Historically one of the most robust live music markets in the world, Germany is not immune to the challenges facing the industry in 2024. IQ talks to those on the front line in a territory where pressures of rising costs has never been more keenly felt.

Germany remains the third-biggest live market in the world, after only the US and Japan. Its turnover is huge – more than €6bn annually from 300,000 events, with over 115m tickets sold [source: BDKV]. It contains markets within markets – Berlin, Hamburg, Munich, Cologne, Frankfurt: all distinct, all mighty – and a massive infrastructure of diversified promoters, modern venues, and household-name festivals.

This is the kind of territory where Taylor Swift finds the time for seven shows of her Eras Tour, and where Adele is dropping in for ten concerts in a bespoke 80,000-capacity Munich stadium across August – a plan the singer herself, who hasn’t played in Europe in eight years, calls “a bit random but still fabulous”.

On a genre-by-genre basis, there are successes all around. Country is booming, schlager remains strong, and Germany’s domestic artists, not least its locally grown hip-hop acts, are now good for multiple nights in arenas. Nine German promoters – counting Live Nation, which appeared as a combined group – ranked in Pollstar’s global Top 100 by ticket sales in 2023.

“All the traffic that was backed up after Covid is really just done now, and we’re looking at fresh new touring and fresh new on-sales in the market,” says Semmel Concerts head of international booking Sina Hall.

“There’s a lot of good things happening and a lot of very healthy sales going on right now”

“People are definitely out, and they want adventure and to experience live and all the different aspects of it, whether that is an exhibition or a musical or a show. There’s a lot of good things happening and a lot of very healthy sales going on right now.”

But while the pandemic seems to have engendered a rolling wave of demand for big-name live entertainment, its fallout, and that of other local and regional complications, is still being felt in numerous ways.

Germany was the only G7 economy to shrink last year, in the teeth of a painful energy crisis, sluggish productivity, low public investment, and an aging population. For the live business, the sector-specific challenges are crowding in, too, chief among them the soaring costs troubling the business.

“I think the market in Germany has all different aspects,” says DEAG CEO Detlef Kornett. “It is good, and it is tough at the same time. When you look at the big brand names out there touring on their own, from AC/DC to Adele, they can ask for almost any price and do experiments never seen before. On the flipside, I think it is tough for small- and medium-sized bands, because costs have increased so much that touring or individual shows become a challenge.”

Most promoters, while broadly upbeat, also draw a distinction between touring and festivals – the former essentially thriving, the latter particularly exposed to mounting labour, production, energy, and talent costs.

“Artists are looking at getting more money out of touring, and the competition between promoters is getting harder and harder”

Are promoters sending out frantic distress signals? Not necessarily – the engine is still firing, the tickets are still selling, Germany is still a muscular market. But in a world that has had some unpredictable shocks in the past few years, there are clouds in the sky even on sunny days.

“I think the market’s become quite tight,” says Wizard Live managing director Oliver Hoppe. “I think the artists are looking at getting more money out of touring, and the competition between promoters is getting harder and harder. Everybody has increased costs; people have less money in their pocket. I’m not complaining, we’re doing quite good. But it’s just a lot of variables that you have to factor in. It feels a lot more like work than it did before the pandemic, I guess.”

Promoters
Germany houses some of Europe’s strongest and most industrious promoters, and these days, they move in packs.

Of the local corporates, CTS Eventim holds weighty stakes in some of Germany’s biggest players, including Semmel Concerts, FKP Scorpio, DreamHaus, Peter Rieger Konzertagentur, and heavyweight regional promoters including ARGO Konzerte, Dirk Becker Entertainment, and Promoters Group Munich – to add to venues such as the Lanxess Arena in Cologne and the Waldbühne in Berlin.

DEAG likewise has promoters and festival properties the length and breadth of the country, from Frankfurt’s Wizard Promotions and Munich’s Global Concerts to I-Motion in Mülheim-Kärlich, whose electronic festivals include Nature One in Kastellaun, Mayday in Dortmund, and Ruhr-in-Love in Oberhausen.

Live Nation GSA launched in 2016 under the father-and-son leadership of Marek and André Lieberberg, since adding a majority stake in Goodlive to the group.

Elsewhere, there remain independents, including Berlin’s MCT Agentur, which bridges everything from clubs to Rammstein and Robbie Williams shows; Hamburg’s Karsten Jahnke Konzertdirektion, busy with Taylor Swift and its annual Stadtpark shows; and Berlin’s Landstreicher Booking, with its great strength in domestic artists.

“This whole industry is in flux and has become a lot more complicated”

But the landscape has changed, and in more ways than simply the push towards consolidation. Traditionally, Germany had a very specific way of doing things, involving national and local promoters, and while that setup remains in place, in a globalised world some of those market-specific conventions are gradually being chipped away.

“It has become very complex,” says Kornett. “The German market always had a unique structure of touring companies and local promoters, but the lines are blurring. More and more, tours go direct without really involving a local promoter, and then there are the local promoters that develop into production and touring companies. This whole industry is in flux and has become a lot more complicated, but we intend to take advantage of that development.”

The discombobulated days of the immediate post-pandemic period, when promoters’ instincts didn’t seem to match the new rhythms of the market, have settled down now, but German shows still require a lot of marketing.

