Motorpoint Arena Nottingham has dedicated a backstage promoter office in memory of late promoter Chris York as the venue marks 25 years in operation.

York, who died last year aged 55, was a director at SJM Concerts and a hugely respected industry figure, receiving the Bottle Award for lifetime achievement at the 2022 Arthur Awards.

Unveiled by the Nottingham arena’s CEO Martin Ingham during the venue’s 25th anniversary gala and awards evening this week, the space honours York’s contributions to the live music sector and his strong ties to the Motorpoint Arena.

An ardent supporter of English Premier League football club Nottingham Forest, York will be commemorated at every show with a club shirt, donated by the team, and displayed in his memory.

SJM’s Simon Moran and John Cornwall were among those in attendance at the event, alongside the likes of Steve Homer and Lucy Noble with the AEG Presents team, Alan Day with team Kilimanjaro Live, and Live Nation’s Phil Bowdery, along with representatives from TEG Europe, Phil McIntyre, DHP Family, Triple A Entertainment Group, ShowPlanr and Feld Entertainment.

Acts set to perform at the 10,000-cap arena in the coming weeks include Bryan Adams, Eric Clapton, Kylie Minogue, Diana Ross and Gracie Abrams

Highlights from the evening included a performance by Our Dementia Choir, guest appearances by Nottingham-born former world champion boxer Carl Froch and actor Vicky McClure, and a headline set from Nottingham native Jake Bugg. The event also featured a charity auction, raising funds for the venue’s charities, Switch Up Nottingham and the DMRC Benevolent Fund.

The ceremony also saw the presentation of a Lifetime Achievement Award to Olympic ice skating legends Jayne Torvill and Christopher Dean. In a permanent tribute, the venue officially renamed its main rink in the duo’s honour.

Also as part of the anniversary celebrations, the venue unveiled a new hand-painted mural created by Nottingham-based artist Elliot Caine, celebrating the city’s cultural heritage and the artists and sports stars who have graced the venue over the years.

Acts set to perform at the 10,000-cap arena in the coming weeks include Scissor Sisters, Bryan Adams, Eric Clapton, Kylie Minogue, Tate McRae, Diana Ross and Gracie Abrams.

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SJM Concerts paid tribute to the late Chris York after being named Live Music Promoter of the Year at the 2025 Music Week Awards.

Accepting the award at last night’s ceremony at London’s Grosvenor House, SJM’s Jack Dowling and John Cornell described their hugely respected former colleague, who died last year aged 55, as a “special guy”.

York was a director at SJM, working with artists including Oasis, Foo Fighters, Green Day, The Chemical Brothers, Lily Allen, Massive Attack, Robert Plant, Underworld, Lorde, Morrissey, Placebo, Suede and Stereophonics over the course of 30 years.

Elsewhere, CAA took home the Live Music Agency prize for a second successive year, with agent Maria May saluting the “exceptional hard work” and collaboration of the team.

“The senior leadership is amazing,” she added. “We all love being in our jobs and we’re extremely grateful to everybody for this award.”

Reading & Leeds, whose 2024 edition was headed by Blink-182, Fred Again.., Lana Del Rey, Liam Gallagher, Catfish and the Bottlemen and Gerry Cinnamon, claimed Festival of the Year and AXS Europe received the Ticketing Company award.

“Artist management today is not an individual pursuit, it’s a shared enterprise”

In addition, Nottingham’s The Bodega came out on top in the Grassroots Venue: Spirit of the Scene category.

The night’s most prestigious award, The Strat, went to Wildlife Entertainment CEO and longtime Arctic Monkeys manager Ian McAndrew. The band’s frontman Alex Turner made a surprise appearance to present McAndrew with the honour alongside Wildlife MD Emma Greengrass.

McAndrew, who has guided the likes of Travis, Royal Blood, Miles Kane and Fontaines D.C. during his 35-year career, is also a founding member of anti-ticket touting campaign group FanFair Alliance.

“Artist management today is not an individual pursuit, it’s a shared enterprise,” he said. “I’m blessed to work with the very best. I’m particularly fortunate to work alongside my fellow director, Sarah Abbott, and Wildlife MD Emma Greengrass, who is someone I not only value as a great professional manager, she’s someone I cherish as a very dear friend.

“I’m grateful to all our former Wildlife colleagues, particularly to my old partner, Colin Lester, the doctor, with whom I shared some amazing experiences and with a lot of laughs along the way.

“I’m truly fortunate to have been afforded the opportunity to do what I want to do, which is to help my artists, my songwriters, get up in the morning, go to bed at night and do what they want to do.”

