MG Live touring head’s Aussie market verdict

MG Live’s newly-promoted director of touring Sam Rogers says it is not all “doom and gloom” for the Australian market as the dust settles on its summer season.

Rogers, who joined the company in 2020, brings more than a decade of experience to his new role, including five years at WME. He has worked with international artists such as J Balvin, Fatboy Slim, Macklemore, Peggy Gou, Madison Beer and The Roots.

“I’m feeling really good about it,” he tells IQ. “I appreciate Matt showing so much faith in me and I’m ready to dig and keep growing all the good work that we’ve already been doing with MG Live.”

Australasia’s largest independently-owned promoter, MG Live was formed in 2023 by Mushroom Group CEO Matt Gudinski, who brought a number of the company’s leading events and touring businesses under one banner.

“I’d always kept an eye on Sam and when the opportunity came up to have him join the team in 2020, even in the midst of a pandemic that had devastated our industry, it was simply too good to pass up,” says Gudinski.

“Sam and I work incredibly well together, and I’m thrilled that he will be stepping into the role of director of touring at MG Live. His wealth of expertise and leadership will be instrumental in ensuring MG Live continues to set the benchmark for touring across our region.”

“The past month has been one of the most rewarding and fun months that I’ve had in the business”

Over the past year, MG Live has delivered more than 50 tours and attracted over 500,000 fans to shows by the likes of Kylie Minogue, Kneecap, Fatboy Slim, Róisín Murphy and JPEGMAFIA. And Rogers hails the recently-concluded summer period as “incredible”.

“The past month has been one of the most rewarding and fun months that I’ve had in the business,” he says. “We had the Kylie arena tour, which was just incredible. We had Fatboy Slim who just wrapped up a run of outdoor winery shows where he’s playing to 10 to 15,000 people each night.

“Fatboy Slim comes out every two years and we’ve continued to grow his business with his management and our friends at WME. This was his biggest tour yet by far, and the vibe was incredible.”

An unorthodox highlight saw the British DJ, aka Norman Cook, play a secret set at a fish and chip shop in St Kilda, Melbourne, announced at an hour’s notice (“That got incredible press coverage and was a lot of fun”), while bedlam ensued when Belfast hip-hop trio Kneecap performed a free set in the city’s Federation Square on 10 March.

“We’ve just had Kneecap in town for their debut tour, which went absolutely crazy. All the shows blew out well ahead,” reports Rogers. “We had another fun moment with them where we put on a free gig in Fed Square in the middle of Melbourne and 14,000 people turned up. It was absolute mayhem.

“We’ve also had JPEG Mafia and Roisin Murphy, and all those tours are just in the last month. That was an incredible way to cap off the summer.”

“The headline business is still strong – Australia punches above its weight in that respect”

Despite the well-documented travails of the Australian live music scene – most notably those of its beleaguered festival sector – Rogers assures there is still reason for positivity.

“I don’t see it as all doom and gloom,” he says. “A lot of the news does seem to be quite negative, but I’m seeing wins almost every day – whether that’s internally, our partners at Frontier, other promoters or domestic artists doing their thing, there are a lot of good news stories out there.”

Indeed, Rogers says tickets have flown out of the box for the company’s upcoming shows with Tyler, the Creator and Montell Fish.

“The headline business is still strong – Australia punches above its weight in that respect – and we’re still seeing a lot of tours sell really well,” he adds. “I know that the state of the festival market is what takes up a lot of that negative space. But even still, while we have lost a couple of the stalwart music festivals over the past couple of years, there are still a lot of good wins to be noted as well.

“CMC Rocks, which is a country music festival, absolutely smashed it, selling out well in advance. Laneway had their biggest year ever and BTV are still doing their thing every year, selling 50,000-odd tickets. To just paint with one brush is not to tell the whole story. I still think that there’s lots to get excited about down here. Now, we’re looking towards the rest of this year and are already talking fairly deep into 2026.”

“It feels like there’s no end in sight for rising costs and we’re all a little bit fearful that one day we’re going to hit this breaking point”

As far as challenges, Rogers points to familiar concerns about rising costs and the knock-on effect on ticket prices.

“These are the same concerns that I think play everywhere in the world, it’s not an Australian-centric thing,” he observes. “But we are seeing rising production costs, travel costs, venue costs, the costs for everything just keep going up and up. And in turn, the ticket prices are going up and up and up. It feels like there’s no end in sight for rising costs and I guess we’re all a little bit fearful that one day we’re going to hit this breaking point.”

Rogers also praises the influence of Matt Gudinski, who was named Mushroom CEO in April 2021 in the wake of his father’s sudden passing.

“I love working with Matt, he’s a great boss,” says Rogers. We knew each other a little bit before I started, and we’d always got on well. But in the past handful of years that’s morphed from an employer-employee relationship to more like friends, and now I consider him a great mate.

“When I think about MG Live and what it means to the artists we work with and also the team that we have around us, a word that comes to mind is ‘care’,” he concludes. “We take a lot of care in the decisions that we make and that’s where we really shine – we take the best care possible of the artists and their team – and we take good care of one another internally as well. So when I think about the important ingredient to make sure that MG Live continues on this trajectory, it’s maintaining that care for all aspects. And I feel like if we continue to do that, we will continue to see success.”

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