wanted because it's hard to
Speaker 1: do a tour deal and one tour um and put
Speaker 1: some signs up in the in the boardwalk and signs
Speaker 1: in the in the in the VIP gallery and do
Speaker 1: some meet and greets and think that's a lot of value.
Speaker 1: That's not, you know, not reaching a lot of customers.
Speaker 1: So you saw brand brand's kind of went two ways.
Speaker 1: The either went really deep with an artist and did
Speaker 1: a real image program where they really got you know,
Speaker 1: a d doesn't Beyonce where they really integrated the artists
Speaker 1: into their brand and um and those are you know,
Speaker 1: very deep relationships and and and let's call those um
Speaker 1: you know those artists direct. We don't have anything to
Speaker 1: do with those. The the the artist and the brand
Speaker 1: come together and a bigger and a bigger deal and
Speaker 1: hopefully that works for them. If the brand wants to
Speaker 1: be in the live business, they probably have ended up
Speaker 1: coming to UH to Live Nation or a promoter and said,
Speaker 1: you know what, I don't want one event, I want scale.
Speaker 1: So that's why we did a good job over these
Speaker 1: last few years. If we don't sell the artists tour,
Speaker 1: we sell the fact that we have a hundred million
Speaker 1: people coming to a to our audience where the you know,
Speaker 1: let's call it the NFL. We have a large audience,
Speaker 1: so we can deliver your message multiple times to a
Speaker 1: large audience space. And that's the only way, you know,
Speaker 1: you tend to win. And advertising is large reach with
Speaker 1: good impact and direct messaging. So we end up never
Speaker 1: selling one tour that's probably not going to be efficient.
Speaker 1: We're going to sell you a summer six month program,
Speaker 1: a two month, a five year program. We're gonna sell
Speaker 1: you a lot of customers over time that your program
Speaker 1: can touch and and deliver against. That's where really we've
Speaker 1: turned it from a one off business to a credible
Speaker 1: sales channel that brands say, Okay, I can I can
Speaker 1: use Live Nation. I can put an advertising program together
Speaker 1: and I'm going to reach a large audience base over
Speaker 1: the summer. That's an efficient buy for me. Um and
Speaker 1: I'll add that to my marketing mix. Okay. This suddenly
Speaker 1: drifts into ticketing because certainly for the big acts, they
Speaker 1: have deals with m X or maybe City where people
Speaker 1: can get tickets, card members can get tickets early. Now
Speaker 1: this of course involves Ticketmaster. Let's say it's a Live
Speaker 1: Nation show. How does this all work out? Yeah? I
Speaker 1: think for the last ten years, I think American Express
Speaker 1: God Blessing, they created that program called Front of the Line.
Speaker 1: I give them full credit because it's one of the
Speaker 1: you programs that probably has lived this long. Now. It's
Speaker 1: been replicated by most credit card companies. Um And I
Speaker 1: think every credit card company probably has some relationship with
Speaker 1: some sports team and our promoter. UM And I think
Speaker 1: the access to tickets, it's probably the biggest value a
Speaker 1: customer wants, right, the hardest thing to do is to
Speaker 1: get a great ticket to a show because there's such
Speaker 1: a big demand and limited supply. So pre sales became
Speaker 1: a big um item for brands that we're willing to pay, uh,
Speaker 1: sponts willing to pay promoters, artists venues for access to
Speaker 1: tickets for their fan base in exchange for a sponsorship check.
Speaker 1: So uh, we're we've all participated in it. It's a
Speaker 1: good revenue stream um for US. Live Nation has it
Speaker 1: for some of our shows. Sometimes artists have it directly, promoters, festivals,
Speaker 1: sports teams. So pre sales has been a really defined
Speaker 1: category of sponsorship, if you want to call it um,
Speaker 1: started by American Express and now used by most brands
Speaker 1: as a value to the sponsorship package. Okay, dirty little
Speaker 1: secret of the business is that on the on sale
Speaker 1: it could be a twenty thousand seat arena, and on
Speaker 1: the on sale date fewer than a thousand tickets are
Speaker 1: ultimately available. Then who decides on all the varying levels
Speaker 1: of pre sale? Why does that exist? Why are we
Speaker 1: in this world? Yeah? I wouldn't say that's the case anymore.
Speaker 1: That that models flushed out over the years, you don't
Speaker 1: have any more of these UM's not anymore. But the
Speaker 1: no comp tour is pretty much standard now. If you're
Speaker 1: running a big tour and you're the tour accountant, you
Speaker 1: ain't given record, label, sponsor, you're not giving anyone anything
Speaker 1: for free. UM. So that changed over the last five
Speaker 1: six years, if you want to call it. Most tours
Speaker 1: now are a no cop tour meeting. Unless I'm proving
Speaker 1: to that artist that I'm taking tickets and delivering them
Speaker 1: to a sponsor media property and getting something in return. Uh,
Speaker 1: they're not getting tickets anymore. And if the label needs them,
Speaker 1: the labels buying them. So I would say that that
Speaker 1: isn't really the challenge anymore. Most of the tickets that
Speaker 1: are going to go on sale at ten o'clock, a
Speaker 1: very small you know what would be a percent small
Speaker 1: percent is held for UM for anything other than now,
Speaker 1: if there's a sponsor involved, maybe they've done a big
Speaker 1: sponsorship deal. Maybe there's a thousand tickets, two thousand tickets,
Speaker 1: ten but there wouldn't be. There would be most most shows,
Speaker 1: most tickets, large majority are going to be available on
Speaker 1: on pre sale slash on sale, Okay, let me, Yeah,
Speaker 1: you entered the point. I was actually more interest did
Speaker 1: less than the no comp I'm glad you covered that.
Speaker 1: But with many acts, there are different levels of pre sale,
Speaker 1: such when the general public gets a bite, most of
Speaker 1: the tickets have already been sold. I'm not talking about
Speaker 1: any neferious activity. But there's the credit card, there's the
Speaker 1: fian club. How does that come about in what's the
Speaker 1: status of that today? But again, let's not use one
Speaker 1: brush to paint the business. Right, there's you know this,
Speaker 1: this business always gets talked about at the time. There's
Speaker 1: there's ten artists that can make the rules different. Then
Speaker 1: there's the rest of us. Right, So most shows, you know,
Speaker 1: I look at my pre sales on most tours. You know,
Speaker 1: there's a very small amount of states that a pre
Speaker 1: sale will go real clean and sell four or five
Speaker 1: thousand tickets on a pre sale before the on sell
Speaker 1: on the Saturday. You know that's that's that's the one
Speaker 1: percent rule most of the time a pre sale. If
Speaker 1: you do a pre sale and you do a thousand
Speaker 1: tick kits are two thousand tickets, you're happy, um, and
Speaker 1: you'll you're you'll gladly exchange some of that direct marketing
Speaker 1: that that brand used to help you sell some tickets.
Speaker 1: I mean, Bob, you know this. Most shows don't sell out.
Speaker 1: Nine shows don't sell out. So most of the time
Speaker 1: our challenge isn't that we sold out and don't have tickets.
Speaker 1: Most of the time is is it's not sold. We
Speaker 1: don't have a ton of marketing and concert promotion as
Speaker 1: you know. This is you know, in a big world
Speaker 1: of all the marketing messages out there. Um, we have
Speaker 1: a very small marketing budget per show, per tour in
Speaker 1: retrospect to the amount of noise in the marketplace. So
Speaker 1: we're always going to find and look for any trick
Speaker 1: sponsor pre sale media. Well well look, well we're probably
Speaker 1: going to resort to many tricks to try to get
Speaker 1: a little bit of news or a little bit of
Speaker 1: noise around a on sale or pre sale. Um, just
Speaker 1: because it's it's it's so tough to break clutter on
Speaker 1: you know, when you're forget if you're you know Taylor Swifter,
Speaker 1: you know, the Beyonces of the world, the rest of
Speaker 1: the businesses. God, I'm going on sale on Saturday, is
Speaker 1: seven others going on sale. I got a thirty thousand
Speaker 1: dollar budget per city. Um, I got forty thousand spend
Speaker 1: in Los Angeles, which buys you, you know what, nothing.
Speaker 1: So you're trying to break a little clutter on a
Speaker 1: Saturday morning. So you'll take that pre sale when you
Speaker 1: when when a commerce or a credit cards going to
Speaker 1: talk direct to their probably targeted fan that wants to
Speaker 1: buy a ticket. Um, So I would say to you Macro,
Speaker 1: I don't believe pre sales are the problem with the customer. Um.