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Country music again takes centre stage in the UK this weekend with the return of Country to Country (C2C), as the genre’s remarkable international growth shows no sign of plateauing.

Lainey Wilson, Dierks Bentley and Cody Johnson headline the 2025 edition of Europe’s biggest country festival, which returns to London’s The O2, OVO Hydro Glasgow and Belfast’s SSE Arena from 14-16 March.

Created by AEG Europe and SJM Presents in collaboration with the Country Music Association (CMA), the event launched in London in 2013 and has expanded to other markets including Scandinavia, the Netherlands, Germany and Australia.

“It’s such an incredible brand and is the market leader,” The O2’s GM and VP Steve Sayer tells IQ. “Each year the programming gets bigger and better and it’s one of our favourite events of the year. The bill is as big as it’s ever been and as in previous years, you’re going to see programming right across the O2 site.

“From our perspective, we’ve seen country music really take off in the UK in the last few years, in no small part, because of the success of C2C. It’s an important genre in our programming strategy and country music is only going to grow over the coming years.”

“Brands are completely ingrained in what we do. The artists are as engaged as the fans are”

The CMA hosted a presentation at The O2 today (14 March) entitled Brand Power of Country Music in the UK, which explored the rise in country consumption and the consumer loyalty of country music fans. The panel was attended by leading UK and US promoters, agencies, record labels and management companies.

It noted that in 2024, country streams surpassed 1 billion for first time in the UK in Q3, while five of the top 15 tracks of last year were country songs. Since Q4 2022, country music streams in the UK have grown 159%.

UTA agent Sean Hendrie spoke about opening mindsets of brands to country and it being “an untapped genre” which has now gone mainstream, with brands involved in country space now including Urban Outfitters, Victoria’s Secret, Primark, Louis Vuitton, Shein and Levi’s.

“Brands are completely ingrained in what we do,” added AEG Presents UK promoter and C2C booker Rachel Lloyd. “The artists are as engaged as the fans are.”

Furthermore, the audience for Bauer’s Absolute Country Radio was up 50% year on year, while Global’s Smooth Country reported a 650% rise in female listeners aged 15-24.

“C2C has laid a lot of the foundations for what we’re now doing at Hyde Park”

Almost 30 country acts will visit the UK for headline tours in 2025, including Brothers Osborne, Kip Moore, HARDY, Alana Springsteen, Darius Rucker, Kane Brown, Old Dominion, Dasha, Tyler Childers and Brett Young, as well as Post Malone and Beyoncé’s Cowboy Carter Tour.

In addition, there are now more than a dozen country festivals on the UK calendar such as Highways, Red Rooster, The Long Road, Towerfest and Maverick. Meanwhile, Morgan Wallen became the first country headliner of AEG’s BST Hyde Park last week.

“C2C has laid a lot of the foundations for what we’re now doing at Hyde Park,” said AEG’s European festivals’ chief Jim King.

Following Wallen’s success, fellow country star Zach Bryan has gone on to sell 130,000 tickets for his two nights at the London concert series this summer.

“It’s tremendous to be a part of that, and a part of the country music journey in the park,” added King, who said he expected country to become even more ingrained at BST in 2016.

“It’s not just about the programming,” stressed King, “we’re fully committed to this genre, not just at BST but at other events we’ll be running in the future.”

“Year after year, the passion grows, the audiences get bigger and the atmosphere more unforgettable”

Last weekend saw AEG and Semmel Concerts stage the German edition of C2C, attracting 9,000 fans to Uber Eats Music Hall in Berlin from 7-9 March.

The site-wide festival featured 51 international artists, including the likes of Dylan Gossett, Dasha, Lainey Wilson, Tucker Wetmore, Chase Matthew, Tanner Adell, Nate Smith, Shaboozey, Chayce Beckham and Avery Anna, attracting coverage in several media media outlets for the first time.

“The impressive growth of the country genre in Germany was more than evident at the festival in Berlin,” says Semmel’s Sina Hall. “The enthusiasm of the fans shows how much country music has now arrived in the mainstream – and with growing momentum.

“Year after year, the passion grows, the audiences get bigger and the atmosphere more unforgettable. This festival has proven once again that country is not just a niche in Germany, but a movement that is constantly growing.”

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Mumford & Sons have revealed a 19-date UK/EU tour in support of their forthcoming album, RUSHMERE.

The British folk-rock trio will kick off the trek in Stockholm on 6 November at Avicii Arena (cap. 16,500) — one of the Swedish capital’s in-demand venues — and wrap up at The O2 (20,000) in London on 10 December.

