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Semmel Concerts acquires theatre in Oberhausen

Semmel Concerts has acquired the Metronom Theater in Oberhausen, a 1,800-capacity venue in northwest Germany that has been closed since 2020.

The German promoter hopes to reopen the venue before the end of the year, after making “extensive” investments in its technology and equipment.

The CTS Eventim-backed firm, which also operates the Arena Berlin, will appoint a new team to manage the theatre, led by director of operations Timo Hoppen.

The Metronom Theater was previously owned by Stage Entertainment, the leading producer of musicals in Europe.

Stage bought the venue, formerly known as TheatrO CentrO, in 2005 and extensively modernised it. It became the venue for many popular musicals before it closed in March 2020.

“We will bring people from all over North Rhine-Westphalia and delight them with great national and international productions”

“Oberhausen has a great tradition as a cultural location,” says Dieter Semmelmann, managing partner, Semmel Concerts. “This makes the task of bringing the theater back to life after a four-year slumber all the more exciting. With changing musicals and shows from our dynamically growing touring business, we will bring people from all over North Rhine-Westphalia and beyond to Oberhausen and delight them with great national and international productions. We would like to thank Stage Entertainment for their partnership in handing over the theater and look forward to making the Metronom Theater a new hotspot for live entertainment in the Ruhr area.”

Daniel Schranz, mayor of the city of Oberhausen: “The restart of the Metronom Theater is very good news for the people of Oberhausen and for our guests. The entry of Semmel Concerts strengthens Oberhausen and our Neue Mitte as a center for culture and entertainment in the entire region. I would like to thank Stage Entertainment for the long-standing and good cooperation. The new owner Semmel Concerts also has a lot of experience in live entertainment and will certainly soon expand the cultural offerings in our city with his programme.”

Semmel recently announced that award-winning film composer Hans Zimmer would perform in North America for the first time in seven years.

The smash-hit Hans Zimmer Live tour will visit North America this autumn, following a sold-out European run that shifted more than 300,000 tickets.

 


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Concerns over Rammstein & AC/DC dates played down

Organisers of Rammstein and AC/DC’s forthcoming tour dates in Dresden, Germany, have played down rumours that the gigs will need to be relocated.

Rammstein are due to play four outdoor shows at the 80,000-cap Dresden Rinne from 15-16 & 18-19 May, with AC/DC set to follow for two nights on 16 & 19 June.

But a Facebook post by the Free Voters/Free Citizens faction of Dresden City Council last week sparked fears that the gigs were in jeopardy over noise concerns.

“We have learned that the concerts by AC/DC and Rammstein planned… in the summer will allegedly have to contend with considerable requirements from the Dresden city administration,” said the statement. “A cancellation and relocation to Leipzig should be on the cards.”

While the city of Dresden acknowledged “challenges” regarding the venue, it insisted “nothing is in the balance”.

“The rumours that planned concerts in the Dresden flood channel will be cancelled or relocated to other locations are false,” said a press release.

“The city’s press release reveals that the information we received from a trustworthy source is accurate”

Responding on social media, the Free Voters say: “The city’s press release reveals that the information we received from a trustworthy source is accurate. After the concerts were publicly announced and tickets were sold, the city government noted: ‘The venue has challenges.’ Typically, ‘challenges’ are clarified before an event.

“What ‘challenges’ these are, we remain silent about. As far as we know, it’s about ‘noise pollution’. We will request access to the files as soon as possible.”

Rammstein promoter Rodney Aust of Bernd Aust Kultur Management tells Bild the concerts will go ahead.

“We are in daily contact with the city of Dresden about this,” explains Aust. “We want the concerts, the city [does] too. They will take place in Dresden.

“Due to the Christmas floods and the problems surrounding the Christmas circus, the event area is now viewed a little more sensitively. That’s exactly what we all do together. We are planning normally, the traffic light is green.”

Semmel Concerts, promoter of the AC/DC gigs, is similarly confident the dates will proceed.

“We have no reason to believe that the two AC/DC concerts in Dresden cannot take place as planned,” it assures Berliner Zeitung. “On the contrary: the band is looking forward to their Dresden fans.”

 


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Hans Zimmer’s 2024 tour surpasses 300,000 sales

More than 300,000 tickets have been sold to The World of Hans Zimmer Tour – A New Dimension, the German film-score composer’s forthcoming outing.

The international concert series comprises 30 arena dates across Europe this spring, followed by an additional 25 dates in autumn.

Seventeen dates, including Zimmer’s hometown of Frankfurt, have already sold out according to the tour’s producer, CTS Eventim-backed Semmel Concerts.

The World of Hans Zimmer Tour – A New Dimension marks a new chapter in the concert series The World of Hans Zimmer, in which the composer does not perform live on stage himself but participates as the show’s curator and musical director.

