‘We have a business that has no barriers’

Live Nation president/CFO Joe Berchtold says the company’s talks with streaming services highlights the “critical” importance of tickets in the modern business.

LN boss Michael Rapino recently confirmed discussions with Spotify, as well as Apple and Amazon, amid reports that Spotify is considering adding access to presale tickets as a tenet of its rumoured super-premium subscription tier.

In addition, Ticketmaster announced a partnership with SoundCloud that will enable artists to list and manage their live events on the streaming platform.

Speaking yesterday (5 March) in a fireside chat at Morgan Stanley’s Technology, Media & Telecom Conference in California, Berchtold suggested the fact the services were targeting ticketing served as validation of how “critically important the ticket is”.

“That’s a pretty strong statement in today’s world that very diverse technology media companies are focused on the value of the ticket,” he said. “When people say, ‘We want tickets,’ we say, ‘That’s great, we’d love to talk to you.'”

“The conversations now are over an entire cycle… It’s a much more strategic, long-term discussion”

The 40-minute interview also saw Berchtold share his thoughts on the growth of the live industry and the complexities of plotting world tours.

“We have a business that has no barriers,” he said. “The big transformation that we’ve talked about over the last 10, 15, 20 years is the artist is now making all their money on the road. So they need to tour, married with the fact that these digital platforms mean that – through TikTok, through Instagram – every fan, every 15-year-old girl in the world is listening to Beyoncé at the same time. So we have global latent demand.”

He continued: “Coming out of Covid, we invested much more in a central team that is responsible for working with the artists and saying, ‘We can talk about the 40 shows in North America, but really, let’s talk about the three-year plan, because we have the North America run, the Latin America run, the Asia run and the Europe run, the festival run in the US, the festival run in Europe…

“‘Let’s map out the next three years. When do you want to work? Do you have kids [and] want to take summers off? How do we sequence it? When are you releasing new music? How do we integrate that in?’ The conversations now are over an entire cycle… So it’s a much more strategic, long-term discussion, because we built that organisation centrally that has that capability.”

Ticket prices were another area of concern, with Berchtold addressing the thought process when it comes to pricing the house.

“Almost every artist says the same thing: ‘I want any fan to be able to afford to get into the building,'” he said. “That doesn’t mean that they can afford to buy the front row, but it means they can buy a ticket and get in. So the increased sophistication on pricing is letting us start with, ‘What does that artist want to make?’ And then, ‘Okay, so now how are we going to price the back of the house?'”

“We are now positioned to do things we couldn’t have done 15 years ago”

By pricing the best seats higher, Berchtold said artists could both combat the secondary market while subsidising an increased number of lower priced tickets. He noted that over 4,000 tickets per date for Beyoncé’s tour were priced $75, with 14,000 tickets costing $110 or less.

“[Artists are thinking], ‘how do I scale the rest of the house so I achieve my objective of what I want to make, knowing that those tickets are still giving good value to the fans?'” he continue. “They’re saying, ‘I can sell [a fifth row ticket] for $300 and know that the scalpers are just going to figure out how to get that ticket… [So] I can price it at $1,000 because that will let me have another couple of hundred tickets at $75.’

“They’re not looking at it and just saying, ‘How do I get the most?’ They’re saying, ‘How do I balance all the pieces to get what I need, while still serving a lot of fans in terms of making it accessible to them?'”

Berchtold praised Live Nation’s Latin America business as a “big contributor” to its growth, noting that its acquisition of Ocesa, which was completed in 2021, “fundamentally changed our position in those markets”.

“We are now positioned to do things we couldn’t have done 15 years ago,” he said.

“We want to go where the demand exists, but buildings don’t exist”

On the flipside, Berchtold pointed out that employing a “hyperlocal” strategy in the US had been key to growing its fanbase in its traditional heartland.

“We’re expanding the market and building that fanbase in more local areas,” he said. “It’s the same underlying dynamic. It means we can go to Buenos Aires with Coldplay… and we can go with the new alt rock band and play in six spots between San Diego to LA.”

Referencing its new 20-year agreement to operate Finland’s Helsinki Halli, as well as other venue projects in Europe and South America, Berchtold outlined Live Nation’s venue strategy.

“We want to go to where the market isn’t,” he stressed. “We’re not going to go compete in the US and try to build an arena and compete against billionaire NBA owners. We want to go where the demand exists, but buildings don’t exist.”

And in the wake of “live music’s biggest year yet”, Berchtold added: “We’ve now sold over 70 million tickets for shows this year and expectation of double digit AOI growth continues, even with the currency fluctuation. So we’re feeling very good overall.”

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