Their 7th LP RUSHMERE, which shares its name with the London pond where the band was formed, will be their first in seven years and is due out 28 March. Presale for the tour starts next Tuesday, 18 March, with a general sale following on Thursday, 20 March.

This jaunt will also include stops at Copenhagen’s Royal Arena (16,000), Berlin’s Uber Arena (17,000), Paris’s Adidas Arena (9,000), Amsterdam’s Ziggo Dome (17,000), and Barcelona’s Palau Sant Jordi (17,960).

Over the summer, the trio — comprised of Marcus Mumford, Ben Lovett and Ted Dwane — will precede the tour with two outdoor shows at Dublin’s Malahide Castle (20,000) and Italy’s Arena di Verona (22,000) in July.

For this venture, Mumford & Sons have partnered with PLUS1 to support War Child, with £1 from every ticket sold earmarked to help War Child protect, educate, and stand up for the rights of children affected by war.

The band are currently in the midst of their first headline shows since 2018

The band are in the midst of their first headline shows since 2018, a nine-date intimate club tour of Europe, Australia and North America. After performing at the likes of Melkweg (1,500) in Amsterdam and London’s O2 Forum Kentish Town (2,300), they are gearing up to head down to Sydney’s iconic Opera House next Monday, 17 March.

Remaining stops on this run also include a North American leg, with Los Angeles’ Hollywood Palladium (4,000), the Chicago Theatre (3,600), Toronto’s Massey Hall at Allied Music Centre (2,765), and New York City’s Brooklyn Paramount (2,700) on tap.

Earlier this month, the group performed an impromptu, intimate show at London’s Flat Iron Square (420), playing two acoustic sets in support of RUSHMERE. Over 1,000 fans showed up to the south London venue, per NME.

TVG Hospitality, which operates the Southwark Quarter and its Flat Iron Square and Omeara (320), is helmed by Lovett, who co-founded the venture with his brother Greg.

Mumford & Sons are represented by CAA in North America and WME for the rest of the world.

The full list of remaining tour dates is as follows:

17th March – Sydney Opera House, Sydney
20th March – Hollywood Palladium, Los Angeles
22nd March – Chicago Theatre, Chicago
23rd March – Allied Music Centre – Massey Hall, Toronto
26th March – Brooklyn Paramount, New York

4th July – Malahide Castle, Dublin
7th July – Arena di Verona, Verona

6th November – Avicii Arena, Stockholm
8th November – Royal Arena, Copenhagen
10th November – Uber Arena, Berlin
12th November – Lanxess Arena, Cologne
13th November – Sportpaleis, Antwerp
14th November – Adidas Arena, Paris
16th November – Rockhal, Luxembourg
17th November – Ziggo Dome, Amsterdam
19th November – Unipol Arena, Bologna
20th November – Hallenstadion, Zurich
21st November – Unipol Forum, Milan
23rd November – Palau Sant Jordi, Barcelona
25th November – Sagres Campo Pequeno, Lisbon
2nd December – OVO Hydro, Glasgow
3rd December – Co-op Live, Manchester
5th December – Utilita Arena, Sheffield
7th December – Utilita Arena, Birmingham
8th December – Utilita Arena, Cardiff
10th December – The O2, London

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As one of the biggest arena acts on the planet, The 1975 have been making headlines wherever they go for the past 20 years. Having just brought the curtain down on their third consecutive year on the road, their fanbase continues to grow, making their efforts to rewrite the rulebooks on sustainable touring all the more impressive. Derek Robertson learns just what it takes to take such a cultural phenomenon on the road.

Can you have too much of a good thing? Clearly, The 1975 think not. For an A-list arena band, they have been remarkably prolific – aside from releasing an album every two years since 2016, they’ve also toured behind them relentlessly: 18 months and 150 shows for I Like It When You Sleep, For You Are So Beautiful Yet So Unaware Of It; a 24-month world tour behind Music For Cars; and a seven-leg, 96-date stint doing their At Their Very Best show. And barely a month after that wrapped on the 13th of August 2023, they were back on the road in Atlanta starting Still… At Their Very Best – another 66-date, worldwide jaunt – in support of their fifth studio album, Being Funny In A Foreign Language.

Even taking into account the enforced breaks during the pandemic, that’s quite a workload – particularly when you consider some of the bands’ struggles with mental health and the pernicious effects of fame. Yet manager Jamie Oborne says that after the Music For Cars tour was interrupted by lockdowns (while first rescheduled, the remaining shows for that tour were ultimately cancelled), “we collectively had a desire to tour, and Matty (Healy, frontman) was very excited about doing a show that was ‘different’ to what people expected or had seen in an arena before. It felt like the right time to get back on the road.”