“We’re getting better at predicting how people are going to react and how certain things are going to do,” says Hall. “But if I compare our on-sales, for example, to the UK or the US, it feels like we still have a very long on-sale period. It feels like in the other markets, it’s got very, very short notice, like sometimes our big tours have been pushed out like two or three months in advance. And I feel Germany still needs that long on-sale phase.”

Semmel’s business is nonetheless moving forward on numerous fronts, its domestic roster including stadium shows for Herbert Grönemeyer and outdoor concerts for Roland Kaiser, as well as the acquisition of 1,800-capacity Metronom Theater in Oberhausen and the launch, with industry veteran Ralf Kokemüller, of new shows and musicals company Limelight Live Entertainment.

“A lot of smaller and medium artists are facing lower demand and massively higher touring costs”

Live Nation is also seeing heavy traffic. In addition to tours by Billie Eilish, Janet Jackson, Metallica, and Justin Timberlake this year (not forgetting those Adele shows with Austrian co-promoter Klaus Leutgeb), Live Nation presides over Lollapalooza Berlin, Munich’s Superbloom, HipHop Open in Stuttgart, the outgoing MELT in Gräfenhainichen, and versions of the Deutschrap-specific Heroes festival in Hanover, Allgäu, Freiburg, and Geiselwind.

At FKP, this year is a big one on all fronts, as it expands its remit from one of “music-focused promoter to cultural organiser,” in the words of CEO Stephan Thanscheidt, having added exhibitions, family entertainment, comedy, and spoken word to its music portfolio. But the music remains strong.

“2024 surely is a special year for us,” says Thanscheidt. “We’re going strong with seven stadium shows from Taylor Swift and a concert series at the prestigious tech fair IFA in Berlin. Our summer festivals, headlined by Ed Sheeran and other legends, can also be considered top-class, resulting in high demand despite challenging times: Southside has just sold out and Hurricane is very close to its capacity as well.”

But as Thanscheidt is well aware, promoters can’t afford to just be about the big stuff, and there are plenty of challenges further down.

“Promoting the biggest names in the industry is a privilege but far from being the entirety of our work,” he says. “A lot of smaller and medium artists are facing lower demand and massively higher touring costs. Venues are also negatively affected by the explosion of costs in recent years. If we want to keep Germany among the biggest music markets worldwide, policymakers must take further steps to protect and foster the ever more important live sector.”

“Urban artists in Germany are doing a few things that are quite groundbreaking in the live business”

Karsten Jahnke Konzertdirektion is taking on the Taylor Swift shows in Hamburg, as well as its own 30-show Stadtpark series, this time featuring The Smile, Alice Cooper, Gossip, Sean Paul and others. But in other respects, managing director Ben Mitha believes we can expect a slightly quieter summer than in 2023 – partly due to the Euro football tournament and, less directly, the tour-dampening effect of the Olympics in France – and anticipates a notably busy autumn.

“The football starts middle of June and runs till middle of July, so you’re pretty much missing a full month,” says Mitha. “And also, once the tournament has started, public attention will be leaning very strongly towards it, so I think it’s better to stay away from that period with your bigger outdoor shows.”

Wizard Live celebrates its 20th anniversary this year, with a busy slate of shows by AC/DC, Toto, Bruce Dickinson, Scorpions, Judas Priest, and others. The company recently divided its operation into four divisions: shows and touring, marketing, brand & music connector, and artist development.

Managing director Oliver Hoppe says the business has changed in numerous ways, from weighing the importance of streaming for emerging acts to cutting through with cash-poor, choice-rich gig-goers. Meanwhile, he notes, artists require different things of their promoters. He points to Germany’s healthy, rule-breaking domestic urban sector as an example of the business in flux.

“Urban artists in Germany are doing a few things that are quite groundbreaking in the live business,” says Hoppe. “Some of them are even moving away from having a promoter at all and just saying, ‘Okay, we have so-and-so many followers, we know that if we press a button, we can instantly sell out. There’s literally no risk in putting on the shows, so what do we actually need a promoter for?’”

The opportunity for promoters, suggests Hoppe, is to market their expertise in new, modular ways. “Some artists need more help in marketing; some just need somebody to take care of logistics for them, like a production team would; some need help with legal or ticketing. It depends on where the artist is in their cycle. But I think the full package is not going to be relevant to everyone in the market, moving forward.”

“I think we are very fortunate that we are an independent. We are like a speedboat – we can make individual trips”

Max Wentzler of Berlin-based independent Z|Art also questions the popular conception that smaller shows necessarily struggle for an audience, putting the blame at the door of rigid promoting strategies.

“We have artists selling 100 tickets, 1,000 tickets, 5,000 tickets, and they are all doing well,” he says, pointing to a roster that includes Brakence, Bleachers, Lola Young, Olivia Dean, Ben Howard, and Jalen Ngonda.

“If you apply one way of working to so many artists, which is what I would say the big ticket-company-driven promoters do, then it’s difficult to innovatively come up with strategies for how and where to promote different artists. But that’s where I think we are very fortunate that we are an independent. We are like a speedboat – we can make individual trips. And the others are like the Royal Caribbean, which takes five days to turn around.”

Another promoter questioning the status quo is veteran event producer and talent booker Marc Kirchheim, who has made a career out of corporate and private events, from televised shows at the Brandenburg Gate with acts that include Bon Jovi, to last October’s show with Robbie Williams at Messe Essen for 10,000 employees of German multinational energy firm RWE. He believes too many international artists and their agents have priced themselves out of such shows, and is keen to engage.