Speaker 1: You know, we can get into scalpers at some point,
Speaker 1: but the real problem on a Saturday at ten isn't
Speaker 1: that the tickets are sold two pre sales. The problem
Speaker 1: at ten o'clock is the tickets are sold because the
Speaker 1: secondary markets very vibrant. Okay, what actually works instead of
Speaker 1: in terms of promoting a show, I mean print, TV, Facebook, online. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's been um to to changes. Ultimately, the none of
Speaker 1: the mainline advertising tends to work anymore. You know, there's
Speaker 1: it's a direct business now. So the best way to
Speaker 1: sell a ticket is to use the artist socials they have.
Speaker 1: They are direct to consumer brands now, as you know.
Speaker 1: So you want to find a fan, go on their
Speaker 1: Instagram and they probably got twenty million followers or however
Speaker 1: many some of them have a hundred millions. So you're
Speaker 1: gonna sell a fan a ticket, probably start with their
Speaker 1: own their their brands, their social networks. Uh So if
Speaker 1: you go and look at our database, Live Nation's database
Speaker 1: of ticket buyers, and the and the artist database, those
Speaker 1: are probably your two best places you're gonna start. If
Speaker 1: I advertise against that those two databases, you're probably going
Speaker 1: to find out most of your customers are there. Uh. Second,
Speaker 1: then you're right, we do spend a lot on Facebook, Instagram.
Speaker 1: Uh those those are those are the best kind of
Speaker 1: response tools for an event. Um. So that that's kind
Speaker 1: of the the two places to spend digital online and
Speaker 1: start with the digital online on the artist's main network,
Speaker 1: and then anyone else's databased like Live Nations or probably
Speaker 1: a E G. S or American suppress whoever has a
Speaker 1: large customer database of ticket purchased purchasers um that are
Speaker 1: like minded or pass buyers. So all online, all digital now,
Speaker 1: all anything radio print, TV we do is probably just vanity.
Speaker 1: It's not probably going to convert. It's too wide. We
Speaker 1: can go targeted now and reach you know, you only
Speaker 1: have to find thirteen or fourteen thousand fans in Los
Speaker 1: Angeles to fill a Staples Center. So you don't need
Speaker 1: a billboard on sunset when you're trying to find thirteen
Speaker 1: thousand people and a ten million population. You don't actually
Speaker 1: want to shoot a shotgun. You wanna you want to.
Speaker 1: You want to be very targeted. You want to find
Speaker 1: those fans that went before, fans look like they want
Speaker 1: to go um or existing fans. So more digital we span,
Speaker 1: the more target and we spend, the more efficient it is. Okay,
Speaker 1: you mentioned the scalpers, you mentioned the on sale time,
Speaker 1: the bots, etcetera. Hey, what is the status of that?
Speaker 1: And be will they pretty much buy anything or only
Speaker 1: the hot tours? Uh? Well, let me let me just
Speaker 1: after one. Let me just say one thing before we
Speaker 1: jump to it. You know, one of the things we
Speaker 1: see in conscious though, I would say to you is
Speaker 1: I don't think we have an awareness program problem. Most
Speaker 1: of the time the artist, uh that And as much
Speaker 1: as people think that's an awareness problem, you only go
Speaker 1: to one or two shows a year. I've said this before.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna forget you know, Yes, if you're nineteen to
Speaker 1: twenty four, you're gonna go to six or seven. But
Speaker 1: generally this is not a This isn't like you're in
Speaker 1: the supermarket and you see something at the check oudisle
Speaker 1: and you buy it. Going to show is a committed game.
Speaker 1: You have to find four other people that even like
Speaker 1: the band. You've got to commit in ahead, got to
Speaker 1: find a babysitter, you gotta go. Let's it's a many
Speaker 1: travel experience. So going to show is that we we've
Speaker 1: done our research is about a two week two week
Speaker 1: process before you buy the ticket. So it's a committed game.
Speaker 1: So it's not as if you're you're you know, you
Speaker 1: just found out about it and uh and I decided
Speaker 1: to go. I say that in that most of our
Speaker 1: research will tell you the reason I don't go isn't
Speaker 1: because I didn't know about the show. Most of the time,
Speaker 1: it's probably gonna be about pricing. So I always remind
Speaker 1: my team we don't have an awareness problem. We have
Speaker 1: a pricing problem. So I may know about the show,
Speaker 1: but you know what, do I want to go again?
Speaker 1: I've been twice, I've seen the band. The minute we
Speaker 1: send them a price offer, we see big, big action.
Speaker 1: And that's typical of you know, travel hotels. Any of
Speaker 1: these kind of businesses where you know it's a depreciating asset.
Speaker 1: Generally you can motivate people by price. So you see
Speaker 1: a lot of that happening, or you'll that's best. The
Speaker 1: best way to move a ticket probably is because we
Speaker 1: were overpriced it, um and um, and that's that's usually
Speaker 1: the best way to kind of kick ticket sales versus
Speaker 1: pounding some more advertising on a on an Instagram ad
Speaker 1: um not so. So that's just a side note. Is
Speaker 1: it's not only just do I know about the tour,
Speaker 1: but can I afford to go to the tour this time?
Speaker 1: Maybe you know there's some things are price resistant, but
Speaker 1: um um. Sometimes that that tends to be our best
Speaker 1: lever is promotion. Um so so scalping you you you uh,
Speaker 1: you know it's ironic, right we we are the only
Speaker 1: product in the world it's worth worth more of the
Speaker 1: second it's sold. That's that kind of goes against business sense. Um.
Speaker 1: Maybe sneakers are becoming that now, but generally the way
Speaker 1: business works as you try to match market pricing to supply. Right,
Speaker 1: if you and I owned a company and the and
Speaker 1: we found out that it's sold out every second that
Speaker 1: we put it on see we'd probably say we should
Speaker 1: increase the price UM. And that's how the traditional businesses
Speaker 1: all work. They find that price resistance sweet spot where
Speaker 1: there's enough demand UM to meet the need, but it's
Speaker 1: price properly. So we're in this tough industry where the
Speaker 1: artist is an incredible brand manager, play him long, and
Speaker 1: he smartly doesn't want to just take that one show
Speaker 1: and price it to perfection. He wants to price it
Speaker 1: to what he thinks is affordable and right for the fan,
Speaker 1: UM for the long term. So it does create though,
Speaker 1: a big challenge because anytime you have an eight to
Speaker 1: ten billion dollar industry called secondary UM, it's gonna be
Speaker 1: get it's gonna get very professionalized. It's a real business
Speaker 1: and it's legal in America UM and endorsed, so it's
Speaker 1: not it's not the hideaway business anymore. It's not a
Speaker 1: bad business. It's a real business. It's called you know,
Speaker 1: reselling tickets and it's been legitimized and UM, so it's
Speaker 1: it's professionalized and it's real as the reality. UM. Some
Speaker 1: countries around the world have you know, put caps on
Speaker 1: it and you can only resell a ticket for ten
Speaker 1: percent and fifteen and they've reacted differently, and I kind
Speaker 1: of like some of that thinking. But the real in
Speaker 1: America is the sports business legitimized scalping long before the
Speaker 1: before US meaning the music business, So it's professionalized. The NFL,
Speaker 1: the NBA, the NHL. Every team has its own exchange.
Speaker 1: He saw the Dodgers a couple of years ago did
Speaker 1: an RFP for their secondary tickets, got like seventy six million.
Speaker 1: So the biggest question I always get from artists is
Speaker 1: why are all my tickets on the secondary? Well, the
Speaker 1: reality is that venue you're playing in probably has a
Speaker 1: sports team and probably has a secondary deal. And you know,
Speaker 1: most sports teams don't sell out on a Monday night.
Speaker 1: For every hot hockey team or basketball or baseball. You
Speaker 1: if you owned a team, you probably got some suits
Speaker 1: and a bunch of Tuesday nights not selling out. So
Speaker 1: you've done a secondary deal with somebody, and as part
Speaker 1: of that deal, you've probably given them a suite or
Speaker 1: access to um good seats when the concerts come to
Speaker 1: that venue too. Um so we're already starting every show
Speaker 1: is starting with probably season tickets or some level tickets
Speaker 1: sold or packaged in a sports secondary deal in that venue.
Speaker 1: So you've you've started already with you know, the the
Speaker 1: artist probably has or some of those seats are already
Speaker 1: been been bought up or or purchased UM. And they're
Speaker 1: they're incredible price um price managers. They know how to
Speaker 1: buy a lot of inventory. They lose on some and
Speaker 1: make make on the others, and are very good at
Speaker 1: at figuring out the whole macro version of what to
Speaker 1: buy from Saturday night basketball to baseball to concert seats.
Speaker 1: So very professionalized, very software driven, data driven. A lot
Speaker 1: of these companies. So this is this is a real business.
Speaker 1: And I only say that because you know, sometimes in
Speaker 1: the space we get a lot of a lot of
Speaker 1: a lot of talk about it and and and until
Speaker 1: we recognize it's a real legitimate industry StubHub see geek ve.