Work it real good
“The boys love to work,” says Maarten Cobbaut, tour manager. “The first real break they had from their intense schedule was the pandemic, but within a week of restrictions being lifted and everything, they were back in the studio working on new music. They are just so passionate about what they do and put so much of themselves into the music and these shows.”

And these shows for Still… At Their Very Best are, unsurprisingly, fairly close in terms of concept, setup, and logistics as the At Their Very Best show. “An evolution, not a revolution,” as Oborne puts it. “It was part of the same cycle, but so much had happened since the tour commenced that Matty felt a creative need to highlight this evolution. The plan was always to use this tour cycle to market Being Funny In A Foreign Language, so we didn’t really see it as two separate tours.”

“The Finsbury Park show sold out instantly, and it was clear the fanbase was still growing on this cycle”

“Both UK runs were all part of the global touring for Being Funny In A Foreign Language, and weren’t seen as separate projects,” adds Matt Bates of Primary Talent, the band’s agent. “Of course, the first run was billed as At Their Very Best, with the second run having a slightly different name, but they very much coexisted together. And there was a lot of demand – the Finsbury Park show sold out instantly, and it was clear the fanbase was still growing on this cycle.”

Treading the boards
The show itself was certainly “different” – both from what you’d expect from an arena band and from their previous bombastic show for Music For Cars. That tour was “really big and ambitious,” says creative director and show designer Tobias Rylander. “We really went for size and technology with massive LED screens and automated cubes. But for At Their Very Best and Still… At Their Very Best, we wanted to be very analogue – Matty wanted the show and design to be more personal and really show them as a band.”

Healy is, says Rylander, always very conceptual in the approach for each era and tour. While the design for the previous tour reflected social media and internet behaviour, “This time around Matty wanted the show and design to be more personal and show them as a band,” explains Rylander.

“Matty wanted it to reflect their history as friends and a group, while also focussing on them as a live act and musicians. He wanted the stage to reflect how they recorded this last album live, together in the studio. He knew he wanted a house, and some sort of living room. And he wanted it to be focusing on the I-mag camera. No video content: just live camera. That’s how I started to design and look at the house. To always have a good background and setting for the camera shots.

“We looked at anything from Ingmar Bergman to Steven Spielberg for inspiration and references,” adds Rylander; Stanley Kubrick and avant-garde theatre were other touchstones (one review described the show as being: “part performance art, part stage play, part Charlie Kaufman movie about a rock star in crisis.”)

“I always remain amazed by the creative ideas of Matty and the band”

Our house
The design eventually started to take on a life of its own as it developed – it literally became Matty’s “home,” housing his memories. “It’s monochromatic and anonymous at the same time; it can reflect and take the shape of anyone’s childhood memories or their new memories leaving the show,” says Rylander. “It’s a very inviting and inclusive set.”

The first half of the show has almost no “effect” lighting and looks more like classic theatre than a rock show. “That’s something we’ve never done before, and something that’s not very common these days – I think we are the only rock band tour out there that brings a whole ‘Broadway’ set,” says Rylander.

And for the second leg of the tour, they kept all the theatrical parts and added a large, curved video screen behind the set that allowed them to add set extensions and environmental backgrounds. “We could go from night to day in a very beautiful way, but also play some really fantastic bits of video content reflecting older tours and eras from the past,” he adds. “And using the upstage video screen as a theatrical set extension like we do – I don’t think I have seen that on stage before.”

“I always remain amazed by the creative ideas of Matty and the band,” says Matt Bates. “The show was brilliant theatre while not losing the ethos of what makes the band so special in the first place. It truly showed a band at the top of their game creatively and musically, and, in their own words, ‘at their very best.’”

Boys on film
As noted above, video – shot live and intimately – was key to the whole look and feel of the show. Head of video Ed Lawlor has been with The 1975 since 2016 and was tasked with turning concept into reality while ensuring the solution was practical enough for a world tour. “We didn’t want to compromise on providing the best IMAG show possible for the budget – the design brief was ‘cinematic’ – so it was an easy decision to focus on one thing and do it well,” he says.

“It was clear early on that the band and management wanted larger than normal IMAG screens, and we wanted the classic projection look rather than LED”

“It was clear early on that the band and management wanted larger than normal IMAG screens, and we wanted the classic projection look rather than LED. On the initial US tour, we specified two Panasonic PT-RZ31K projectors per side on a 24’ Stumpfl screen from PRG rental stock, which was the largest off-the-shelf option available,” he adds. “On returning a year later to larger venues, the management requested a bigger option – at that point, we commissioned a 32’ Stumpfl screen, which was the largest practical option in a fast-fold product. This required an increase to 3x PT-RZ31K per side, which is the brightest arena IMAG projection I’ve heard of in a while.”