His acclaimed European tour in 2022 thrilled almost 400,000 fans in spring 2023 and was completely sold out

Soundtrack conductor Gavin Greenaway, a long-time trusted friend of the Hollywood composer, will take the helm, leading renowned soloists from Zimmer’s talent pool and a symphony orchestra. Visual projections of film sequences accompany the music.

Zimmer has completed highly successful stops around the globe with his Hans Zimmer Live tour. His acclaimed European tour in 2022 thrilled almost 400,000 fans in spring 2023 and was completely sold out.

Read the IQs feature on the tour here.

 


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Future of ‘Kaisermania’ concerts in doubt

Semmel Concerts has warned the future of veteran German singer Roland Kaiser’s ever-popular ‘Kaisermania’ concerts in Dresden could be under threat.

This summer marked the 20th anniversary of Kaiser’s shows at the annual Film Nights on the banks of the Elbe, with the 71-year-old headlining five sold-out 12,000-cap dates from 28-29 July and 4-6 August. The events were also televised live on German TV, attracting 1.77 million viewers.

However, the promoter warns the institution may have to relocate from 2026 due to plans drawn up by the city of Dresden, which could make it more expensive to continue to run Kaisermania at its current location.

“We are now in the situation that we can currently only plan until 2025 and have no security for 2026”

“The city of Dresden is of the opinion that the site on the banks of the Elbe must be put out to tender again from 2025,” organiser Dieter Semmelmann tells MDR um 4, via Maennersache. “Of course, this makes us nervous and concerned because we fear that this concept, which has been valued for many years, is now about to be suddenly changed. We are full of hope that things will change for the better in the coming weeks or months.”

Speaking to Bild, he adds: “We are now in the situation that we can currently only plan until 2025 and have no security for 2026. If we can no longer implement it in this form, we have to look for an alternative location.”

Bayreuth-based Semmel also produced Kaiser’s Alles oder Dich tour in autumn 2021 – the first major arena tour to be undertaken under pandemic conditions – which attracted 150,000 people over 27 shows.

Schlager singer Kaiser has announced a 50th anniversary German tour for May to July 2024. He will perform at open air venues such as the Kalkberg Arena in Bad Segeberg, Heinz von Heiden Arena in Hannover, Rostock’s  Ostseestadion, Königsplatz in Munich, RheinEnergieStadion in Cologne and the Red Bull Arena in Leipzig.

 


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The big business of touring entertainment

It’s boom time for touring entertainment as people seek out social activities that bring them closer to their favourite TV shows and films, opportunities to learn in an interactive way, or ways of treating three generations of their family.

Touring entertainment is big business right now. As Nicolas Renna, whose company Proactiv Entertainment has been in the sector for 35 years, says: “When I first went to ILMC maybe 15 or 16 years ago, promoters that worked with family entertainment were in the minority. Feld was there, and a few others, but that was about it. Now, although we’re not equal with the music promoters, this segment has become more and more interesting for people, even the rock and pop promoters.”

Indeed, rock and pop promoters have increasingly been getting in on the action. No longer content to promote shows such as Disney on Ice, companies are increasingly creating or acquiring their own touring product. DEAG-owned Kilimanjaro Group acquired musicals producer Flying Music in 2017 (the firm behind West End production Thriller – Live and The Rat Pack Live From Las Vegas) and is opening an exhibitions space in London this year. Last year, CTS Eventim-owned FKP Scorpio announced it was starting a new business dedicated to theatre and family shows, called FKP Show Creations. As well as promoting shows across Europe, it’s launching an arena touring production of beloved opera Aida.

Denis Sullivan, vice president, international tours at Feld Entertainment, has spent years in this sector. He says: “This is an evergreen industry; people don’t take time off to make a record and can tour every month of every year.”

He says the growth in demand for what can loosely be called ‘family entertainment’ is illustrated by the fact that Feld – one of the biggest firms in the business with products such as Disney on Ice, Monster Jam, Marvel Universe Live! and Jurassic World Live Tour – has a rehearsal facility that can set up two full-size arena shows side-by-side, and they both are constantly in use. “There’s something going on in them every single time. The number of products we put out ourselves is significant, and we will continue to do [so] because the audience is there.”

“The sector is growing because there’s something for everybody in our shows”

With over 12 years’ experience in the events industry, Ticketmaster’s VP client development Alex Berti spearheaded the company’s Ticketmaster Attractions segment. “We’ve seen a significant increase in the number of immersive art events, as the digital mapping and projection technology that powered these events became more accessible and more portable,” he says. “This meant producers could secure rights to an amazing piece of content and tour it around the world. That’s been a key driver to growth in this sector. For us, it’s meant supporting producers in multiple markets across a product’s lifespan and ensuring the client and the customer get the same experience in every market.”

Creating a market
Often, family show producers are pioneers – the first to go into markets that are yet to fully open to the worldwide touring entertainment industry. For many young children, a Disney on Ice show or an interactive moving dinosaurs exhibition is their first experience of live entertainment. It’s not too much of a stretch to say that family show producers are helping create the concert-attendees of the future.