Speaker 1: These are professional companies, public companies now UM. The reselling
Speaker 1: of a ticket has been a you know, into unless
Speaker 1: someone wants to wake up and do some legislation or
Speaker 1: or try to do something different. It's a legitimate business UM,
Speaker 1: and it's part of the system. I think I try
Speaker 1: to convince artists every now and then that it's not
Speaker 1: the boogeyman, because it's real and it does live. It
Speaker 1: is existence, so we should think about it now. If
Speaker 1: you want to solve it, the best way to do
Speaker 1: is to price your product differently. But if you don't
Speaker 1: price your product differently, you're probably going to be um
Speaker 1: at some point. There's no way around it. The secondary
Speaker 1: market will exist. Okay, but let's talk about the on
Speaker 1: sale availability. Uh, no one knows. You might know the
Speaker 1: exact numbers of tickets that go to spot you are
Speaker 1: acquired via box and go to scalpers as opposed to
Speaker 1: regular customers. Forget the reselling of that ticket. What percentage
Speaker 1: on a sellout show end up in the hands of
Speaker 1: the secondary market essentially from the on sale date. Well, again,
Speaker 1: I don't want to paint one picture because again you know,
Speaker 1: shows aren't selling out and don't have a hot on sale.
Speaker 1: So I don't want to paint one number and say, oh,
Speaker 1: you know, every concert goes, but you are, you know,
Speaker 1: on the ones that get the press, the the bts
Speaker 1: is of the world, the ones where the where the
Speaker 1: family members trying to buy that ticket for their their
Speaker 1: their their daughter or son. The hot ticket you're gonna,
Speaker 1: you know, we're gonna. I looked at a number, you know,
Speaker 1: we've we've stopped over thirty billion bots over the last while,
Speaker 1: I mean Saturday morning on sale bots trying to steal
Speaker 1: tickets or grab tickets UM is a is the biggest
Speaker 1: challenge in our space. So when you hit a hot
Speaker 1: on sale UM on a marketplace on a Saturday morning,
Speaker 1: you know you're you're gonna get a high percentage of
Speaker 1: those tickets are going to be acquired by bots slash
Speaker 1: scalpers at ten ten between ten and ten oh five, right,
Speaker 1: we're always living that. By ten oh five, somebody's mad
Speaker 1: that they think Ticketmaster must have given tickets to the
Speaker 1: scalper because there's ten pages of bots of us pages
Speaker 1: on Google saying they've got tickets available. But they're they're
Speaker 1: fast and they can eat up ticket inventory very very
Speaker 1: fast with the computerized bots. So it's a big problem
Speaker 1: ten o'clock or on sales in general being being scooped
Speaker 1: up by by bots. Um is a big part of
Speaker 1: the what makes the experience of ten buying a ticket
Speaker 1: uh not great for a fan. They're they're confused on
Speaker 1: why it's sold up in a minute, and why there's
Speaker 1: pages of self helpers with tickets available, and what are
Speaker 1: the strategies at your company to combat that. Well, we're
Speaker 1: you know, as I remind people, Ticketmaster would spend the
Speaker 1: most of any buddy. There's there's were brought the only
Speaker 1: one that's spending any money, right, Yeah, there's no one
Speaker 1: else is waking up trying to stop a secondary buy
Speaker 1: on a ten o'clock Um so, so Ticketmaster has you know,
Speaker 1: huge security department. We're gonna spend tens and tens of
Speaker 1: millions a year on software and bots and trying to
Speaker 1: find bad actors. And is that Bob Luffett's trying to
Speaker 1: buy a ticket or is it an I P? But
Speaker 1: you know this is it's an arms race. These are
Speaker 1: professional businesses. This isn't like, you know, an easy I
Speaker 1: P to trace and stop it. So we do our
Speaker 1: best to try to deliver an on sale that a
Speaker 1: fan has a shot at buying a ticket at the
Speaker 1: regular price. But the reality is, you know, the business,
Speaker 1: that the business. There's no one else out there spending
Speaker 1: a dollar trying to stop a bought at ten o'clock. StubHub,
Speaker 1: seek geek Um, access tickets, the sports. I mean, there's
Speaker 1: no one else spending a dollar trying to stop an
Speaker 1: on sale Um, so we're we are as big as
Speaker 1: Ticketmaster is. It's still in a ten billion dollar arms race.
Speaker 1: It's a tough business to be able to develop any
Speaker 1: any stoppage against ten o'clock on sale at that level,
Speaker 1: when when there's that much money involved. Okay, let's just
Speaker 1: look at the take the long view. As you mentioned earlier.
Speaker 1: I remember forty years ago cable TV, if you wanted
Speaker 1: to get a channel for free, you could go to
Speaker 1: the actual cable. They put these filters on. You remove
Speaker 1: the filter, you got the page channel for free. Then
Speaker 1: they digitized everything. There was no theft. Needless to say,
Speaker 1: you know, we're going to move from hard tickets two
Speaker 1: tickets on the device in this product progress, is there
Speaker 1: a way that's actually hurt the box and hurt the scalpers.
Speaker 1: You know, we're we're digitizing our ticket the last couple
Speaker 1: of years, and you're right, when you move from a
Speaker 1: PDF to a digital ticket, you in theory can could
Speaker 1: imply some control. Um, But in America, UM, you know,
Speaker 1: there's no political will to put any rules in place
Speaker 1: to limit um those those those uh, those those controls.
Speaker 1: So we have a digital ticket, we could in theory
Speaker 1: say that you bought a ticket to the Jimmy Buffett Show,
Speaker 1: you can't resell it. You can only resell it with
Speaker 1: a ten percent uplift. UM. But if we try to
Speaker 1: impose any kind of controls on that, you know, scalpers
Speaker 1: and others are pretty good at lobbyists and getting someone
Speaker 1: cranked up that there's a free marketplace and who owns
Speaker 1: that ticket and I should be able to do whatever
Speaker 1: I want with that ticket and controls by anyone are allowed.
Speaker 1: So we don't see the marketplace. We're looking to try
Speaker 1: to control the sale of the ticket. That's our challenge.
Speaker 1: We we believe that there could be controls. You could
Speaker 1: do it tomorrow, um, but there isn't there. There isn't
Speaker 1: the political appetite both in sports most artists want to
Speaker 1: clean on sale at ten o'clock is a reality. UM.
Speaker 1: So we don't see We don't see it as a
Speaker 1: way to you know, uh, we don't see it as
Speaker 1: something that will come into effect and make a difference.
Speaker 1: We think that the market um StubHub and others have
Speaker 1: have done a good job of convincing everyone in Congress
Speaker 1: and I otherwise that a ticket should be freely traded.
Speaker 1: I mean, you look you got Bill Pascal. Look at
Speaker 1: his boss act. He's he actually wants the irony is
Speaker 1: he's doing. His boss act is about making sure that
Speaker 1: the scalper has free controlled access to every ticket that I,
Speaker 1: Ticketmaster and others when you put a ticket on sales
Speaker 1: should make our platform freely UM available that if you
Speaker 1: buy it on any secondary site, that I can walk
Speaker 1: in the building and have free access and free free
Speaker 1: distribution and control, so that that shows you where the
Speaker 1: where the marketplace is um. So we we believe that
Speaker 1: listening to digital tickets good for Live Nation and ticket
Speaker 1: Master from a from a business perspective, because going back
Speaker 1: to my earlier story about sponsorship, the more I know
Speaker 1: who Bob Luffitz is that walked in the building, that's
Speaker 1: a big advantage to me just from doing a better
Speaker 1: job in my marketing talking to you next time, up
Speaker 1: selling you. So for me, it's just good to turn
Speaker 1: a PDF into a piece of data, and the better
Speaker 1: I can use that data to sell more tickets, up
Speaker 1: sell and have a better relationship with the customer. It's
Speaker 1: good for us turning those hundred million people to walk
Speaker 1: in the door from a PDF into it actual segment
Speaker 1: of digital human file is much better for our business.
Speaker 1: I don't think though, we're going to be successful imposing
Speaker 1: restrictions on the on the business and the distribution of
Speaker 1: that ticket or the transfer ability of that ticket. I
Speaker 1: don't think there's the political will to limit any of it.
Speaker 1: Part of what we got into um with some of
Speaker 1: these centators was just you know, our ticket and is
Speaker 1: it really transferable? And a lot of the them of
Speaker 1: the stuff you you read about was about was were
Speaker 1: we going to limit the distribution of our ticket? Where
Speaker 1: we're gonna make you buy a ticket a ticket Master
Speaker 1: as a digital ticket and the only way you could
Speaker 1: resell it was at the Ticketmaster resale um. And that's
Speaker 1: that was kind of the big basis of a closed
Speaker 1: platform that the scalpers and others had excited some of
Speaker 1: the Congress about. We had never planned on doing that.