As for the cameras, Lawlor decided to do 3G well rather than 4K on the cheap, so specified four Sony HDC-2500 channels and a Ross Carbonite 2 M/E PPU from PRG UK. This was augmented with four Panasonic AW-UE160 and an RP150 control panel, with additional fixed shots from Marshall CV503-WPs.

Screen time
Those IMAG screens are very much larger than normal for arena touring, and so Lawlor and his crew worked closely with both PRG and AV Stumpfl to find a solution that allowed for rear projection in a fast-fold type frame with no central member that would obscure the beam. PRG have also been working with The 1975 since 2016 and, says Stefaan Michels, sales director for PRG UK, “our partnership has grown stronger over the years – we’ve fostered a close relationship with their tour and production management team, and one that extends beyond their time on the road.”

PRG’s brief was scalability, and the integration of new equipment tailored specifically for this production. Michels had to ensure the duplication of rig setups between Europe and the US, as well as customising equipment to meet the tour’s unique requirements. “Implementing A-B-C rig configurations was essential for maximising efficiency and flexibility throughout the tour,” he says, “and we made specific equipment choices based on detailed specifications provided.”

For example, one significant consideration was the need for different sizes of projection screens to suit the dimensions of various venues. For larger arena shows in the US and UK, they incorporated a large USC Hi Res LED wall to deliver high-resolution visuals that could effectively engage the audience across expansive spaces. Additionally, custom-made, large projection screens equipped with additional 31K laser projectors were also used, particularly in venues with specific lighting conditions or sightline challenges.

“We had to come up with a system that kept Matty safe but also ensured that, if the worst happened, it was safe for a rescuer to go out and assist”

Another specific choice was the decision to utilise Ereca Stage Racer 2s, a decision driven by the need to minimise the deployment of copper cabling on a daily basis. “This choice not only reduces setup time but also enhances flexibility, allowing for swift adjustments as tour requirements evolve, as they inevitably do over the course of an extensive tour like this one,” says Michels. “Moving multiple 3G video signals even over medium distances caused problems on the first leg of the tour, as it required coaxial cable to be both modern and in good condition, which is a challenge to maintain on tour when local labour is in use,” adds Lawlor. “This was another factor in the decision to adopt the Stage Racer 2s.”

Hanging about
All in all, this setup provided a modest challenge for head rigger Simon Lawrence – “simply 120 points going to the roof and a relatively small weight of 50 tonnes.” But there was one area of concern – at one point, Healy climbs upon onto the roof of the “house” to perform a song, on top of the front apex. “Like any artist, Matty wants to be as free as possible when performing, and initially, he felt he should have no safety systems at all, but when he is nearly six metres up in the air above the stage, this is not possible,” says Lawrence. “So we had to come up with a system that kept Matty safe but also ensured that, if the worst happened, it was safe for a rescuer to go out and assist.”

Rounding out the suppliers, All Access provided the front of house mix position stage (a B stage set piece) and built a custom lift for this, while TAIT provided a TAIT Mag Deck rolling house stage. “The Mag Deck design incorporates magnetic corner blocks for alignment and a shear keyway to reduce the number of legs needed to support the decking structure,” says Bullet,
TAIT’s business development manager – UK. “This reduced the amount of product that needed to travel on the road and the time needed to load in and load out, ultimately saving on costs.”

On the road again
Moving all this around was the responsibility of Natasha Highcroft, director of Transam Trucking. “We supplied 15 low-ride height production trucks, plus one merchandise truck for the UK, and eight production trucks plus one merchandise truck for the European leg of the tour, all superbly handled by our lead driver, David Isted,” she says. “As with most tours, keeping to the EU legislation on drivers’ hours and statutory weekly rest periods can prove difficult when parking and access is restricted. Fortunately, with an understanding production and accommodating promoters, we were able to facilitate breaks whilst keeping to budget.”

Bussing was provided by Beat The Street; in total, they ran four 16-berth double-deck Setra’s for the crew and two 12-berth Van Hool Super-highdeckers for the band. “Plotting band bus moves can be a bit of a challenge when day drivers are mixed in with overnight drivers, as it becomes difficult to get the drivers their required weekly breaks,” says Garry Lewis, the company’s transport manager. “So, it was agreed to add a second driver to each band bus, which gave us the flexibility to make it work as seamlessly as possible for the band party.”