“The German market is not only the tours, the ticketed shows, it is also a lot of corporate, private and public events,” says Kirchheim. “But after the pandemic, prices have exploded worldwide, and the big acts are demanding fees that no longer correspond to reality.”

The big tourers and their management should give more consideration to the corporate and private sector, even if their agents aren’t enthused, he suggests. “Corporate and private events are always valuable for international star acts,” he says. “When there are no record sales, just small payments from Spotify and co and indoor tour productions, they require new sources of income. But with the fees that have been asked for since Covid, the international top acts are no longer affordable.”

Festivals
For a bluntly revealing insight into the challenges facing European festivals, look no further than the announcement in late-May by Goodlive’s MELT festival that this year’s event will be the last, after a run that began in 1997.

“Despite our commitment and efforts in recent years, we recognise that the original MELT no longer fits into the German festival market and cannot withstand the developments of recent years without radically altering the festival concept,” said Goodlive director Florian Czok.

“The challenge, not only for Goodlive but all German festivals, is that we can’t raise the ticket price every year – we simply can’t do it”

Even amid a backdrop of well-founded fears for the wider festival business, the reaction among German promoters made it clear that, whatever we might think a doomed festival looks like, MELT – which takes its final bow in July at the Ferropolis open-air museum, near Gräfenhainichen, Saxony-Anhalt, with Sampha, James Blake, Sugababes, DJ Koze, and Romy on the bill – wasn’t it.

“For ages, MELT festival was like the go-to hipster, trendy, buzz-act festival in Germany – it was really like one of the GOAT festivals out there,” says Ben Mitha. “It’s such a lighthouse in the festival landscape, and now it has to close its doors forever. It’s quite shocking, and I hear from a bunch of festivals out there that they are really struggling this year.”

There’s no mystery to the problems festivals face this year, in Germany or anywhere else – costs have soared on all sides, big-hitting talent has been hard to nail down, and the market can’t support price rises that genuinely reflect the mounting cost of staging big events.

“Costs are rising, year-on-year, by at least 10% to 15%,” says Goodlive’s Fruzsina Szép. “The challenge, not only for Goodlive but all German festivals, is that we can’t raise the ticket price every year – we simply can’t do it.

“We all thought costs would go down after Covid, but they keep increasing. And sponsorship income is not rising by 10% to 15% every year. I think sometimes, as festival owners, people think there is always more juice in the lemon, but the lemon is totally dry.”

Germany boasts a giant festival scene that includes rock monoliths such as Wacken Open Air, Rock am Ring, and Rock im Park; electronic institutions such as Time Warp, Mayday, Love Family Park, and Nature One; and indie all-rounders including Lollapalooza Berlin and twin FKP festivals Hurricane and Southside; not to mention vigorous newcomers such as Munich’s Superbloom and small-but-beautiful indie darlings such as Appletree Garden in Diepholz and Watt En Schlick in Varel.

“We have seen cost increases up to 50% across all areas of live culture, mainly due to higher prices for energy, resources, and personnel”

Tricky conditions aside, the market is, in many respects, still a strong one. How optimistic are the big brands?

“My answer can only be two-fold,” says Thanscheidt, whose German festivals include M’era Luna in Hildesheim, Highfield in Großpösna, Elbjazz in Hamburg, and Deichbrand in Cuxhaven. “Of course, our team can’t wait for the festival summer, and given our lineups and commercial success, we’re sure to have set the right course for the immediate future.

“At the same time, we have seen cost increases up to 50% across all areas of live culture, mainly due to higher prices for energy, resources, and personnel. Anyone who compares this dynamic with actual ticket prices immediately realises that we cannot and do not want to pass on the enormous additional costs to our guests.

“Our size as a group currently allows us to produce in such a way that attending a festival remains as affordable as possible. Not excluding anyone from live culture for financial reasons is the most important challenge of our time, and it’s becoming increasingly difficult due to the small margins and high risk of our industry.”

DEAG’s Kornett is reasonably confident about demand, the group having recently announced sales of 4.9m tickets for its 2024 festivals across Europe, up 38% year-on-year. But he is concerned about the impact of increasingly unpredictable weather events on the summer months, which he regards as all but inevitable in 2024.

“Germany has been hit really hard by adverse weather, and it’s a matter of when, not if, there will be adverse impacts of the weather in Germany this year. It has become a common phenomenon,” he says, though on DEAG’s account, he strikes a positive note particularly for DEAG festivals.

“For festivals, the market has been relatively good,” says Kornett. “It has been harder to get a decent bill together, get the right acts for a given festival – it is a matter of acts being available and on the road. But there’s a massive amount of festivals in the summer months, and the consumer wouldn’t go if they didn’t like it.”

“A lot of the festivals, especially the big ones, seem to have been in a bit of an identity crisis, post-pandemic”

Some suggest that the complications and cancellations of the Covid years have left festivals struggling for direction. “A lot of the festivals, especially the big ones, seem to have been in a bit of an identity crisis, post-pandemic,” says Wentzler at Z|Art.

And as tastes shift, there is a strong case to be made for new concepts. Goodlive’s Superbloom, launched in 2022 under the stewardship of then-former (and recently returned) Lollapalooza Berlin festival director Szép, is a recent market entrant that has been widely embraced as offering something fresh.