Speaker 1: We don't believe in a closed platform that market is
Speaker 1: long sled. We're we're we're I've got an open platform
Speaker 1: to date UM. But that shows you that that's kind
Speaker 1: of the the the the the intent of the lobbyists
Speaker 1: and what their concerns were that that anyone would imply
Speaker 1: any kind of control or rules on the ticket. Prior
Speaker 1: to the shutdown, there was a lot of noise your
Speaker 1: company about the verified m what's the status of that
Speaker 1: now and was it effective? You know? I think we
Speaker 1: I think prior you know. The good news is the
Speaker 1: shutdown gave us a lot of time to rethink what
Speaker 1: is it we want to get done uh in our
Speaker 1: ticketing strategy. Um And I think we. I think we
Speaker 1: were fighting the fight with some band aids that probably
Speaker 1: weren't effective enough overall to make a difference. Um. So,
Speaker 1: I think we've learned that verified fan is another tool
Speaker 1: in the toolbox. Is it a good idea? Yes, it's
Speaker 1: a great idea, Bob that if I'm going to go
Speaker 1: on sale, that I can get verified fans registered in advance,
Speaker 1: so I at least have a shot on the on
Speaker 1: sale of saying Bob Left is registered and now we
Speaker 1: can sell you a ticket on Friday. It's a great
Speaker 1: system to take a little bit of load off the
Speaker 1: on sale and distribute it through the week prior to
Speaker 1: So it's a good tool. Some bands, as you know,
Speaker 1: are very obsessed with I want to do everything I
Speaker 1: can to make sure the fan buys my ticket and
Speaker 1: no one else does and at Ticketmaster, we gotta have
Speaker 1: those tools and um and we'll have them. I would
Speaker 1: just say I think we're probably less obsessed with trying
Speaker 1: to roll out verified fan as we are at rolling
Speaker 1: out digital ticketing, which is more important overall, and that
Speaker 1: with the more we get the ticket digitized, the better
Speaker 1: the experiences for everybody, and the better it is for
Speaker 1: our overall business. Okay, let's talk about pricing. Pricing is
Speaker 1: very different than it used to be used to. If
Speaker 1: you had an expensive just you know, use round numbers.
Speaker 1: If the best seats were two hundred dollars, the seats
Speaker 1: and the rafters were a hundred, what do we know
Speaker 1: the seats and the raffers have. Rafters have gone down
Speaker 1: to fifty in many cases, and the seats up front
Speaker 1: of gone to five hundred with what is conventionally known
Speaker 1: as platinum. So what is the the You know, this
Speaker 1: is always a game other than the stones have their
Speaker 1: own style. Uh, it's always a game of pricing. What
Speaker 1: is you now? And ticket Master and Live Nation are
Speaker 1: the experts because they see this every day. Whereas an
Speaker 1: act only goes on tour maybe once every other year.
Speaker 1: What do you tell acts in terms of pricing these days, Well,
Speaker 1: two things, going back to our first point. You know
Speaker 1: there's still billions of dollars in secondary and business out there,
Speaker 1: so we know we're not pricing the house right, so
Speaker 1: we have opportunity to at least gap to get some
Speaker 1: of that front of the house economics for the artist.
Speaker 1: And again going back to what we said, the shows
Speaker 1: I'm dealing with in life are not selling out, so
Speaker 1: I don't ever have a problem selling the front part
Speaker 1: of the house. I do have a problem selling the
Speaker 1: back part. Go to my other point on why is
Speaker 1: the problem pricing not awareness, So I'm always going to
Speaker 1: convince an artist to redistribute the pricing and how low
Speaker 1: can we get the back end of the house and
Speaker 1: probably subsidize the back end of the house on the
Speaker 1: front up front of the house. So if we can
Speaker 1: get that perfect sell out, we want to make sure
Speaker 1: that we have you know, affordable seats in the back
Speaker 1: last row that's sell out. And if you've got to
Speaker 1: take twenty dollars off the back row ticket, I'd rather
Speaker 1: add it to the front row to still get the
Speaker 1: same gross but but price it properly um with the
Speaker 1: back end. So artists, you know, listen, We're we were
Speaker 1: a business that was very very rudimentary for years. As
Speaker 1: you know, we had three scalings, was you know, a
Speaker 1: hundred seventy nine and forty nine and forty dates were
Speaker 1: the same whether it was a Friday in New York
Speaker 1: or Tuesday in Pittsburgh. So you know, I would say
Speaker 1: in general, we've We've been talking to artists for the
Speaker 1: last five years just about nobody prices their product that
Speaker 1: way anymore. You know, you got a price to the market.
Speaker 1: You know that the aisle seat is worth more than
Speaker 1: the middle seat, Friday night's worth more than Monday night.
Speaker 1: New York is going to be more expensive than Pittsburgh.
Speaker 1: So I would say that we have, you know, worked
Speaker 1: hard on a pricing model over all to say what's
Speaker 1: the best way to price your tour depending on what city,
Speaker 1: what date. Is it three prices or is there five
Speaker 1: or six price points that are better for the house? Um?
Speaker 1: So yeah, I I every year the artists are getting better,
Speaker 1: We're getting better at price in the house to sell
Speaker 1: it out, maximize the gross take a little bit of
Speaker 1: that secondary money off the table that that they weren't
Speaker 1: participating in, but still find that fine line, whether it's
Speaker 1: still accessible enough that it sells through. And that's been
Speaker 1: the kind of the science and art over the last
Speaker 1: five years and a lot of why the grosses have
Speaker 1: continually go up and grossers will go up for the
Speaker 1: next you know, five six years, because we're still dramatically
Speaker 1: under priced across the board. Now, speaking of that, what
Speaker 1: we know is the hardcore fans will pay the most,
Speaker 1: whether it be a platinum ticket or whether it be
Speaker 1: a ticket that's purchased on a secondary market. They'll pay
Speaker 1: four hundred and fifty dollars to sit in the first
Speaker 1: fifteen rows and are thrilled. Okay, yes, some New York
Speaker 1: City Los Angeles shows you have fat cats who just
Speaker 1: want to be there, But generally speaking, that is not
Speaker 1: the case in every market. So these are high demand items.
Speaker 1: Will we ever get to the point where acts will
Speaker 1: realize that maybe it's just a perception from the seventies
Speaker 1: and reality, we should price the tickets at what their
Speaker 1: value truly is. Oh yeah, that that's gonna happen. I
Speaker 1: think you're gonna see the you know, like you said,
Speaker 1: we we do a bad job on pr as an
Speaker 1: industry because it's a very a concert ticket is still
Speaker 1: very affordable overall, if you go look at average ticket prices,
Speaker 1: forget the high ones, just average for sports concerts still affordable.
Speaker 1: And you are right, there is somehow the NBA gets
Speaker 1: gets to write press releases about the hundred thousand dollar
Speaker 1: front row as a positive. Um and this business. If
Speaker 1: Bruce charges more than a hundred and fifty, you know,
Speaker 1: it's it's it's a story. So you're right. I think
Speaker 1: that slowly, the artist of today, the next generation artist
Speaker 1: is going to look at the tour and realize that
Speaker 1: their fans, that they want to sell directly to their fans,
Speaker 1: that some fans will spend more for that experience, and
Speaker 1: they're better off having that experience and taking that dollar
Speaker 1: into their growth than someone else. Um and and and
Speaker 1: and compared to other things, it's still wildly affordable. I mean,
Speaker 1: I took my boys to Disney World. I mean, geez uh,
Speaker 1: that's not a cheap day. Um So most of the
Speaker 1: other things that are this valuable in life. You know,
Speaker 1: you don't go to eighty concerts a year, like sports teams.
Speaker 1: There's you know, that band comes to town maybe what
Speaker 1: once every three years, to Los Angeles. That's a high
Speaker 1: demand product. That's an incredible experience. You can see it
Speaker 1: once every three years. That's gonna be worth a lot
Speaker 1: more than you know, eighty games a year for a
Speaker 1: sports team that you can see every year. So yeah,
Speaker 1: we were still completely underpriced. I think this next generation
Speaker 1: will will come to reconcile that they don't have to
Speaker 1: be ashamed of how spectacular that experience on stages. There's
Speaker 1: spending a fortune these artists on the production. Now you
Speaker 1: mean fifty forty seventy trucks at stadiums. They're putting these
Speaker 1: incredible shows on. So um, I think that pricing will
Speaker 1: start to reflect the demand over time. It's the best
Speaker 1: way to address the market. Let's talk about the Stones
Speaker 1: inflex pricing. That's not your company, that's Concerts West. But
Speaker 1: essentially there's no scalping because they change the price based
Speaker 1: on demand and conventionally you get a ticket day of
Speaker 1: Is that the future? Is that really only for the Stones? Well,
Speaker 1: I listen, I do give. I've always given, you know,
Speaker 1: I think Mixed just a genius business manager. We did this,
Speaker 1: We did the show at the Hollywood Bowl and I
Speaker 1: remember it was I don't know, I'm gonna get the
Speaker 1: exact math wrong, but it might have been a forty
Speaker 1: year anniversary and he had charged six dollars forty years
Speaker 1: ago and it was six d this time. And he said,
Speaker 1: you know, the the sett list hasn't changed, just the price.