“Our focus, as a community of creatives, is always to try and limit the negative impact touring has on the environment”

Sustainability has long been an issue dear to the band’s heart, and on this tour, they were determined to do all they could to lessen its carbon footprint and impact on the environment. “The set design put a real focus on the structural elements being reusable or recyclable, and many of the items that make up the set-build will end up back in stock at the supplier end – this is quite unique,” says Oborne. “Our focus, as a community of creatives, is always to try and limit the negative impact touring has on the environment. It’s by no means a perfect solution, but we are pretty committed to chipping away at our impact on the environment.”

Indeed, the modular nature of the set is something of a first. “It’s a renewable scenic technology, and this is the first time this product has been taken out for a live touring show,” says production manager Josh Barnes. “We wanted something that would really give us the aesthetic finish that we were looking for, in terms of being robust and feeling like the walls are actually the walls of a house and not just a flimsy, flat set. But also, be something that could be transported in the most sustainable, cost-effective way possible and be renewed or recycled at the end of the campaign.”

He goes on: “We ended up partnering up with PRG scenic through their Belgium and Las Vegas offices and worked with them on creating the house out of a product called InfiniForm – basically, it’s a 50 x 50 mil aluminium box section that allows you to cut it and add corners, reels, braces, fixings, or whatever you need. Then, once the frames are made, they were clad in aluminium honeycomb, which is a lightweight, hard-wearing wall surface.

“And, at the end of the campaign, they’re just going to be stripped back into component parts and used by the next project. There’s no ongoing storage needed, and there’s no waste in terms of bits and pieces that would just normally get thrown away if it were a custom build.”

This also meant that the band was able to drop their air freight requirements from 40 pallets down to just 17 for the entire show. Coupled with the decision to carry a smaller production around mainland Europe, requiring only eight trucks instead of 16, this allowed the production team to significantly cut the tour’s carbon footprint and make some impressive cost savings.

“One of the things that we’ve really focussed on for this tour is crew welfare, and trying to look after people’s mental health”

Take a break
Looking after the planet is a noble endeavour, but the band are also at pains to look after people – specifically, their people. “One of the things that we’ve really focussed on for this tour is crew welfare, and trying to look after people’s mental health,” says Barnes. This effort started before the tour even hit the road – after rehearsals, several training days were scheduled with an American organisation called Safe Tour, covering topics such as wellness on the road, mental health first aid, pronoun training, and some bystander intervention training. “It was really beneficial to everybody involved in the project to set them up for success on what was, and still is, quite a long run,” he adds.

Crew rest was another priority, something that’s always a struggle given the nature of long days on the road. “Getting the right amount of rest between shows is really important,” says Barnes. To that end, they’ve been careful not to set loading times for arrival or very early in the morning, instead choosing “about an hour after we expect to arrive, to give the crew enough time to actually plan their mornings. We can also adjust show and door times as well, to assist if we need to leave slightly earlier one night or start later the next day.”

The quality of crew rest has been improved, too. “So not just a single day off where you arrive at a hotel, but a day where you can sleep in a bed and not set an alarm,” says Barnes. “Effectively, two days off, or one full day off, every few weeks – that was a real win being able to work that into the schedule.” Hotels are pre-booked, so people can access their rooms direct on arrival at 10am or whenever and are required to have a number of amenities to help the crew unwind; a gym, a sauna, a pool, spaces to relax, and convenient access to nature, parks, or wildlife. “Options beyond just sitting in a bar drinking.”

And this emphasis on physical health extends to the available food, with nutritionally balanced meals available on the buses and through catering, plus plenty of non-alcoholic beverages and 0% beers. Crew members can make individual food choices through an app, and while the band themselves tour with a personal trainer to keep them in shape, things like being able to walk to a venue from the hotel, and that downtime is actually downtime, are prioritised. “These things help in a number of ways – it’s financial, it’s sustainability, and it’s improving welfare,” adds Barnes. “They’re all important aspects to us.”

Much in demand
As one of the most popular acts of the new millennium, the band is in tune with its global fanbase, striving to make its touring activities as sustainable as possible and speaking out on issues on behalf of underrepresented communities. An infamous onstage kiss in Malaysia between Healy and bassist Ross McDonald last July continues to have repercussions, but that hasn’t stopped promoters internationally from booking the act.

“We sold out four O2 Arena shows this time, plus 40,000 tickets on this album campaign in the UK alone”

Unsurprisingly, given the stature and popularity of the band, Still… has been a roaring commercial success, too, with sold-out shows all across the globe. “We sold out four O2 Arena shows this time, plus 40,000 tickets on this album campaign in the UK alone,” says Bates. “Their fanbase continues to grow year on year, and while that does make the tours easier to sell, we like to launch the show with significant marketing for the first announcement,” says Luke Temple of SJM Concerts. Both Arena Birmingham and the two Manchester dates sold out in a weekend; Temple says the plan was always to do two at the latter, “but I’ve no doubt they could have sold out a few more.”