The imperative, Szép suggests, is to create new and compelling propositions for a changing audience that might not be attracted to traditional festivals. While she stresses that the event is not aimed exclusively at women – Calvin Harris, Sam Smith, Burna Boy, and The Chainsmokers are on the bill – there is clear evidence that Superbloom is filling a new niche. Last year, it sold 50,000 tickets, and this year, three months out from its September slot, it was more than halfway there and selling faster than in 2023.

“With Superbloom, we have somehow created a live brand that people want, especially young women,” she says. “Last year, almost 70% of our audience was female, and when we communicate with our fans, we hardly receive any aggressive or negative feedback. They say they felt super-safe, and they really appreciated our programmes about awareness and inclusion. I never would have thought that this philosophy that was important for me would make such a huge impact already, in two years.”

Evidently, festival success stories aren’t defined by their genre. Stuttgart’s jazzopen celebrates its 30th anniversary this year, with headliners including Sam Smith, Sting, and Lenny Kravitz, plus jazz legends such as Lee Ritenour, Billy Cobham, and Marcus Miller in four venues across ten days, selling 55,000 tickets and bringing in another 10,000 for its open stages.

“About 30% of our €7m annual budget comes from sponsorship by brands”

“While unfortunately a number of European independent festivals cannot survive anymore, jazzopen is on a good track,” says promoter and director Jürgen Schlensog of Opus Live.

“Of course, we are faced with increasing price levels for artists and production costs. However, we have been able to build a strong sponsorship pyramid in the last ten years. About 30% of our €7m annual budget comes from sponsorship by brands such as Mastercard, Mercedes-Benz, Allianz, and more. We are cashless and climate-neutral, and we are proud to be independent and ready for the future.”

And a very different German festival with a clear appeal to its chosen market is Superstruct’s Wacken. The 34-year-old metal institution was plagued by bad weather in 2023 and still, days later, sold out 85,000 tickets for this year’s event in just four-and-a-half hours.

“We are more than grateful and humbled for your trust,” the festival’s promoters wrote in an open letter to fans. “Especially after the difficult start of the festival this summer… we really appreciate that the community stands by us and sticks together.” Other festivals will no doubt be hoping for the same.

Venues
Inevitably, the story of larger German venues is one of a balancing act between healthy demand and punishing increases in costs. Looking through the first lens, the rise and rise of mass live entertainment, especially at the volume end of the scale, is hard to deny.

“The market is constantly evolving and is highlighting new genres that can fill a venue of our capacity”

“The market is constantly evolving and is highlighting new genres that can fill a venue of our capacity,” says Ole Hertel, Anschutz Entertainment Group vice president and managing director, who runs Berlin’s freshly rebranded 17,000-capacity Uber Arena.

“A decade ago, gaming moved into the live event business, then K-Pop took over. Lately, we have international comedians touring German arenas, darts are played before 10,000 people, podcasters are selling out single shows, and German hip-hop acts are selling out consecutive shows – unthinkable a decade ago.”

But with big buildings, of course, come huge costs. The 20,000-capacity Lanxess Arena in Cologne is one of the cornerstones of the German circuit and reliably ranks as the best-attended arena in the country. The arena’s CEO Stefan Löcher reports a strong year so far, with the men’s handball final and 15 sold-out Cologne Carnival events of its own in the immediate rear-view mirror, and incoming shows including Justin Timberlake and Thirty Seconds to Mars.

“The year 2024 feels great so far,” says Löcher. “After the pandemic years and the numerous delayed tour starts due to the energy crisis, it feels like pre-Covid times since last year.

“But I think the entire industry is noticing the increased costs, especially in the tour business. And of course, with a venue of our size, we also have a huge new burden when it comes to energy costs. That’s why it’s important for us to become more efficient in all areas in good time. Of course, that won’t happen overnight.”

“German arenas are increasingly focusing on sustainability”

A new venue in Munich, greenlit in 2022 by the city council but not yet constructed, proposes to be Germany’s first climate-neutral arena, with all its energy generated and supplied onsite via solar panels, geo-thermal energy, and district heating.

Arena managing director Lorenz Schmid reports that the project is moving forward, its plans having been presented to the planning and design advisory committee in the nearby town of Freising in early June.

“The Design Advisory Committee is an official part of the approval process and plays a central role in ensuring urban planning and architectural quality,” says Schmid. “They praised the current planning and gave their approval to continue with these plans. This is a big step and another milestone for us.”

The Munich Arena is only the most notable exponent of a sector-wide trend towards green upgrades and energy initiatives.

“German arenas are increasingly focusing on sustainability, including the implementation of energy-efficient technologies, waste-reduction programmes, and sustainable sourcing of materials,” says Steve Schwenkglenks, VP and MD of Barclays Arena in Hamburg, which is in the process of switching to LED lighting and last year established its own in-house reusable cup-washing facility.

“These efforts are aimed at reducing the environmental impact and appealing to a more eco-conscious audience,” he says.

The Uber Arena, formerly the Mercedes-Benz Arena, is in the midst of its own LED transition programme, which currently stands at 90% complete. Also in the works are an application for AGF’s A Greener Arena certification, the installation of an EV charging station in July, a contract with an outside company to recycle the venue’s paper towels, and the return of bees to the arena roof after a two-year hiatus.