Speaker 1: So I think, Uh, he's done a fabulous job from
Speaker 1: day one of being about the business and and uh
Speaker 1: and being that's been accepted as part of his brand.
Speaker 1: So I think the Stones are incredible success story. Um,
Speaker 1: but you're right, it's gonna take more artists like that
Speaker 1: that are gonna say I have a product that should
Speaker 1: be dynamically priced and should match demand. And we're seeing
Speaker 1: that from I would say when you talked to new
Speaker 1: younger managers of today thinking about touring there, they come
Speaker 1: at it in a in a more fresh way that
Speaker 1: way on why why am I not going to charge
Speaker 1: the right price? Why is scuppers? Why wouldn't I price
Speaker 1: a house differently? So I think there's a there'll be
Speaker 1: a new generation of pricing that comes up through through
Speaker 1: the next ten years. Okay, let's switch to the fees.
Speaker 1: You and me both know the inside the history of
Speaker 1: the fees whatever, but the public really can't get it,
Speaker 1: can you explain how Ticketmaster doesn't get the entire fee. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean again, the fee was part of the original
Speaker 1: um price UM that Fred Rosen when he started ticket Master.
Speaker 1: You know, to have an exclusive ticketing service in your building. UM.
Speaker 1: You you charged a service fee to execute the business.
Speaker 1: And you know, it started at one or two dollars.
Speaker 1: And Fred would tell you the story. Every year when
Speaker 1: he went to renew that venue, would say, great, just
Speaker 1: add another dollar, add another dollar, and and it got
Speaker 1: at it for many years. UM. And it used to
Speaker 1: be you know, six dollars, seven dollars, eight dollars, and
Speaker 1: it was split probably fifty fifty back in the day
Speaker 1: ticket Master in the venue. UM. And then ultimately venues
Speaker 1: continue to uh to uh kind of gets hooked on
Speaker 1: the drug of the service fee, and ultimately, you know,
Speaker 1: today you look at service fees and venues UM, it
Speaker 1: does becomeing a very important part of P and L
Speaker 1: UM in that venue, and it's the high margin piece
Speaker 1: of the business. As a revenue stream UM that you
Speaker 1: you know, you're you're used to having and part of
Speaker 1: financing your building and your operations. As talent costs or
Speaker 1: in sports for sports business athletes or however, their bills
Speaker 1: have gone up, so it has become a very lucrative
Speaker 1: piece of business for venues. Now, you're right, in a
Speaker 1: typical venue, in a sports venue, a sports ticket, the
Speaker 1: team and the venue are probably getting of the service fee.
Speaker 1: So if it's a thirty forty dollar service be um,
Speaker 1: they're gonna get it. In a concert ticket and a
Speaker 1: typical big arena show, um, ticketmaster's gonna get the same thing.
Speaker 1: We're gonna get two bucks, three bucks out of that
Speaker 1: forty or forty five dollar service fee. The rest would
Speaker 1: go to the venue. UM. So it's you're right. We
Speaker 1: we have a you know, a challenge where the ticketmaster
Speaker 1: takes the punch in the head for the no tickets
Speaker 1: available at ten am and a thirty five dollar service fee,
Speaker 1: two things we really have no control over. One we're
Speaker 1: not making thirty five and two week we can't control
Speaker 1: that the market gets bought up by secondary business because
Speaker 1: of underpriced industry. So you're right, it's a tough it's
Speaker 1: a tough pr hit to handle, um and and um,
Speaker 1: and it's kind of been part of now a historic
Speaker 1: revenue stream that that that seems to be uh here
Speaker 1: to stay as as as venues and sports and music
Speaker 1: costs of risen. So what percentage of ticket Master's ticket
Speaker 1: sales and or revenue are contracts as opposed to sports
Speaker 1: another verticals? Um? What would be the off? You know,
Speaker 1: roughly ticket Master sold about five million tickets last year globally. Um,
Speaker 1: sports would be sports would be of that business from
Speaker 1: a sales perspective. Um. So yeah, that's about the split.
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm gonna we do a ton of season
Speaker 1: tickets involved where we make no fees. Um. So those
Speaker 1: are kind of called no feed, no tickets. But what
Speaker 1: sixty or seventy percent of the business would be sports
Speaker 1: in general? But we make more money on our concert
Speaker 1: on the concert business than the sports business. Um. Because
Speaker 1: obviously Live Nation happens to be a ticket a concert
Speaker 1: provider or concert venue. You where we're uh, we're servicing ourselves,
Speaker 1: okay forgetting making an exclusive deal with the building. Why
Speaker 1: should someone use Ticketmaster as opposed to one of its competitors. Well,
Speaker 1: if you're you know, there's there's there's almost there's two
Speaker 1: businesses and ticketing. Right, there's the non sports venue and
Speaker 1: then there's a sports venue. There's let's call it reserve
Speaker 1: tickets versus single tickets. If you're in the single ticket business,
Speaker 1: event right business, festival business, UM, that's not a hard
Speaker 1: business to solve in terms of software. So they all
Speaker 1: do a great job and we do a good job
Speaker 1: in it. Ticketmaster has done a great job for many
Speaker 1: years in servicing sports teams. Sports teams are incredibly high demand.
Speaker 1: So when you're doing UM, when you're servicing the sports
Speaker 1: NFL team, NBA team, NHL team, you know, we did
Speaker 1: an audit recently. We'll run over two to three hundred
Speaker 1: different programs products for all of those teams, reports, UM,
Speaker 1: transfer ability, season tickets, sports. So that the biggest success
Speaker 1: the ticket Master has had is if you're going to
Speaker 1: be if you're if you're a big sports team and
Speaker 1: you have a season ticket based in a single taste base,
Speaker 1: you need you need software to service all of that. UH.
Speaker 1: Ticket Master has two great platforms, Arctics and Hosts, which
Speaker 1: service your season tickets as well as your single tickets
Speaker 1: all together, manage all of those transfer those, provide audits
Speaker 1: for you, sell your tickets for you, cancel them, manage
Speaker 1: your box office. All of the infrastructure needed to be
Speaker 1: a great enterprise platform for season and UM single tickets.
Speaker 1: That's a complex business to manage, and every team has
Speaker 1: twenty different customized things they on it to do. I
Speaker 1: wanted to talk to this, I wanted to do this
Speaker 1: with a sponsor. I wanted to do this with the
Speaker 1: Hall of Famer. So it's a real it's a real
Speaker 1: hard model to scale ticketing at the level it is
Speaker 1: and be absolutely customizable to such level. So that's really
Speaker 1: where its strength has been. When we launched our own
Speaker 1: ticketing company, we thought we would be able to do it,
Speaker 1: and we really realized that there was a hundred I
Speaker 1: had an audit company come and look at Live Nation
Speaker 1: ticketing versus Ticketmaster, and there was like a hundred nine
Speaker 1: seven things that Ticketmaster did for the venue that we
Speaker 1: couldn't even do. So it was all of this years
Speaker 1: of customization for Broadway for the venues UM that have
Speaker 1: made that platform very very viable UM and and UM
Speaker 1: and useful for the venue. So you have two things
Speaker 1: that Ticketmaster does better than most people. It's got a
Speaker 1: highly scalable platform, meaning it can handle billions of bots
Speaker 1: at ten am. We'll still customize it to your needs.
Speaker 1: When you say I'm a a football team that needs
Speaker 1: you to do this on a Sunday with the church
Speaker 1: for a benefit form for an exhibition game. Very very
Speaker 1: hard problems to solve at scale. The second thing that
Speaker 1: has done really well when we broke the company too,
Speaker 1: is it still happens to be incredible big e commerce marketplace.
Speaker 1: If you look at putting your if we're gonna service
Speaker 1: you as the venue, the biggest value you're gonna get
Speaker 1: is we're gonna sell your ticket at our marketplace where
Speaker 1: a majority of customers go to still buy their tickets,
Speaker 1: where it has the highest um you know, the e
Speaker 1: commerce scores of ticket sales. So one, we're gonna, you know,
Speaker 1: do two things. We're gonna have a great platform that's
Speaker 1: scalable yet customizable, and to we're gonna have the best
Speaker 1: marketplace to put that ticket for sale, help you sell
Speaker 1: that ticket, use our database, sell you more tickets, and
Speaker 1: we can we prove over and over if you leave
Speaker 1: our platform, odds are your ticket sales will go down
Speaker 1: just because we happen to have a big audience. Um.