It was a similar story north of the border, in Glasgow. “The band played Glasgow Hydro in January 2023, then headlined TRNSMT Festival in July 2023,” says Dave McGeachan of DF Concerts. “We were thinking we would leave Glasgow off the 2024 tour, but we decided to add a show at the OVO Hydro. Then we had to add a second night due to demand, which also sold out – quite incredible sales within 13 months.”

In Sweden, the band sold out Stockholm’s Tele2 Arena – “their biggest show in our territory yet,” says Natalie Ryan-Williams of Luger. “Over the years, their fanbase has expanded, and with them being the phenomenon they now are, we knew people were going to travel in from all over Sweden – and even some internationally.”

The possibility of multiple shows in Spain was considered, but, says Cindy Castillo of Mad Cool, venue availabilities and logistical constraints prevented it. “The demand was certainly there, indicating the band’s strong draw in this area,” she says.

Two nights were possible at Amsterdam’s AFAS Live – even if they were nearly a month apart – and, says Friendly Fire’s Roel Coppen, “they were the band’s fastest-selling arena headline shows to date. They played Best Kept Secret in 2023, but we had no issues with these new dates – we could cater to different audiences with different shows within 12 months.”

“You can just about see anyone attending a The 1975 show nowadays – they really attract people from all backgrounds and generations”

Even in more developing territories, these shows have really connected to local fans. “The situation in continental Europe is quite different from the UK, especially in Central Europe,” says Anna Vašátková, head of marketing and PR for Rock For People in Czechia. “The band isn’t played on the radio very often and there’s not as much media coverage, so we’ve had to do all the heavy lifting ourselves. We did quite a massive marketing campaign, including outdoor, radio spots, and extensive use of online media.”

Coppen also noted something else on this run – a broadening of their fanbase. “I do see there’s been a steady, growing interest from other demographic groups and also journalists have been getting more excited about the band in recent years,” he says. Ryan-Williams has noticed something similar. “You can just about see anyone attending a The 1975 show nowadays – they really attract people from all backgrounds and generations, which is a beautiful thing to see.”

“The 1975’s appeal spans various age groups and genders, and their music has definitely attracted a diverse audience transcending age and gender boundaries,” adds Castillo. “It resonates with listeners across generations, from teenagers to older adults, probably thanks to its relatable themes and catchy melodies.”

Success is no accident
Beyond the accolades and acclaim, beyond the facts and figures, this tour has been a resound- ing success. And not just for the legions of happy fans. Everyone IQ speaks to has high praise for the way the band and their team have gone about everything and how they treat all those who encounter them. “Over the years, The 1975 has evolved into more than just a client; they have become like a second family to me,” says Michels. “The professionalism, collaboration, and welcoming spirit displayed by everyone involved transcend mere business relationships.”

“It is always our pleasure to work with The 1975, their production, and their management teams,” says Meegan Holmes of 8th Day Sound, a sentiment echoed by Roy Hunt, Christie Lites’ global account manager. “Every individual involved has demonstrated a high level of professionalism, commitment, and passion that has made this journey memorable,” he says. “The synergy between the band and the crew created an atmosphere of mutual respect and cooperation, while management has been nothing short of supportive, ensuring a seamless and enjoyable tour. Overall, it has been a remarkable experience that speaks volumes about the dedication and talent of everyone involved.”

Fittingly though, band manager Oborne attributes the success to all of those who work so hard to make the shows happen – and who help the band shine. “When I think about The 1975 touring, I can’t help but think about how dedicated and committed to the show our crew are,” he says. “The professionalism and dedication are something we simply could not be without. I am very grateful to all those behind the scenes who turn up day in day out and make the entire thing work. It’s quite something to witness.”

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As one of the biggest boy bands of the 90s, Take That have been selling out venues for more than 30 years, while racking up millions of record sales, numerous awards, and a reputation for putting on spectacular concerts. Current outing, This Life on Tour, is only enhancing the band’s status, while taking the group into new markets internationally. IQ reports.

As one of the UK’s most-loved acts, Take That have sold more than 14m albums in their home nation alone, consistently setting the bar high with live performances that thrill arena and stadium crowds alike. But unlike many of their peers, the trio of Gary Barlow, Howard Donald, and Mark Owen are determined to further build their fanbase, with the current tour taking them to new territories, as well as markets they haven’t visited in decades.

Last year, Take That switched allegiances by entrusting James Wright and Oliver Ward at United Talent Agency to handle their representation globally.