“Long term, we have to evaluate how we source our energy consumption to run a sustainable business”

And while such measures are clearly important, AEG’s Hertel acknowledges that major work remains to be done on the fundamental question of how to power arenas.

“Short term, we constantly look for ways to save energy in our day-to-day operation,” he says. “Long term, we have to evaluate how we source our energy consumption to run a sustainable business.”

In Düsseldorf, the D.LIVE group operates the Merkur Spiel-Arena (in fact a stadium, with a capacity of 52,500), the Mitsubishi Electric Halle (7,500), and PSD Bank Dome (13,500 or 11,000 seated, with the option to reconfigure to 5,500).

Acts and events playing across D.LIVE’s venues this year include Coldplay, Niall Horan, Disney On Ice, Ne-Yo, Bryan Adams, and Troye Sivan, and plans are afoot for the D.LIVE Open Air Park – a space for up to 80,000 spectators that will be up and running from summer 2025. “Over the last [few] years, we invested more than €30m in all our venues,” says Daniela Stork, D.LIVE executive director of booking, ticketing and special events.

“Among other things, we converted the lighting in all venues to LED. In the Merkur Spiel-Arena, we also integrated new full-colour upper- and lower-tier lighting. We have redesigned the VIP areas in the Merkur Spiel-Arena and the PSD Bank Dome, and we have renovated the backstage areas in the PSD Bank Dome and the Mitsubishi Electric Halle so that not only our guests but also the acts and production teams feel at home with us.”

There’s more to the German venue scene than just arenas and stadiums, of course, though it is apparent that the success of the larger rooms means there is less money in the market at other levels – especially the lowest ones. As in all Europe’s thriving cities, German clubs are under threat from landlords, developers, and energy bills, but they are also struggling to get a share of consumers’ entertainment budgets.

“Five years ago, if you put on a show that was not the hottest show in town, 100 or 250 people would still find their way to the show by accident,” says Hoppe. “And that is completely gone. Now, you either have really strong sales, or you have really bad sales, especially in that segment.

“First of all, people don’t have that kind of money anymore. Second of all, people that do have that kind of money have invested in premium shows that now cost 50% more than they did before. Also, I think people like their couch. And those are all the little bricks in the wall we have to navigate in our business at the moment.”

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As the biggest live music market in Europe, Germany suffered more than most when it came to two years without international tours. But while the return to business has been welcomed, the post-Covid ‘new normal’ is delivering a new set of challenges, making an already cautious market even more wary. Adam Woods reports.

Every year for more than three decades, German insurance company R+V Versicherung has been asking Germans about their worries. And this year’s survey, published in October, revealed that they have a lot of them, from the rising cost of living to unaffordable housing to the fear of rising taxes and the worsening economic situation.

“Overall,” said study leader Grischa Brower-Rabinowitsch, “people are significantly more worried than they were a year ago.”

None of this will surprise German promoters, who, even in this jam-packed catch-up year, have been well aware that something was up.

Scarred by Covid, hammered by inflation, and gloomy about the imminent future, Germans are increasingly inclined to stay at home and keep their money in their pockets – maybe coming out for a big show or a festival but otherwise seemingly directing their leisure budgets towards Netflix and heating bills.

The business is therefore feeling discomfort on several fronts. Jens Michow, president of the Federal Association of the Concert and Event Industry (BDKV), recently called for more government aid to cover increased energy costs, as venues reported huge increases in their own bills.

“We don’t just live on cake, we live on bread. And all the bread is gone”

Saddled with galloping costs, supply shortages, perilously variable demand and the persistent spectre of fresh winter Covid restrictions, many promoters are beginning to wonder whether the business is sustainable at this level for long.

“It’s shit,” says MCT Agentur’s Scumeck Sabottka. “I mean, in the pandemic, we couldn’t work, and of course there was no business. But speaking for myself, we would never have thought the market would be so disastrous when we returned. And that goes equally for small clubs that should sell out but don’t, to venues that ought to sell 4,000 and end up selling 1,200. My guesstimate is that we are running at lower than 50%.

“The really big and hot things still sell,” adds the Rammstein and Robbie Williams promoter, “but the middle bit is really struggling. And that is the important bit because we don’t just live on cake, we live on bread. And all the bread is gone.”

The pattern is one familiar to many markets: big shows guzzle consumer spending, giving a very tangible impression of a market in rude health, but the greater mass of shows – those that form the fabric of the business, not to mention the pipeline of future stars – are often troublingly hard to make a success of.

“It’s weird because, on the one hand, if you only look at all the sold-out shows, it feels like everything is okay”

“All the stadiums in Germany are super-busy in all the available windows. Everything is booked up,” says Ben Mitha, managing director at veteran Hamburg-based indie Karsten Jahnke Konzertdirektion. “It’s weird because, on the one hand, if you only look at all the sold-out shows, it feels like everything is okay. But then, for every big sell-out, you might have ten or 20 smaller shows that are not doing very well.”

But, though all is not entirely well, Germany remains the largest live music market in Europe and the third biggest in the world. In addition to heavy gig-going cities such as Berlin, Cologne, Munich, Hamburg, and Frankfurt, it has a further 35 cities with populations of around 200,000-plus and plenty of shows and local events in most of them.