Speaker 1: So we're we're we've been you know, successful at keeping
Speaker 1: both of those plates mean well, lots of engineers every
Speaker 1: day customizing our main platform and great e commerce people
Speaker 1: thinking about how we keep putting mor um, fixing our ux,
Speaker 1: getting to the app, making sure we can sell tickets
Speaker 1: better than anyone else when it comes to that seat
Speaker 1: map and I want to ticket um to my football
Speaker 1: game or my my one off game. So still too
Speaker 1: great skills and global that have been able to uh
Speaker 1: to to lead the pack there. Okay, if Live Nation
Speaker 1: hast of the concert market internationally, what percentage does Ticketmaster
Speaker 1: have domestically and Live Nation associated ticketing platforms around the
Speaker 1: world have internationally well Globally, the ticket team business is
Speaker 1: still fairly fragmented, So I don't know if we have
Speaker 1: that number there would be I wouldn't be a big
Speaker 1: number globally because his markets are still fragmented. Um and
Speaker 1: in the US again, you know the business of ticketing
Speaker 1: globally and ticketing in the US when you add when
Speaker 1: you look at the market of ticketing, we do a
Speaker 1: great job on one segment called arenas and uh and
Speaker 1: and amphitheaters, but you know, there's a whole world of
Speaker 1: ticketing that we don't participate in or don't have a
Speaker 1: high score. Whether it's you know, all the college businesses
Speaker 1: that Paciolan do the secondary business now sec of Sports
Speaker 1: seek geeks and Vivid's okay. Now you have an act
Speaker 1: that wants to go on the road, how do you
Speaker 1: convince them to come to Live Nation as opposed to
Speaker 1: a competitor. And at the end of the day, does
Speaker 1: it really just come down the money? Uh, you know
Speaker 1: it's it's never about the money. But it's always about
Speaker 1: the money, as they say. You know, listen, you still
Speaker 1: have to have the infrastructure to get the job done right.
Speaker 1: You can, you can win anything. It's it's the repeat
Speaker 1: business that matters. So you know the big piece of
Speaker 1: our businesses. We have a hundred offices in forty countries,
Speaker 1: so you know, think about it. Ultimately, we're a huge
Speaker 1: distribution company as well as a financing company, so you
Speaker 1: have to do both things. You have to make sure
Speaker 1: that you have the best financial incentives to win the business. Um.
Speaker 1: And whether it's a tour or it's local, but ultimately
Speaker 1: you've got to make sure you can execute the show. Um,
Speaker 1: you have the best economics for the band, whether they
Speaker 1: show up in Milan, Pittsburgh, Toronto, or um or Australia.
Speaker 1: So you know, our our strength has always been go global.
Speaker 1: A global business is what the artist needs today. Have
Speaker 1: offices and all the main cities, have the best marketing staff,
Speaker 1: production venue deals, marketing deals, sponsorship deals, um. And that
Speaker 1: ends up being you know kind of the business. If
Speaker 1: we can have the best players and most of the
Speaker 1: markets around the world, we can convince any artists that
Speaker 1: we can take care of their tour market at the best,
Speaker 1: execute at the best, get the best venue rates, get
Speaker 1: the best production rates, as well as pay the proper
Speaker 1: financing deal to to secure the deal because of your
Speaker 1: other revenue streams. Do you find if there's a competition
Speaker 1: live nation, if it chooses to can always pay more. Now,
Speaker 1: I mean you know most most of the ultimately you know,
Speaker 1: the tour that the local business is still a dog
Speaker 1: fight as you know, you know denver you're fighting. You
Speaker 1: know your guys versus uh guys. Everyone's got similar revenue streams,
Speaker 1: so tends to be the same same. No, we don't
Speaker 1: have any new tricks that the others don't have. So
Speaker 1: we've all got the same revenue streams. And if it's
Speaker 1: a tour, it's us versus a g um. They've got
Speaker 1: similar revenue streams. As you know, they own the buildings,
Speaker 1: they have the sponsorship, so we all have the same
Speaker 1: revenue streams to to use to win the tour or
Speaker 1: the local day eight. We just happen to think that,
Speaker 1: you know, Uh, I've always believed that it's a local business,
Speaker 1: and I think that's our competitive advantage very Having a
Speaker 1: hundred offices and thirty thousand staff executing your tour is
Speaker 1: a is a big investment to make, but it ultimately
Speaker 1: makes a difference when you're looking at that band and
Speaker 1: and talking about do you have boots on the ground
Speaker 1: to to make that happen. Now, you also have touring deals.
Speaker 1: I remember talking to you one day there was a
Speaker 1: relatively nason act with some action and you made an
Speaker 1: overall touring deal. So how prevalent are those and what's
Speaker 1: the philosophy behind that? Well, you know, touring deals, let's go.
Speaker 1: You know, ten twelve years ago was not It was
Speaker 1: not the norm. And I think every year you've seen
Speaker 1: more and more artists look at kind of uh looking
Speaker 1: for a partnership with someone us a g um and um,
Speaker 1: and I think they become more or of the of
Speaker 1: the norm, which would make sense because you know, I
Speaker 1: always remind artists or managers and agents that you know
Speaker 1: the same reason why you have a record deal. You didn't.
Speaker 1: You didn't sell off your record by by record store
Speaker 1: by city. You probably did a record deal because you
Speaker 1: want one partner thinking about your business on a longer
Speaker 1: term basis, on a marketing basis. So I truly believe
Speaker 1: that if you have a tour partner thinking about your
Speaker 1: tour on a global basis, you might not you know,
Speaker 1: make money and Denver, but you might make make money
Speaker 1: in Argentina and South America. You're going to make a
Speaker 1: different investment basis if it's spread over time and you
Speaker 1: can play together and you're gonna try to build a
Speaker 1: pot together. So I think I think an artist today,
Speaker 1: I think a manager today has a whole new business
Speaker 1: than he did of the old management system. Right, the
Speaker 1: old manager had to get you a record deal and
Speaker 1: a tour deal. The new manager today has got a
Speaker 1: whole new world to think about on influencers and how
Speaker 1: he's going to build his brand and what they going
Speaker 1: to do with that artist. I think when it comes
Speaker 1: to touring, I don't think it's that complex. In the end,
Speaker 1: I think he wants to meet with his agent talk
Speaker 1: about his tour plans and find a good, committed partner
Speaker 1: that's going to pay market rate with great marketing and
Speaker 1: support and get that done. I don't think there's a
Speaker 1: they are obsessed, um with what exact artist or what
Speaker 1: promoter and spain is doing the deal. I think they're
Speaker 1: more obsessed with who's my promoter? And I've got to
Speaker 1: think about that, just like I thought about my record partner.
Speaker 1: I want to play with a partner that's thinking long
Speaker 1: term with me. So we've seen that more and more
Speaker 1: um an artist looking for bigger deals, longer term deals.
Speaker 1: So what does a tour deal look like in what
Speaker 1: percentage of your business is that? Or to put another way,
Speaker 1: how many of you have? Well, because on a global basis,
Speaker 1: you know we you know I mentioned earlier we did
Speaker 1: thirty thousand shows. We might have five thousand of those
Speaker 1: would be a tour deal. A tour deal could be
Speaker 1: forty dates in America, could be a hundred dates globally,
Speaker 1: could be one year deal, could be three year deals
Speaker 1: depending if the artist is on cycle or once a
Speaker 1: couple of cycle deal or a certain amount of shows.
Speaker 1: So somewhere between you know, one cycle and three cycles
Speaker 1: maybe a tour deal. Okay, what's the future of the
Speaker 1: agency business If we're looking from the agency side. Music
Speaker 1: representation is a small revenue share of these giant agencies,
Speaker 1: and certainly when you have the monster acts, do they
Speaker 1: really need an agent at all? So what's your thought
Speaker 1: about where that's all going. Well, you know, I think anyone,
Speaker 1: I think we've all got squeezed in the business. Right. Ultimately,
Speaker 1: the artist has done a great job of building their
Speaker 1: business over time, and the manager, the agent, the promoter,
Speaker 1: everyone ultimately had gotten squeezed over time. Promoter, I know
Speaker 1: used to be it used to be what a fifty
Speaker 1: fifty eight twenty manager used to get paid on gross
Speaker 1: versus net, And an agent's gotten squeezed. So I think
Speaker 1: we're all in the same business. The middleman ultimately gets
Speaker 1: squeezed over time if you don't reinvent your business or
Speaker 1: diversify it. I as a promoter, knew that we wouldn't
Speaker 1: we couldn't exist. Just as a promoter fifteen years ago
Speaker 1: when I was you know, looked at Live Nation, it
Speaker 1: was that to me was just one piece of the business.
