Live Nation FY24: Ticket prices, Spotify, DOJ

Live Nation has reported record revenue and profitability from concerts in 2024 as Michael Rapino hailed “live music’s biggest year yet”.

LN, whose stock price hit a new all-time high of $155.10 earlier this week, posted $23.16 billion in overall revenue for 2024 – up 2% on the previous 12 months. Operating income was $825 million, with AOI of $2.15bn.

Concert attendance rose 4% to 151 million fans, while current ticket sales for 2025 of 65 million tickets for Live Nation concerts are up double-digits year-on-year. Ticketmaster revenue of $3bn represented a 1% increase on 2023.

“2024 was live music’s biggest year yet, as artists toured the world and fans turned out in record numbers,” said Rapino, the firm’s president and CEO. “2025 is shaping up to be even bigger thanks to a deep global concert pipeline, with more stadium shows on the books than ever before.”

The company plans to add 20 large venues globally through 2026, including stadium projects in Bogotá, Colombia and Toronto, Canada.

“To help artists perform to fans everywhere, we remain focused on building new music-centric venues, which make more live music memories possible and help drive our double-digit operating income and AOI growth in 2025, and compound at this level for years to come,” added Rapino. “At the same time, we’re investing back into the industry for those who create the music, as our investments in artists have more than doubled in the last five years, and we will continue to find new ways to support them while enhancing the fan experience.”

“[The] question is, over the course of this year, is there a path towards a resolution with the DOJ that doesn’t lead to the trial?”

Rapino and president/CFO Joe Berchtold fielded questions from investors on subjects such as ticket prices, partnerships with streaming platforms and the DOJ’s antitrust lawsuit during the company’s earnings call.

On the latter, Berchtold said there was “nothing really substantively new” to report since the recent administration change.

“The trial process continues to move apace as it has, targeting early next year for a trial date,” said Berchtold. “So [the] question is, over the course of this year, is there a path towards a resolution with the DOJ that doesn’t lead to the trial? We’ve said in the last administration, there was really no interest in any discussion on settlement.

“We’re hoping that this DOJ returns to a more traditional approach… but we haven’t had any discussions yet. The person that you would discuss it with has not been approved yet, not been appointed. So until that happens, there’s nothing we can do. And we’ll see how that plays out in the coming months.”

With ticket prices for major shows attracting headlines in recent weeks, Rapino suggested artists were becoming more adept at combatting the excesses of the secondary market, adding that the current level of sales for stadium gigs indicated the price of entry was set “at almost perfection”.

“We think these artists on their stadium pricing are priced at almost perfection”

“I think you’re seeing, with artists in general, every cycle is a little more educated on, ‘What’s the best way to price my ticket, how do I keep it accessible to my fans, but make sure scalpers don’t run away with the front of the house?’ So we love seeing these stadiums sitting somewhere around 95% sold out right now,” he said. “The ‘instantly sold out at 10am’, means we’ve transferred a lot of wealth to the scalpers.

“If you see any of those tickets, any tickets you’re talking about are going to be the high-end tickets sitting on the market. Those will flush out between now and show date. So, we think these artists on their stadium pricing are priced at almost perfection.”

He continued: “They’re helping consumers get to more shows at a good price, but also making sure that that’s priced closer to market, which means you’ll have a few high-end tickets sit around the rim until we get closer to show date. So, that’s the perfect on-sale and land the plane on show date model.

“Any inventory you see, we could sell that out in a minute if we drop the price, right? So, [it’s about] finding that right combination where you’re making sure demand and supply kind of march along on the way to the show date versus the 10am buyer sale.”

Despite the volume of huge tours currently on sale – with the stadium show pipeline up 60% year-on-year – Rapino said there had been “no slowdown at all” in demand.

“We are seeing continued strong demand,” he said. “We’re seeing consumers buying up those stadium dates faster than ever, up year-over-year or any comparable base, so no slowdown at all. Lots of inventory, but equally great demand selling most of these stadiums out or close to being sold out by the time we get to the show dates.”

“Spotify and Apple and Amazon, they’ve approached us all. We’ve talked to them all, about ideas on if they wanted inventory”

He added: “Overall, our festival business globally is stronger than ever. Our club and theatre business is stronger than ever. And obviously our stadium business is on fire. So whether it’s geographical, whether it’s venue type or whether it’s festival, we’re still seeing strong, strong consumer [activity] across the board in terms of buying tickets for the ’25 season.”

Amid reports that Spotify was considering adding access to presale tickets as a tenet of its rumoured Music Pro new subscription tier, Rapino confirmed LN had been in talks with the streaming giant, as well as Apple and Amazon, over potential link-ups.

“They’ve approached us all,” he said. “We’ve talked to them all about ideas if they wanted inventory. There’s a cost to that and we would entertain and look at that option if it made sense for us in comparison to other options we have for that presale, which is a very valuable asset.

“We do deals for the artists, but ultimately the artist has control of it and that artist’s job is to maximise the revenue from it. They’re not giving that away to anyone for free. So whether we partnered with them and found sponsors, or we paid for it, it’s valuable.

“It’s always the easy go-to, ‘Let’s give them presale access.’ The hard part about presale is just scaling it. Everybody wants Beyoncé presale and that’s hard to scale. So we’ve been working with all three of them, trying to find a model that may work for us and them and I assume that they’re talking to others also.”

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