To some extent, the post-pandemic months have been a success. The bigger domestic and international shows have broadly performed well, and most of the larger festivals have made a fairly safe landing in the new era. Groups such as CTS Eventim and DEAG, meanwhile, have reported H1 2022 revenues higher than those of the same period in 2019. But in the short- to medium-term, the overall pot seems likely to shrink even as the cost of staging shows increases and profitability declines.

Under such challenging circumstances, says Sina Hall, Semmel Concerts senior project manager, entertainment, it is critical that the international industry adopts a policy of honesty and understanding when deals are being done.

“We all need each other in the future, and it is the responsibility of everyone in the industry to understand the position everyone else is in”

“I think it is about being transparent and aligning our expectations with everyone involved,” says Hall. “It can’t be that domestic promoters are taking on the increased costs of touring on top of everything. And I feel like a lot of conversations with agents have changed in that way. We all need each other in the future, and it is the responsibility of everyone in the industry to understand the position everyone else is in.”

Already, the shape of next year’s calendar appears to be shifting. “It used to be you did a regular indoor tour in the spring, then a strong festival summer and then maybe a second tour in the autumn,” says Mitha. “Now a lot of artists are skipping the indoor touring and just trying to squeeze as much as they can into the summer because it’s the safest period in terms of infections.”

There is no doubt that aspects of the German industry will still draw a crowd in 2023. The question is what proportion of shows will struggle and whether there will be much of a profit to be made in even the successful ones.

“Will it be a fantastic year?” ponders FKP Scorpio CEO Stephan Thanscheidt. “I have my doubts. It surely won’t kill us, but it won’t be the best year. And then again, maybe the war ends, everything normalises and the people’s pur- chasing power rises again. It’s all just completely out of our control.”

Promoters
International operators including CTS Eventim, FKP Scorpio, and DEAG all call Germany home. And at the top of the market, concern for the immediate future mixes with bullishness, as big players make the most of the demand unleashed by the unrestricted reopening of the market in May while acknowledging that treacherous times lie ahead.

“I think Germany might be one of the weaker European markets because the energy crisis is particularly severe here,” says DEAG COO/CDO Christian Diekmann. “But we are in a good mood because we are in the middle of a very strong year. In the first half of 2022, we increased our revenues by 110%, from €63.9m to €133.4m. And that’s not compared to ’21 or ’20 but compared to the last regular year of 2019.”

After Germany’s May restart, DEAG sold more than 3m tickets between June and August 2022, while Diekmann attributes a successful Christmas last year to DEAG’s Christmas Garden series of events, which sold 1.9m tickets as 2021 drew to an end.

“That was a very good start to ’22,” he says. “Like all of our competitors, we have the problem of the lack of material, the lack of staff, the increasing costs. But the strength of our group structure means all of our subsidiaries can combine purchases in every segment, and we have been in a position to get everything we need for every concert and every open-air this year.”

“What we are seeing is that artists are already going on sale as early as they can”

DEAG, which includes promoters including Frankfurt’s Wizard Promotions and the UK’s Kilimanjaro Live among its stable, isn’t pretending to be immune from market turbulence.

“For 2023, we are very, very careful,” says Diekmann. “Of course, we have exploding expenditure in every field of the business. We have the energy crisis, we have the inflation, and the majority of economic forecasters expect a very strong economic dip. That is the situation. What we are seeing is that artists are already going on sale as early as they can.”

CTS Eventim experienced a group-wide bounce of its own, with revenues of €734.4m from January to June 2022 – up from €696.6m in the first half of 2019. Those are international numbers, but Eventim’s strength in the German market is profound, with stakes in FKP Scorpio, Semmel Concerts, new Matt Schwarz-helmed, Berlin-based promoter DreamHaus, Peter Rieger Konzertagentur and a number of regional promoters, as well as venues such as Cologne’s Lanxess Arena and the Waldbühne Berlin.

DreamHaus has made an auspicious start, launching in early 2021 and assuming responsibility for Rock am Ring and Rock im Park, as well as building its own touring and festival business.

“2022 has been difficult, challenging and felt long, when I was hoping for it to be a transition year”

“The beauty of being a startup during Covid times is that we didn’t have to deal with any aftermath of cancelled or multiple-postponed events,” says Schwarz. “We could focus on Rock am Ring and Rock im Park and had enough lead time to set these up.

“We also have multiple domestic and international arena and stadium tours cooking right now,” he adds, listing Muse, Måneskin, Sam Smith, Lewis Capaldi, Yungblud, and domestic arena star Apache 207, among others.

“2022 has been difficult, challenging and felt long, when I was hoping for it to be a transition year,” says Schwarz. “But I am proud of what we’ve achieved.”

Live Nation GSA is also powerful, having built on the acquisition of local giant MLK since 2015. As well as a heavy schedule of international tours, in September the corporate brought Berlin-based festivals, booking, and services agency Goodlive into the fold.

Across the wider market, while there is little doubt that many shows that once would have delivered guaranteed returns are now falling well short of expectations, there are those who point to encouraging signs at grassroots level and suggest that the market simply needs refreshing.