What these companies are doing is giving people their first taste of an experience that cannot be replicated online, on TV, or on any other platform. They’re showing the children who come to see shows that going to see something live, at a venue, is cool.

If there is such a thing as a positive to come out of the pandemic, it’s that the growth of the sector has been accelerated by the ending of lockdown restrictions. While the concert industry is reporting being busier than ever before with the sheer number of shows on sale, demand for entertainment as a family group has been accelerated by the fact that people were kept apart for so long.

“The sector is growing because there’s something for everybody in our shows,” says Sullivan. “The shows might be predominantly targeted towards kids but mums and dads are going to go and have a great time because there’s something in it for them, too. Every successful Disney movie, for example, has something for the whole family unit.”

“Covid was a creative catalyst in our industry, producing a rapidly changing environment, which led to new models of collaboration”

And that’s not restricted to the live entertainment sector. Touring exhibitions are also seeing a boom time, reports Manon Delaury of Touring Exhibitions Organisation (TEO). “The touring exhibitions business was growing significantly before Covid, but the pandemic accelerated that,” she says. “But we’ve also seen expectations change. For example, people are craving very social experiences – people want to experience things together as much as possible. The multi-generational aspect has also become very important. And, of course, social media is a key factor.”

The other upside of the enforced pause was that it enabled exhibition organisers time to reflect, collaborate, and share information. “That led to a boom of new productions being developed and announced, and new collaborations between the private and public sectors, between entertainment and educational. That’s generated new experiences with a multi-layered, enriched approach,” she says. “These have triggered new ideas for engaging with audiences, and there are new, interesting approaches for bringing generations together to have the social moments we’ve all been craving.

“I think Covid was a creative catalyst in our industry, producing a rapidly changing environment, which led to new models of collaboration.”

Christoph Scholz is director of SC Exhibitions – an arm of long-time German music promoter Semmel Concerts. He is calling for more data reporting for the sector. “We all feel the market has grown, but there’s no data. So we need to be careful with claims about the amount of growth we’re seeing. I urge the exhibition industry to stand up and to share data on things such as ticket sales and ticket prices, because it will benefit us all.”

Scholz says 2023 is shaping up to be SC Exhibitions’ busiest year to date, with a new exhibition Disney 100 just opened at the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia, and a second unit at the Olympic Park in Munich, a new Marvel exhibit which will be revealed in July, plus SpiderMan: Beyond Amazing, and Marvel: Universe of Super Heroes.

“For this segment, we have to create the audience from scratch”

At ILMC’s dedicated strand to this sector this year, Scholz told a panel that exhibition revenues have grown from 2% to 10% of the company total.

But for anyone thinking this is easy money, Proactiv’s Renna sounds a note of caution. “This is very different to rock and pop. We create demand for shows people don’t know about; we create new audiences. If you have an artist such as Coldplay or Madonna, people know them and will come if they like the act. For this segment, we have to create the audience from scratch.”

And let’s not forget the enormous upfront costs required to get a production or exhibition on the road. Semmel Exhibitions, for instance, invested €3.5m in the Marvel: Universe of Superheroes exhibition experience before a single ticket had been sold. GAAP, an agency specialising in booking theatrical shows, spent recent years developing a new exhibition called Sensory Odyssey, which merges digital art, cinema, interactive technologies, sensorial techniques, and cognitive sciences. It raised €4m in private capital for the exhibition, which debuted in Paris.

FKP Show Creations was launched last year by the pan-European promoter. It’s spearheaded by CEO Jasper Barendregt. “In this market, it’s a bit like the Wild West at the moment,” he says. “There’s a lot of gold- digging happening. There’s a lot of content in the market, and there’s a lot of promoters jumping on it.”

It’s no wonder with such huge demand for experiences and ‘immersive’ exhibitions. “Something that changed throughout the pandemic was people were watching a lot of Netflix and Amazon Prime at home, and suddenly they’re able to see it and experience it in cities. The pandemic has accelerated demand for these products,” says Barendregt.

“Being entertained while learning, playing, and participating is the new normal”

To illustrate demand for family entertainment, he says FKP Scorpio was promoting a Paw Patrol tour before the pandemic and sold “a lot of tickets,” but it was halted by the lockdowns. Of course, by the time things opened up again, the children of the people who had bought tickets had out-grown Paw Patrol, so they had to sell the tour again to a new audience. “And we did. What we’ve done is we sold a Paw Patrol tour twice. There’s a huge amount of people who want more and larger shows for really young kids.”

And Liz Koravos, managing director of Kilimanjaro Group’s new UK exhibition and cultural venue The Arches at London Bridge, says: “There has been an obvious shift in the market, likely influenced by the immersive ‘unicorn’ experiences of Van Gogh and the likes of Secret Cinema, but this can be seen through all disciplines, as the lines between exhibition, film, show, performance continue to be blurred. Being entertained while learning, playing, and participating is the new normal. With thrilling new content and the recovery of tourism following Covid, we think there is a very healthy exhibition market, and the demographic is widening.”