Speaker 1: You had to build a much more diversified business model
Speaker 1: over time. To win, which we worked on. I think
Speaker 1: the agents have done the same thing. I think whether
Speaker 1: you're William Morris or c A A, they've all you know,
Speaker 1: William Morris obviously very different with UFC and others, but
Speaker 1: I think they looked at it as a macro business
Speaker 1: and they've diversified into other businesses to build around it
Speaker 1: UM so they can try to offer value to those
Speaker 1: artists and clients, UM beyond just their you know, the
Speaker 1: historic business model. So I think they'll I think that listen,
Speaker 1: they're great brands at the car CEA William Morris case
Speaker 1: you now joining. I think the role of an agent
Speaker 1: UH is a is a good check and balance for
Speaker 1: the manager UM. And I think the agent will continue
Speaker 1: to evolve their services UM, much like the labels have evolved.
Speaker 1: Right everyone looked at the labels and all of a
Speaker 1: sudden they're making money on Peloton that no one predicted.
Speaker 1: So I think the artists are gonna make a lot
Speaker 1: of money there direct to consumer brands. Right now, every
Speaker 1: artist wants his own vodka is tequilas, Monetizing his Instagram
Speaker 1: is TikTok. There's lots of ways to monetize these artists.
Speaker 1: Outside of the tour alone. The agents are all looking
Speaker 1: at how do we how do we add more value
Speaker 1: to the to the UH, to the to the artist.
Speaker 1: How do we get them into venture deals together, how
Speaker 1: do we monetize their privates? How do we ponetize um
Speaker 1: affairs and festivals. So still a big piece of the
Speaker 1: business and and a whole new world for the agents
Speaker 1: that they keep evolving their skill set. One thing we
Speaker 1: know is the traditional let's put the traditional major label
Speaker 1: business is very different from it used to use. Some
Speaker 1: major labels controlled most of the market place, certainly in
Speaker 1: the era of physical distribution, and those were the acts
Speaker 1: that sold the tickets. Now more than ever, if you
Speaker 1: look at pole Star, you look at grosses, it could
Speaker 1: be completely different from the Spotify top fifty. So in
Speaker 1: a music level, what is going on in general? What
Speaker 1: do you see in the marketplace? Yeah, you know, but
Speaker 1: I saw that that that's been consistent for quite a while.
Speaker 1: I mean, even pop music that charts, we're not always
Speaker 1: reflective of the sale on the venue, so that that's
Speaker 1: not new to me. UM. We we've seen that disconnect
Speaker 1: from disco days onward. It didn't always mean that you
Speaker 1: could sell tickets. So, um, you know, I I don't
Speaker 1: see that as uh is anything that affects the business differently,
Speaker 1: you know, I do think that you look at the business,
Speaker 1: you know, it's a day and you look at hip
Speaker 1: hop businesses as you know, let's call that the new
Speaker 1: rock and roll or the rock and roll of today's generation.
Speaker 1: That's vibrant and big as ever Travis Scott do you
Speaker 1: name them are selling out and driving driving venues like
Speaker 1: the rock and roll of the past. So that's relevant
Speaker 1: and bigger than ever. Um So I don't, I don't.
Speaker 1: I don't think the the charts reflective on the ticket
Speaker 1: sales is a new disconnect. I think that's been happening
Speaker 1: for for a long time. Okay, so what do we know?
Speaker 1: You're in this business three d in sixty five days
Speaker 1: a year. Certainly new managers they may only have one
Speaker 1: act and are wept behind the year. So what do
Speaker 1: you say to new managers who have a successful act,
Speaker 1: it's got some action. What lessons do they need to learn?
Speaker 1: What do they have to wake up to? Wow, it's
Speaker 1: a great it's a great one. You know, I think
Speaker 1: they're you know that you see the the chain happening
Speaker 1: in this new era of managers um in that there
Speaker 1: they're driving their artists. Probably is celebrities more than artists
Speaker 1: at times. Um And I do think that, you know,
Speaker 1: we we often remind them that even though they may
Speaker 1: be able to get a vodka line or sell some
Speaker 1: Instagram ads, longevity means you've got to have hits and
Speaker 1: you've got to apprentice yourself on that road and connect.
Speaker 1: Uh So I would say sometimes, you know, I was
Speaker 1: with a manager and we had a tour that wasn't
Speaker 1: selling well, and I said to what what are we
Speaker 1: gonna do? And and he said, well, you know, we're
Speaker 1: getting paid for privates and we're gonna launch a hot
Speaker 1: sauce because we have a lot of followers. And I thought, wow, Now,
Speaker 1: for thirty years, Bob, that answer would have been, you know,
Speaker 1: we're gonna get in the art we're gonna get in
Speaker 1: the studio, we've got a single coming, and we're gonna
Speaker 1: sell some tickets. Um So, I do think that, you know,
Speaker 1: over night, now if you have twenty million followers, you
Speaker 1: can sell some Instagram ads and make a living. Um So,
Speaker 1: I think that they have to watch that fine line
Speaker 1: between driving their brand monetizing their brand. But ultimately, if
Speaker 1: they're gonna play long, they've still got to put those hits.
Speaker 1: They've got to have the playlist, and they've got to
Speaker 1: be be able to connect on stage and sell arenas.
Speaker 1: I mean, i'd always tell that artist, sell the arena,
Speaker 1: sell the amphitheater. If you can sell the stadium, then
Speaker 1: start the monetization because you'll never you'll never get that
Speaker 1: chance to get that run and build that business. But
Speaker 1: once you stand on stage as a stadium act and
Speaker 1: get that rarefied air, the next the next thirty or
Speaker 1: forty years are set. But you've got to get there.
Speaker 1: That you're you're you're defined as an artist on what
Speaker 1: you do on stage, and if you can get to
Speaker 1: that rarefied stadium, even that sell outs arena business, you
Speaker 1: become an artist of a different caliber and then you're
Speaker 1: probably going to be able to have a career, even
Speaker 1: if it's a diminishing career of casinos and fairs eventually,
Speaker 1: but the more people you can perform to and really
Speaker 1: live is where you make fans on on on you know,
Speaker 1: on Spotify is where you you sell some some streams,
Speaker 1: but but you you you cement long term fans when
Speaker 1: they see you live. Um. And the more you do
Speaker 1: that and you put all that hard work in and
Speaker 1: go global and go play some festivals, solidify that fan
Speaker 1: base and then and then the monetization will come. Versus
Speaker 1: you get monetize it too fast and early, that artist
Speaker 1: isn't gonna want to get on that plane and go
Speaker 1: all the way to Belgium to play that festival, or
Speaker 1: build that build that road show. So you know I'm
Speaker 1: biased because I live and live, but we've seen it
Speaker 1: over and over. If you build a live audience, you
Speaker 1: build a fan base live. That magic that you make
Speaker 1: with that fan in that field or in that stadium
Speaker 1: or that festival carries your brand for long time. And
Speaker 1: what is the status of Live Nations management company? Is
Speaker 1: that a future business? When we see that fade away
Speaker 1: sold off? No, No, we we like we like it
Speaker 1: um Um. You know, it started organically, so it's not
Speaker 1: it's not meant to be uh, anything more than than
Speaker 1: the obvious. We started with jay Z and rock Nation
Speaker 1: and it was our kind of our first shot at
Speaker 1: being in business with an artist and a manager company. Um.
Speaker 1: And then we've expanded slowly over time. Obviously, what Irvan
Speaker 1: was was here for a bit and gone and we
Speaker 1: have our seventeen management companies. Now we'd be investors in UM.
Speaker 1: I love that division Artist Nation. UH. It's great to
Speaker 1: be that connected to the artist and the manager to
Speaker 1: see the world from their view here what's going on
Speaker 1: from the record deals to the uh to to the
Speaker 1: madness and and and selling off their records and publishing
Speaker 1: rights and and obviously it helps drive our core business.
Speaker 1: Is if if you're if you're building those relationships, it
Speaker 1: does it does ultimately get you to win a few
Speaker 1: jump balls, um when you're battling for the tour. So
Speaker 1: we just you know, concluded a deal recently. Well we'll
Speaker 1: keep building that division. UM. We think it's a good
Speaker 1: adjacent business to our core business, high margin compared to uh,
Speaker 1: the concert business. So we like it, okay. And what's
Speaker 1: the status of festivals both domestically and worldwide? What do
Speaker 1: we know? There were a few then there were too
Speaker 1: many where we at now you know, there's a I
Speaker 1: think a little bit of a shakeout happened. Probably obviously
Speaker 1: COVID did did help. We've we even struck out a few.
Speaker 1: I think we I think we shut down twelve that
Speaker 1: weren't working that we didn't love over over our festival portfolio.
Speaker 1: Um So, I I think you're seeing the bars getting higher,
Speaker 1: which is um to kind of make make a successful
Speaker 1: festival work. Um So, if you're lucky enough to be
Speaker 1: in space like Lalla Palooza is, or Coachella or Bonnaroo
Speaker 1: or a c l um where you seem to be
Speaker 1: passage of right in in that consumer space, they're fabulous businesses.