“If all you’re doing is putting up posters for shows the market has seen many times before, things aren’t going to sell”

“Young, exciting talent is absolutely selling tickets and selling out,” says Max Wentzler at Berlin-based national promoter Z|ART Agency, citing recent German shows by Jockstrap, Pip Millett, Lola Young, and Jordan Rakei. “We had Remi Wolf over and people were hyped. Rachel Sermanni, too – she has never been to Germany, she has had a couple of releases, and she deserves that attention.”

Market pressures aside, Wentzler has a mischievous but serious theory that many established promoters and artists have been caught napping by the changing expectations of the market.

“I think established artists need to bring something new to their show, and not just rely on their ‘established-ness,’ for want of a better word,” he says. “Also, the traditional mechanism of how to get fans to buy tickets has completely shifted.

“Don’t get me wrong, we are all having to work hard. But it is about being present and engaged with your audience and bringing more value to a show. We are experiencing a shift in the live industry. If all you’re doing is putting up posters for shows the market has seen many times before, things aren’t going to sell.”

“People are possibly going to spend less money next year, and we as an industry influence what they spend their money on”

If there is a recurrent characterisation of the German market, however, it is an aversion to risk and an attraction to proven formulas.

“It is a very slow-moving market in the way that things progress,” says Jack Summers of London-based promoter The Culture Collective, which promotes UK dance acts in Germany. “That is true of the music industry as a whole, but the German attitude, where live music is concerned, is if it’s not broke, don’t fix it.”

Whether something is truly broken or not, it is clear the market needs support if today’s developing and mid-level artists are to survive the current crisis and become viable in the longer term – and some promoters recognise the urgency.

“People are possibly going to spend less money next year, and we as an industry influence what they spend their money on,” says Hall. “So I think it is really important that we don’t just focus on the big shows but that we keep supporting new artists, who have already had it tough during the pandemic.”

Local promoters
From a geographical and promoting point of view, Germany is clearly a huge market and a federated one, in which the 16 states have significant local differences. Traditionally, national promoters have partnered with local promoters for shows in specific cities, though these days the boundaries are often less defined.

National promoters often run their own shows in cities where they have a presence, and some cultivate local specialists in-house. For instance, DEAG’s Wizard Promotions and sister company, handwerker promotion, formed a Frankfurt-based joint venture in 2018 called Rhein Main Concerts to produce events in the south-west region of the country.

Some local promoters have expanded well beyond their original regions: Semmel Concerts, these days a major national player, initially focused on Bavaria and Eastern Germany, before broadening its network across the country and into Austria.

Nonetheless, the old system remains broadly in place, with powerful local promoters including Eventim’s Dirk Becker Entertainment, which operates in the Rhine- Ruhr region of western Germany encompassing Cologne; DEAG’s Munich-based Global Concerts; Hannover Concerts in the northern German city of the same name; and Undercover, based in Braunschweig and operating in northern Germany and beyond.

German recording giant BMG has lately taken decisive steps into the market through this channel, acquiring Undercover in 2020 in order to lay the foundations for a new live music and events unit. In September, BMG announced that it had booked Berlin’s 1,600-seat Theater des Westens until the end of 2024 for a series of residencies by domestic and international recording artists, as well as stage musical productions.

Festivals
Germany boasts a giant festival scene that encompasses rock monoliths such as Wacken Open Air, Rock am Ring, and Rock im Park; electronic institutions such as Time Warp, Mayday, Love Family Park, and Nature One; and indie all-rounders including the Berlin Lollapalooza and twin FKP festivals Hurricane and Southside; not to mention vigorous newcomers such as Berlin’s Tempelhof Sounds and Munich’s Superbloom.

When Live Nation snapped up seasoned indie Goodlive in September, it took ownership of Superbloom, as well as festivals including Melt! and Splash! in Ferropolis; metal and punk festival Full Force in Löbnitz; and hip-hop event Heroes in Geiselwind.

The two-day Superbloom launched in Munich’s Olympic Park on 3–4 September after two Covid-related postponements in 2020 and 2021, with Calvin Harris, Macklemore, Megan Thee Stallion, Rita Ora, Skepta, and David Guetta among the acts that performed, alongside 12 ‘experience areas’ focusing on themes from fashion to science to sustainability.

“This is my craziness, that I want to do things like this, because I’m a strong believer that festivals can give young people examples that can change their views and their lives for good,” says Superbloom managing director Fruzsina Szép, who has previously worked on Lollapalooza Berlin and Sziget.

“There were so many festivals, even very well-established ones, that were not sold out”

It drew 50,000 visitors and ultimately sold out, for which Szép is grateful, if not entirely surprised. “There were so many festivals, even very well-established ones, that were not sold out,” she adds. “But I had this good feeling that we were doing it right, and we worked so hard to create this brand and this concept.”

She echoes the prevailing view that the biggest challenge in German festivals this year was human resources and suggests the weakening of vital functions such as security could yet be the most serious consequence of Covid.

“Everybody is keen to have a great line-up and booking and programming, but security is so essential, and we have such a responsibility to the fans and artists to get it right.”

FKP Scorpio toughed out a busy summer, reintroducing its Hurricane and Southside festivals, which brought 80,000 and 70,000 a day over three days, as well as drawing 25,000 to M’era Luna in Hildesheim and 40,000 to Highfield in Großpösna, while launching a new Berlin festival, Tempelhof Sounds, with local Berlin promoter Loft Concerts and Eventim stable-mate DreamHaus.