Ups and downs
As with concerts, demand for family entertainment can go in waves. With over 20 years’ experience at one of the most established companies in this sector, Maria Maldonado, Feld’s vice president – Latin America & Mediterranean Europe, says there have been other boom moments before things returned to a more ‘normal’ level of business: “We’ve had peaks and valleys as leaders in this industry. So, we had years in the mid- 2000s where we got High School Musical and Disney Live! on the road, or more recently when we had Frozen or Encanto out, and they were huge. We’ve seen quite a bit over the decades, and this is a growth moment.”

Barendregt says: “In the next seven or ten years, I think the big brands are going to get bigger, and there will be more demand for them to be on the road. That’s a good way to go because the marketing money was spent on the television show, television series, and so on. So going on the roll with it is fantastic.People don’t want to stay in front of their televisions, they want to experience it in real life. Especially if it’s not too expensive – somewhere between €20-€35 is where most tickets are sold at the moment.

“That’s why experiences work fantastically, because a lot of people might not be able to go on holidays, so they think, ‘If I’m not going to go on holidays, I’m going to see Jurassic World or Monet’s Garden’. Because it’s affordable; it’s more expensive than cinema, but you also get a lot more than cinema – it’s a whole experience.”

“We’re also seeing a live music component brought into exhibitions, to give them an immersive environment for the visitors”

Future perspectives
The current wave of experiences has been driven by a combination of creativity – partly inspired by technological advances, partly by demand from people to want to get closer to the action. But what does the future hold?

Proactiv’s Renna says the trend for more people producing their own content will continue. “There might be maybe less IP-driven content, because the IPs will be fewer but more powerful than before. However, events such as the Christmas Garden we do with DEAG will continue to do well. It’s about right venue, right partner, right promotion.

“Exhibitions are something we will continue to develop. It’s a large investment up front, but once you get started, it can run for many years, and it can go to many markets.”

Delaury is noticing an increasing interest in creating exhibitions dedicated to music and popular culture, such as exhibitions about the Rolling Stones, David Bowie, and others. “There’s definitely a trend of bringing music experiences to travelling exhibitions, focusing on an artist, a trend, or a movement, but we’re also seeing a live music component brought into exhibitions, to give them an immersive environment for the visitors.”

It’s certainly a boom time for touring entertainment, and as more and more innovative concepts travel, it can only be
a good thing for this part of the business. Technology and creativity are working hand-in-hand to drive forward experiences that people will remember for years to come. It’s a risky business, often with huge upfront costs, but get it right and you can keep the show on the road for years without needing to take a break.

All that said, the most important thing, as Feld’s Sullivan says, is: “We want everyone happy at the end of the day and to send them home with a smile.”

The Touring Entertainment Report 2023 is available exclusively to IQ subscribers in print, as a digital magazine or online at our dedicated minisite hereSubscribe now and view the full report.

A preview version of the Touring Entertainment Report 2023 is below.

 


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Global Promoters Report 2022: Germany

The Global Promoters Report, a first-of-its-kind resource that highlights the world’s leading promoters and the 40 top markets they operate in, is now available to subscribers of IQ.

In an excerpt from the guide, IQ delves into the biggest touring market in Europe and the third-biggest in the world: Germany.

 


Germany is the biggest market in Europe and the third-biggest in the world, after the US and Japan. It generated revenues of around €5bn a year in pre-Covid times, though things are significantly tougher since the return of unrestricted shows in spring 2022, as energy prices and economic concerns squeeze sections of the market.

The German promoting business remains muscular and is largely steered by powerful consolidated groups – from local giants CTS Eventim, FKP Scorpio, and DEAG, to Live Nation – though there remain a number of hardworking independents.

Between them, the big groups account for a significant chunk of the nation’s national promoters. CTS Eventim, for instance, holds stakes in FKP Scorpio, Semmel Concerts, DreamHaus, and Peter Rieger Konzertagentur, accounting collectively for recent tours by Rolling Stones, Ed Sheeran, Muse, Måneskin, and others, as well as major festivals including Rock am Ring and Rock im Park and Hurricane/Southside.

Live Nation GSA entered the market in 2015 through its acquisition of Marek Lieberberg Konzertagentur (MLK). It brings all the expected superstar tours you would expect – Bruce
Springsteen, for one, arrives next July for four German stadium shows and another in Austria, while Sting, Lil Nas X, Bryan Adams, and Rosalía did the rounds before Christmas.

Live Nation bulked up further in September, adding longstanding independent Goodlive to its holdings. The festival, booking, and services agency brings events including Munich debutante Superbloom, electronic fest Melt!, and hip-hop and reggae event Splash! in Ferropolis; metal and punk festival Full Force in Löbnitz; and hip-hop event Heroes in Geiselwind.