Speaker 1: I mean, Lola Palooza is. You know, I can't take
Speaker 1: any of the credit. It was everyone else. But you
Speaker 1: know what a brand they built that we're now sitting
Speaker 1: in all of these festivals in South America, over in Europe.
Speaker 1: It's through traveling festival brand that that's worked well. So
Speaker 1: festivals are still you know, consumers love them to death
Speaker 1: on a global basis. We have a couple hundred of
Speaker 1: them and I love them still, whether they're boutique ideas
Speaker 1: like we're doing in England too big ideas. Um I
Speaker 1: think there's still vibrant, still lots of landscape. I think
Speaker 1: you know, you and I've talked about it. I think
Speaker 1: I don't. I don't think all of a sudden you
Speaker 1: can just launch a mainline festival with you know, three
Speaker 1: different genres of music over the weekend and expect a
Speaker 1: hundred thousand anymore. I think they become like any industry.
Speaker 1: They went out wide, then they the big ones survived,
Speaker 1: and then the niche one started to create their own space.
Speaker 1: So we see it happening now, a niche idea in
Speaker 1: a good location against a certain genre of music or
Speaker 1: a certain theme. Look look at Eddie's festival we're doing
Speaker 1: in uh Down near San Diego on the ocean, a
Speaker 1: real beach theme, and of UM sold out obviously through COVID,
Speaker 1: sold out. But so I like the I like the
Speaker 1: super served ideas where they're hitting a certain target, certain
Speaker 1: location um, and they're less They're almost less talent reliant
Speaker 1: because they have more of a thematic and soul to them,
Speaker 1: and those ones tend to work, and the band is
Speaker 1: the compliment to the theme, not just a bad line
Speaker 1: or typically we have a good lineup with a bad
Speaker 1: name and we think it's a festival, but it's not.
Speaker 1: It's got no soul, no no, no, no real reason
Speaker 1: for existing other than the lineup. So I think those
Speaker 1: are gone. We don't green light many of those anymore.
Speaker 1: If you've had a good idea or a great location. Uh,
Speaker 1: those seem to be working well. Okay, if you use
Speaker 1: Elton John's song, I'm still standing. You look at your
Speaker 1: tenure at Live Nation. There are a lot of people
Speaker 1: in power that are no longer there. You have remained.
Speaker 1: What makes you successful both from the beginning and now
Speaker 1: you personally. Oh jeez, I know you have to kind
Speaker 1: of my therapy session on Thursdays to dig into that
Speaker 1: one as we're as we're strying to solve that. You know,
Speaker 1: I don't know, none of us can understand what are
Speaker 1: superhuman power is. But uh um, you know, I think
Speaker 1: I got lucky early in life that I really really
Speaker 1: loved live entertainment and I found a passion early. So
Speaker 1: I do think that's been part of the success, right
Speaker 1: because from my early days this was what I wanted
Speaker 1: to do. So I was very focused, been very focused
Speaker 1: on building this kind of business in this space. Um uh.
Speaker 1: And I do think that's the real reason I'm successful.
Speaker 1: I didn't want to run a record label, I didn't
Speaker 1: want to run anything else, but I wanted to build
Speaker 1: a live concert company. And I think my focus and
Speaker 1: a little bit of my Thunderbay Warrior in me Um.
Speaker 1: And that grit added together with that complete focused agenda
Speaker 1: is how we ended up kind of staying on course here.
Speaker 1: Most people that I was battling with the most things
Speaker 1: I've been through, they didn't have the obsessive focus I
Speaker 1: had on a live event business. I mean, they might
Speaker 1: have wanted to be in business, they might have wanted
Speaker 1: a music's business, they might have other agendas. But you
Speaker 1: had to wake up early and go to bed late
Speaker 1: to beat me on this core business idea because this
Speaker 1: is this is what I think about nightly daily. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but knowing a little bit more than we've talked about
Speaker 1: here so far, going back to the top. You were
Speaker 1: working for Lobat. They had a company library. You literally
Speaker 1: read every book in the library. Yeah, you can say grip,
Speaker 1: but there's more of a dedication, more of an effort.
Speaker 1: Obviously an intelligence point too, that is really a key component. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, Um, maybe it's small town values. There's a
Speaker 1: little bit of Canadian and you when you when you
Speaker 1: grow up in Canada, um and you're you know, you're
Speaker 1: you're looking at ABC and CBS every day and looking
Speaker 1: at this big, big country called America, telling you how
Speaker 1: great they are you. You definitely don't grow up in
Speaker 1: Canada thinking that you have any of the answers. You
Speaker 1: don't think you're the smartest on the block. You think
Speaker 1: you have a lot to prove and a lot to learn.
Speaker 1: So I would say from from my insecure, small thunder
Speaker 1: Bay roots, um, you know, my obsession with learning and
Speaker 1: trying to outwork and outlearn the other guy still exists today.
Speaker 1: So I think that that tenacity of I'm going to
Speaker 1: work harder and because I'm not the smartest guy in
Speaker 1: the room, I better read and understand and and and
Speaker 1: and kind of figure out every angle to the the
Speaker 1: equation um to get this job done. So absolutely that
Speaker 1: that that burning desire to learn, observe, digest um has
Speaker 1: has stayed with me. I still don't think I've arrived.
Speaker 1: I don't think I got it figured out yet. I don't.
Speaker 1: I'm not resting on my laurels. So that tenacity to
Speaker 1: keep keep striving to be better having arrived yet has
Speaker 1: been I guess probably a good a good thing. Okay,
Speaker 1: in the live side of the business. Uh, it's not
Speaker 1: like the way they used to shuffle the decks at
Speaker 1: record companies, which they've done a little bit less of now,
Speaker 1: and there are lifers, you know, Louis Messina, you know
Speaker 1: a lot of other ones. How long do you plan
Speaker 1: to do this? You know, I would say what I
Speaker 1: love about the live business very different than the record business. Um. Now,
Speaker 1: the record business has not produced a lot of entrepreneurs overall.
Speaker 1: You know, there's been a few big winners, obviously Geffen
Speaker 1: and you know, Jimmy and Clive um. But generally they're
Speaker 1: they're they're like the movie studios. They work within an
Speaker 1: existing system. UM. I love the live business because it
Speaker 1: is filled with characters and entrepreneurs still to date. So
Speaker 1: I I do believe one of the strengths of Live
Speaker 1: Nation is we've just been continually able to reinvent ourselves
Speaker 1: because you know, the the innovator's dilemma is always how
Speaker 1: do you keep making your big company innovative? Well, you've
Speaker 1: got to keep injecting it with some of the craziest right,
Speaker 1: You've got to inject it with entrepreneurship. Um. And and
Speaker 1: every day we're waking up doing a new joint venture
Speaker 1: with the latest you know, um, festival hustler, entrepreneur, venue operator, promoter,
Speaker 1: My company is filled with them. We have hundreds of
Speaker 1: joint ventures. UM. So I do find that we've been
Speaker 1: able to although run a very big public company, uh
Speaker 1: the entrepreneurial flair and me still gets fed uh daily
Speaker 1: and I get the deal and live with some of
Speaker 1: the greatest entrepreneurs, the crazies, the fun the big thinkers.
Speaker 1: None of these guys in the entertainment space in theory
Speaker 1: have worked for a company. As you know, the messina is,
Speaker 1: the Focals, the Dennis Desmond's, the c three guys, the
Speaker 1: insomniac Pascals, the Ron Lafittes, all the managers. None of
Speaker 1: them think they work for me. They don't work for
Speaker 1: a company. We're a federation. So I do find that exhilarating.
Speaker 1: I wouldn't be able to work in a traditional business
Speaker 1: like lebat and others, where it was just kind of
Speaker 1: filled with a line workers. I do love the entrepreneurship
Speaker 1: that that the live business feeds um and reinvents itself
Speaker 1: and overnight there's a new entrepreneur. As you know, if
Speaker 1: he if he finds the right field with the right idea,
Speaker 1: he can be the next Paul Tollett. Right, So we're
Speaker 1: always on pursuit of kind of like America's got talent,
Speaker 1: we're always looking for new talent. Um. We read a
Speaker 1: fine your self by it and uh and I love
Speaker 1: being part of that and and um. So that's that's
Speaker 1: what finds it exciting. So it's it's far from a
Speaker 1: job to me. As you know, you've got lucky every
Speaker 1: now and then, find your passion, do it with great people,
Speaker 1: have success. I'll run this one as as long as
Speaker 1: it's still exciting and fun. Okay, thank you, Michael. This
Speaker 1: has been so great. Thanks for talking to our own audience.
Speaker 1: Really appreciate it. Thank you, Bob appreciated. Until next time.
Speaker 1: This is Bob Left Sense