“All our festivals in Germany, besides Deichbrand, were sold out this summer, and this was not the case for a lot of other festivals in this market”

“It was a challenge this year, but in the end we had fantastic festivals, with no Covid-related cancellations on the artist side,” says Thanscheidt. “And we had Ed Sheeran and Rolling Stones stadium shows and our Tempelhof Sounds, which we announced four weeks before Omicron kicked in, but still we had 40,000 a day, so we can’t complain.

“That doesn’t mean we made a lot of money on festivals, because the margins were not really there with ticket prices from 2019 and exploding costs. But all our festivals in Germany, besides Deichbrand, were sold out this summer, and this was not the case for a lot of other festivals in this market.”

Elsewhere, eventimpresents/DreamHaus’s Rock am Ring sold a record 90,000 weekend tickets for its 2022 edition, which took place at the Nürburgring racetrack in June. The concurrent Rock im Park, at Zeppelin Field in Nüremberg, like-wise put in a strong year.

“Rock am Ring and Rock im Park underlined their position as Germany’s leading festivals,” says Schwarz.

“We had record-breaking attendance as well as streaming numbers, with the full festival being broadcast live in its entirety for the first time, so that felt great. We are currently finalising the programming for next year’s edition of the Rocks where we just announced approximately 50 acts.”

“We have been able to improve our sponsorship income by about 20%, which is remarkable because sponsorship is not getting easier these days”

Karsten Jahnke’s successes this year include shows by The Cure and 170,000 tickets sold for 49 shows in its Stadtpark Open Air series, in Hamburg’s park of the same name. “That was a really good season for us,” says Mitha. “Lots of legends – Deep Purple, Sting, Joe Jackson – and some really interesting up-and-coming artists like Michael Kiwanuka and Olivia Rodrigo.”

In October, DEAG acquired a majority stake in the renowned Psytrance/Goa Festival Indian Spirit, which has been held in Eldena, near Ludwigslust in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, since 1999.

Among its portfolio of more than 30 European multiday and one-day festivals, the group already owns German electronic events Nature One, Mayday, Ruhr-in-Love and Airbeat One. The last of these – the largest electronic music festival in Northern Germany, with 60,000 visitors – DEAG acquired in July.

In a different corner of the market, Opus’s Stuttgart Jazzopen, which fits 58 shows into 11 days in July, sold 44,000 tickets this year for acts including Sting, Van Morrison, and John Legend – some of whom had been booked for the cancelled 2020 event.
Next year, says festival head Jürgen Schlensog, the aim is 50,000, and there is reason to be optimistic on the commercial front.

“We have been able to improve our sponsorship income by about 20%, which is remarkable because sponsorship is not getting easier these days,” he says.

The Jazzopen, which is both cashless and carbon-neutral, ploughs its own furrow in the German market. “In Germany, we are quite lonely because the format we run is quite unique – we run an 11- day festival, which is obviously very different from weekend festivals.”

Venues
The upside of Germany’s top-heavy market is that bigger venues played out of their skin this summer. The Waldstadion, currently known as the Deutsche Bank Park, home of German football club Eintracht Frankfurt, had its best summer ever with 18 concerts – more than any other stadium in Europe, and including shows by Coldplay (two), Ed Sheeran (three), Iron Maiden, and Elton John – drawing combined crowds of 800,000.

“Summer 2022 benefited from postponed shows from 2020 and 2021, which finally happened this year,” explains Eintracht Frankfurt Stadion managing director Patrik Meyer. “We were able to add quite a lot of new shows as well, and we are very proud that we were part of the development of the first KPOP.FLEX Festival in a European stadium.”

Looking ahead, Meyer adds, “2023 looks even better than 2022. The bookings for next year are very good, and we will continue projects like KPOP, World Club Dome and Monster Jam. In 2023, we will also act as promoter for three shows, and we will be hosting an NFL game in November – a project we won through a tough tender process and are very delighted about.”

Germany’s busiest arenas include Munich’s Olympiahalle, the Lanxess Arena in Cologne, Hamburg’s Barclays Arena, Quarterback Immobilien Arena in Leipzig, and Mercedes-Benz Arena in Berlin.

“There’s a lot of really interesting concepts and new open-air venues that came out of the pandemic”

Bavaria-based developer SWMunich Real Estate continues to plan the 20,000-cap, €300m MUCcc Arena in Munich – optionally Germany’s first climate-neutral arena – which is expected to open within the next five years.

“In the Munich region, there is neither an arena specially designed for concerts and live shows, nor an indoor location with a capacity of up to 20,000 guests,” SWMunich managing director Lorenz Schmid told IQ in the summer. “We are closing this gap… at a time of increasing demand.”

There is movement elsewhere in the market, too. Berlin’s 4,350-cap Verti Music Hall, which launched in AEG’s mixed-use entertainment district Mercedes Platz barely a year before the pandemic kicked in, is once again up and running, with shows this summer from Jack White, Deftones, Lukas Graham, Franz Ferdinand, and Bastille.

Meanwhile, another modest silver lining of the pandemic has been the emergence of a new generation of outdoor venues, some of which live on in (more or less) post-pandemic times.

“There’s a lot of really interesting concepts and new open-air venues that came out of the pandemic,” says Hall. “I like the Seebühne in Bremen. It’s a lovely setting right by the harbour, and when you look at the stage, you have the sunset and the water in the background.”

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