“The majority of acts – especially those not in the top range or having a buzz right now – are struggling to sell tickets”

The Eventim-affiliated, Hamburg-based FKP Scorpio is, of course, a group in its own right, operating across the Nordics, Austria, Benelux, the UK, and Poland. In Germany, it has lately promoted stadium shows for Sheeran and the Stones, as well as a heavy slate of festivals – from the twin Hurricane and Southside indie events to M’era Luna in Hildesheim, Highfield in Großpösna, and Berlin’s Tempelhof Sounds.

Broadly speaking, festivals and blockbuster headline shows have remained strong in Germany this year. Cities like Berlin, Cologne, and Munich remain busy, affluent markets for live shows, with Hamburg not far behind.

But in a time of economic uncertainty fuelled by the war in Ukraine – combined with a perfect storm of post-Covid factors that have put a premium on material and staffing of all kinds – the softness of the everyday touring market is a major challenge for the German business. While the biggest acts sail on undaunted, all promoters have tales of smaller shows either half-filled or cancelled due to weak demand.

“Looking at this demographically, the younger people are going to shows more in comparison to older people, but in general it’s challenging,” says FKP Scorpio CEO Stephan Thanscheidt.

“Of course, there are some acts that sell all the time, but the majority of acts – especially those not in the top range or having a buzz right now – are struggling to sell tickets. A lot of acts are cancelling at the moment, and not for logistical or other non-transparent reasons. They are just saying, very openly: we can’t make this tour financially work with the ticket sales and the costs we have. They are potentially playing to half the people, with double or triple the cost.”

“You put great acts on, you put great support acts on, you really think about pricing, and still ticket sales are running at 50%”

All promoters have been forced to reckon with a very different market in 2022, even as they have scrambled to honour the previous two years’ worth of Covid-era tickets.

“You put great acts on, you put great support acts on, you really think about pricing, and still ticket sales are running at 50%,” says Scumeck Sabottka, founder of independent Berlin-based Robbie Williams and Rammstein promoter MCT Agentur, who, again, notes that his flagship shows have done very well.

“Maybe next year it gets better, but I think the new normal could easily be 70%, so we need to gauge our costings and offers on that. At the moment, I think we, as promoters, are carrying a lot of pressure on our shoulders.”

German promoters in the DEAG stable include Frankfurt veteran Wizard Promotions – now under the stewardship of Oliver Hoppe, son of legendary founder Ossy – which leans in a rock direction, with Iron Maiden, Def Leppard/Mötley Crüe, and Scorpions all on the schedule for 2023. Hoppe junior, (who in September added the title of DEAG executive vice president, product and innovation to his Wizard responsibilities), shares the mixed outlook, “All in all we managed to entertain over a half a million visitors in the summer, and that was tough work but also an exciting exercise. But it’s a struggle. Nobody knows where inflation, labour shortages, energy costs, and the ongoing pandemic will take us.

“There seems to be a pattern that high-demand shows are still high in demand, but I am very concerned about club shows and emerging artists. I am expecting every day for some grand-scale tour to hit the wall, but so far, from what we are hearing and seeing from the market, that isn’t happening – so I think there is hope.”

“We see strong sales on A+ talent and established festivals but soft ticket sales on everything else”

Also in the DEAG family – along with UK promoter Kilimanjaro Live, whose Stuart Galbraith recently ascended to the group role of executive vice president international touring – are Christian Doll’s Stuttgart-based C2 Concerts and the German arm of I-Motion. The former’s 2022 tours include German dates for the Harlem Globetrotters; the latter, part-acquired in 2019 from US promoter Randy Phillips’s LiveStyle, operates several long-established electronic music festivals including Mayday, Nature One, and Ruhr in Love.

Sina Hall, Semmel Concerts senior project manager, entertainment, says dialogue with agents and other stakeholders is ongoing, as the market adapts to a new set of conditions. “If you look at the situation for promoters or clubs that are not necessarily part of a group of companies, most of them most likely used their money to make it through the pandemic, so they have to be more risk-conscious when making decisions now,” says Hall.

Relatively few promoters have launched during Covid times, for obvious reasons, but one exception is DreamHaus, the CTS-Eventim-backed venture helmed by former Live Nation GSA managing director and COO Matt Schwarz, which landed in early 2021 with one significant advantage over the wider market. “The beauty of being a start-up during Covid times is that we didn’t have to deal with any aftermath of cancelled or multiple-postponed events,” Schwarz noted in IQ’s recent German market report.

In other respects, DreamHaus – which operates the blockbuster Rock am Ring and Rock im Park festivals, as well as Tempelhof Sounds and arena shows this year for Lewis Capaldi, Yungblud, Muse, Måneskin, and others – sounds a familiar note of caution.

“We see strong sales on A+ talent and established festivals but soft ticket sales on everything else,” says Schwarz. “Pushing down the increased costs of touring and local production to the customers via higher ticket prices is not a sustainable solution. The worst is yet to come, so we are more selective in our bookings and the M.O. is ‘less is more’ for now.”

“The worst is yet to come, so we are more selective in our bookings and the M.O. is ‘less is more’ for now”

In its structure, Germany is a unique market. Under its distinctive regionalised system, local promoters with strong local knowledge typically co-promote with national promoters in any given city.

The local promoting business these days also betrays a strong corporate interest. Eventim owns a number of such promoters, including Bavaria’s ARGO Konzerte, Cologne’s Dirk Becker Entertainment, Promoters Group Munich, and Vaddi Concerts in south-west Germany.

Other prominent local operators include DEAG companies ACT (Berlin), River Concerts (Hamburg), Rhein Main Concerts (Frankfurt), Global Concerts and KBK (both Munich) and Handwerker, based in Unna; Hannover Concerts, in the northern German city of the same name; and Undercover, based in Braunschweig and operating in northern Germany and beyond, which was acquired by BMG in 2020 to lay the foundations for a new live music and events unit.

Some local promoters have expanded well beyond their original regions: Semmel Concerts, now a major national player, focused on Bavaria and Eastern Germany when it first launched more than 30 years ago.

These days, its shows span Germany and Austria and its calendar includes three postponed Berlin dates on Elton John’s farewell tour next May, as well as concerts by Hans Zimmer, Céline Dion, John Cale, and others next year.

“It makes the business kind of boring if there are only three or four big corporates fighting each other”

In a globalised era where scale and network clout count more than ever, Germany is hardly the only market in which independent promoters have inexorably been absorbed into international groups. Ben Mitha, managing director of Hamburg-based Karsten Jahnke Konzertdirektion, the persistently independent promoter founded by his grandfather, doesn’t condemn any other company for doing so, though he maintains that the market needs indies for its all-round health.

“I totally understand those people, especially in these last two challenging years, who are seeking shelter under a corporate umbrella,” says Mitha. “At the same time, it makes the business kind of boring if there are only three or four big corporates fighting each other. I think you also need those independents out there doing it for the passion or investing in some niche that might not be interesting for the big companies.”

Karsten Jahnke’s forthcoming shows include a Hamburg appearance for Robbie Williams as well as dates for Avril Lavigne, Arctic Monkeys, Wolf Alice, Elton John, and numerous smaller acts. This year’s successes have included The Cure and 49 nights at Hamburg’s Stadtpark for the Open Air series, with Deep Purple, Sting, Joe Jackson, Michael Kiwanuka, and Olivia Rodrigo among those collectively selling 170,000 tickets.

Among the market’s other nationally focused indies, is Berlin-based booker and national promoter Z|ART, founded in 2014 by Max Wentzler and Hauke Steinhof. Wentzler says there are enthusiastic audiences out there for fresh talent but suggests spiraling costs can easily have a brutal effect on promoters, even when a show is an apparent success.

“We are used to suffering in the live business, but it is haemorrhaging a little bit,” says Wentzler. “Margins have been decimated, basically, and it feels like all the income is being eaten up by security, ticketing, and stagehand companies, and also venues, who have increased their rates in response to energy prices because they are going to get hit with a huge bill.”

“Margins have been decimated, basically, and it feels like all the income is being eaten up”

Other independents include Hamburg’s a.s.s. concerts & promotion. Part of the Mehr-BB Entertainment Company, a.s.s. has operated as a booking agency and tour promoter for German and international rock, pop, folk, jazz, and world music artists since 1979, presenting up to 1,200 concerts a year.

A Covid-era consolidation saw two more Hamburg-based concert promoters, Funke Media and Neuland Concerts, merge to form what the company describes as “one of the largest owner-managed concert agencies in Germany.”

Operating as Neuland Concerts and working as both promoter and agency, Neuland’s current schedule includes dates for German stars Ina Müller and Max Mutzke. In Munich, Astrid Messerschmitt’s United Promoters has a superstar pedigree, having worked shows for Eric Clapton, AC/DC, and others, as well as maintaining a longstanding relationship with legendary veteran Marcel Avram.

Hamburg’s Music Minds Productions has also seen it all and has recently staged shows for 50 Cent at Cologne’s Lanxess Arena and The Police’s Andy Summers in Hamburg and Berlin. Of the market’s standalone festival promoters, Cosmopop is responsible for the 28-year-old Time Warp electronic festival in Mannheim and its international editions in Brazil, Chile, and the US; Opus produces the renowned Jazzopen Stuttgart; while ICS (International Concert Service) controls Wacken Open Air in Schleswig-Holstein, which remains one of the world’s biggest and most-esteemed rock festivals.

“I would wish that in many cases solution-oriented thinking could come forward instead of ego-driven thinking”

The market is competitive and tough, with even the winners licking their wounds after a bruising year. Superbloom managing director Fruzsina Szép – recently profiled in the German editions of Rolling Stone and Vogue as the one and only woman in charge of a German festival – believes more collaboration would benefit all.

“I don’t see any other festivals as competitors,” she says. “I’m really happy to have many great festivals in Germany, in Europe, in the UK. And if we have to tackle the same problems, then why not learn from each other to make it better?

“I’m very much in balance with my own ego, and I would wish that in many cases solution-oriented thinking could come forward instead of ego-driven thinking. People shouldn’t be afraid to say, ‘Well, we had problems, we had challenges.’”

 


The Global Promoters Report is published in print, digitally, and all content is also available as a year-round resource on the IQ site. The Global Promoters Report includes key summaries of the major promoters working across 40+ markets, unique interviews and editorial on key trends and developments across the global live music business.

To access all content from the current Global Promoters Report, please click here.

Semmel Concerts claims double win at Germany’s LEA

Semmel Concerts took home two honours from the first full-scale Live Entertainment Award (LEA) ceremony since the pandemic began.

More than 1,000 guests attended the event, which recognises excellence in the German live sector, at Frankfurt Festhalle this past Wednesday (22 June).

Semmel CEO Dieter Semmelmann was named Promoter of the Year and also received the award for Concert Hall/Arena Tour of the Year for Roland Kaiser’s Alles oder Dich tour, which was produced by the Bayreuth-based company. Staged in the autumn of 2021, Alles oder Dich was the first major arena tour to be undertaken under pandemic conditions, and attracted 150,000 people over 27 shows.

“My whole team has fought with courage, passion and vision for every event”

“Like many in this industry, my whole team has fought with courage, passion and vision for every event, and even accepted the challenges of resuming major tours under difficult conditions during the past year,” said Semmelmann. “So I dedicate this award to all my colleagues, on stage and behind the scenes, because mammoth undertakings like this have only been, and will only ever be possible with boundless loyalty, a lot of determination and countless helping hands.”

A jury of 24 experts, made up of media representatives and industry specialists from Germany, Austria and Switzerland, decided on the winners of the LEA, awarded for outstanding achievement in 2020 and 2021.

Elsewhere, Cologne promoter Roland “Balou” Temme was posthumously honoured with the Lifetime Achievement Award. Temme, who died last August aged 67, organised tours by the acts such as Peter Maffay, Udo Lindenberg and David Garrett with his companies Think Big and RTK.

Other winners included Austria’s Nova Music Entertainment for Nova Rock Encore (Festival of the Year), Nils Bodenstedt and Uli Mücke (Artist Manager/Agent of the Year), and Telekom Deutschland and Live Nation Brand Partnership & Media for the creation of digital live experiences on the Magenta Musik 360 portal (Cooperation of the Year).

Two new categories were also created this year due to the special circumstances in the assessment period: Industry Alliance of the Year went to the Music Industry Forum, Events Industry Forum, Swiss Music Promoters Association and Austrian Events Industry Interest Group, while the award for the artist alliance of the year went to booker Maria Paz Caraccioli Gutierrez and photographer Martin Diesch.

In addition, the inaugural honorary LEA was awarded to longtime BDKV (Federal Association of the Concert and Event Industry) president Jens Michow.

 


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Friday round-up: World news in brief 17/12/21

Welcome to IQ‘s weekly round-up of news from around the world. Here, in bite-sized chunks, we present a selection of international stories you may have missed from the last seven days…

AUSTRALIA:
TEG, the Sydney-based live entertainment, ticketing, and technology company, has appointed impresario Randy Phillips to the board of directors. The live music veteran most recently served as president and CEO of LiveStyle. Prior to that, Phillips was CEO at AEG Live for 13 years, where he promoted world tours for artists such as Bon Jovi, Justin Timberlake and Justin Bieber. Phillips, whose role will be both advisory and operational, will contribute to the expansion of the TEG footprint in live entertainment, including the creation of unique, owned, or co-owned, and financed intellectual property.

GERMANY:
Semmel Concerts has set up its own booking department under the name SCE Artists & Events. “Of course, the booking area has always been an important part of our company DNA, which we are now professionalising and making more visible with the Artists & Events department,” says MD Dieter Semmelmann. “We act as a partner and networker between artist/production and customer. Due to our experience and our diverse portfolio, we are able to offer and implement individual and tailor-made concepts for our partners.”

FRANCE:
Midem, a music industry conference and festival in Cannes, has been officially axed after 55 years. The impact of Covid-19 forced the organisers to stage events online in 2020 and 2021. An in-person event was scheduled for June 2022 but has now been pulled. The event launched in January 1967 with the promise that execs could “do all your business in six sunny days in Cannes,” and it became a crucial fixture of the music industry calendar.

SPAIN:
The organisers of marquee Spanish festival Primavera Sound have warned that they may have to find a new host city in 2023 due to a “lack of interest and agreement” from Barcelona city council. Primavera Sound has taken place in Barcelona for 20 years and has recently expanded internationally with sister events in Los AngelesChile , Argentina and Brazil. The flagship event will mark its 20th-anniversary next year with an expanded edition.

UNITED STATES:
The 10 people who died in a crowd crush during Travis Scott’s concert at the Astroworld Festival in Houston last month accidentally suffocated, according to the Harris County medical examiner. The victims, aged 9 to 27 years old, died of compression asphyxia, the examiner’s report concluded. Another 300 people were injured among the audience of 50,000 people. Travis Scott has requested to be dismissed from multiple lawsuits he is named in relating to the Astroworld disaster.

NORWAY:
More than 160 music festivals across the country are to benefit from the latest round of compensation from the Norwegian government’s scheme for organisers and subcontractors in the cultural sector. Kongsberg Jazz Festival, Oslo World, Vossa Jazz, Night Jazz, Trondheim Jazz Festival, Oslo Jazz Festival, Beyond the Gates, Midgardsblot Metal Festival, Nordland Music Festival and Risør Chamber Music Festival are among the festivals that will receive a share in 2022. It was recently announced that the scheme, which has been running since 2020, will be continued until the summer of 2022.

UNITED STATES:
Opry Entertainment Group (OEG) has announced AXS as its official and exclusive ticketing partner. Under the partnership, AXS will provide its full suite of solutions for all OEG properties on a single platform, streamlining tour and show ticketing operations. OEG properties include the Grand Ole Opry, Ryman Auditorium, its Ole Red venues in Orlando, Gatlinburg, Nashville, Tishomingo and the recently announced Ole Red in Las Vegas (expected 2023). The partnership also creates new opportunities to align with AXS’s parent company AEG and its live event business, AEG Presents.

 


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German concert tickets ‘to rise by up to 30%’

Concert ticket prices in Germany are set to rise by up to 30% as a result of the coronavirus crisis, according to a new report.

Price increases of 15-30% are likely to become standard for domestic shows in the short to medium term, reports Backstage Pro. The increase is attributed to inflation since pre-pandemic times, as well as rising production costs.

“The technology companies have increased their prices drastically, by 20 to 30%”, explains Axel Ballreich, chairman of venues body LiveKomm. “It is foreseeable that the prices for concert tickets will rise by at least 15 to 20%.”

In a controversial move, ticket-holders for German singer Roland Kaiser’s postponed 2020/21 dates in Dresden will receive a voucher for the €67.50 cost of the original ticket. The voucher can then be used towards buying tickets for next year’s rescheduled shows, which are priced €84.50 – 25% higher.

Tickets for many concerts postponed from 2020/21 will remain at their original prices

Promoter Semmel Concerts told Bild newspaper the increase was due to rising costs for “technology and staff shortages” along with additional expenses for “security, ticket organisation or hygiene regulations”.

Ballreich points out that tickets for many concerts postponed from 2020/21 will remain at their original prices, but others will be reliant on increases to cover costs given the subsequent increases in overheads.

However, Claus Berninger, owner of Aschaffenburg’s  Colos-Saal club, warns it is “completely wrong” for organisers to up ticket prices to make up for lost income.

“The fans won’t go along with that either,” adds Berninger, who instead calls for productions to be slimmed down in order to cut costs.

 


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Back to Live concert series launches in Germany

Germany has launched its first major concert series which is compliant with the current Coronavirus-related regulations, but the organisers have said the events are a “show of strength” and not an economic model for the future.

Back to Live, organised by Semmel Concerts and CTS Eventim and other partners, launched on 3 September at the Berlin Waldbühne (cap. 22,000), inviting up to 5,000 guests to watch a performance from Roland Kaiser.

The series will include seven concerts and run until 2 October featuring artists including Helge Schneider, Peter Maffay and Wincent Weiss.

At a press conference before the start of the first concert Semmel Concerts CEO Dieter Semmelmann, president of the BDKV Jens Michow, and CTS Eventim COO Alexander Ruoff demanded a concrete roadmap for the live industry.

The organisers have called for uniform, comprehensible and nationwide binding rules on hygiene organizational and documentation standards; financial help until the reopening; and a fixed date of 1 April 2021 to restart live music without coronavirus-related restrictions.

“These concerts are a huge step forward, but without a doubt only a very small one, on the way to normalcy”

“We are of course very happy that we can implement this series of events here in this beautiful open-air stage. We have been preparing for it for a long time and quickly developed and ready the necessary technical solutions for ticketing with regard to visitor data collection,” says CTS Eventim’s Alexander Ruoff.

“These concerts are a huge step forward, but without a doubt only a very small one, on the way to normalcy.”

Dieter Semmelmann,  CEO Semmel Concerts says: “We are very pleased that we can now really hold this series of events, because organising concerts is our calling and our passion.

“But our entire industry is facing a total economic collapse, so it is inevitable to press for a dialogue with politics in order to make the employees and artists in Germany heard. We need binding statements, otherwise the industry will be flat.”

The German government recently announced that all major events that don’t adhere to social distancing measures and hygiene protocol will now be banned until at least the end of the year.

The Live Nation GSA-promoted concert Return to Live – slated to be the biggest show in the country since March – was recently postponed indefinitely due to increasing infections.

 


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