In their native UK, however, the band has a longstanding arrangement with SJM founder Simon Moran, who is often credited with persuading them to end their nine-year hiatus to reform. That decision saw SJM enjoying phenomenal success on The Ultimate Tour in 2006, in addition to the six tours prior to the current outing.

Nonetheless, Moran admits to being once again surprised by the volume of ticket sales. “We never take anything for granted,” Moran tells IQ, in the knowledge that 700,000 ticket sales makes them the biggest-selling UK tour by a UK act this year. “The high level of the tours previously and the production values thus far have delivered tremendous results, but it’s nice to see thew sales come through to this level.”

This Life marks Take That’s 12th tour, but ever ambitious, the band are taking their production to a number of new markets. “We want to go to places they’ve not been to,” says Moran. “We haven’t played in Leeds before, so to sell-out four shows and 40,000 tickets is a great result.”

“We’re very careful on pricing to [ensure we] have a wide range. There were probably 15-20% of the tickets priced at £60, which is great value”

And the SJM founder observes that the band’s popularity seems to still be expanding. Detailing the demographics of the ticket holders, he comments, “We still see the original fans from the 90s and then there’s a whole new fanbase that came on board with the Beautiful World [2007], Circus [2009], and Progress [2011] tours, but we also see the sons and daughters of the original fans and maybe even of the ones from [the noughties] as well.”

The fact that the tours attract so many young fans also plays a part in ticket prices, according to Moran. “We’re very careful on pricing to [ensure we] have a wide range. There were probably 15-20% of the tickets priced at £60, which is great value. At the other end, we have some VIP tickets, but we want to keep prices affordable for the vast majority of people.”

New relationships
While Moran promotes the UK tour leg – along with DF Concerts in Scotland and fellow Manchester-based operation Kennedy Street Presents – globally, Take That are now represented by UTA’s Ward and Wright who went back to basics for the set-up of This Life on Tour.

“We took the decision, collectively with management, to speak to every promoter in every market, including historical promoters,” says Ward. “Essentially, it was an open door, with us being the new agents, to have fresh conversations with everyone to find the right partners for the band in every territory. The enthusiasm amongst the promoters to bring the band to these markets, where they hadn’t been for ages or [had] never been, was massive.”

Disclosing some of the research undertaken in pulling together their proposal for Take That, Ward explains, “Our IQ Department here at UTA is an amazing resource and using their analysis we could see there were some really prominent markets, at least in terms of digital audience, where the band either had never been or hadn’t been for years. We took that information in good faith to [band manager] Chris Dempsey, and he then took it to the boys to show them there might be some untapped markets that should be considered.”

“The boys themselves were very keen on this campaign to do more in these markets and meet these fans for the first time or for the first time in a long time”

Wright says, “The boys themselves were very keen on this campaign to do more in these markets and meet these fans for the first time or for the first time in a long time. So it just became a big part of our conversation in the lead up to us working with them.

“We were also able to present an understanding of where fans were looking at things like Take That’s Wikipedia pages, so we really had a deep understanding of exactly where their fanbase was.”

That data has helped Take That plan a routing across 51 cities in 21 countries, as the band plays 79 dates before the end of the year, plus their own bespoke festival in Malta.

Burning ambition
Underlining the scope of the new markets that UTA’s research identified, the tour will see Take That play their first-ever shows in Portugal, Hungary, Malta, Poland, Czechia, and Slovakia. Additionally, Ward and Wright have agreed deals that will see the band performing in Asia for the first time since the 90s and their return to Spain after a 17-year absence.

Wright comments, “There’s a fundamental fear when a band or an artist has been going for that length of time, they want to sort of sit back. But Take That’s energy is quite remarkable – it’s very infectious to be around. And it just drives us to step up and deliver for them.”

And flagging up the professionalism of the artists, Ward says, “We’ve got a band who’ve been willing to do the promo and to go to these markets to excite the fanbase. The best example is Australia, where this will be only the band’s second visit since the 90s. Working with the promoter, Gary [Barlow] went to Australia to launch the tour with four days of packed promo. Credit to Gary, that has helped us have the best sales the band have ever seen in Australia.”

“We have many original fans, but we also have lots of teenagers coming to the show – it’s about a 50/50 split between the generation”

Susan Heymann, chief operating officer at Frontier Touring, which is promoting the band’s six-date tour, is delighted with the band’s return down under. “Gary was adored everywhere he went on his Australian promo trip,” she says. “The band and their team are some of the nicest people we’ve worked with and incredibly hardworking.”

As one of the new promoters on the tour, Heymann tells IQ, “We had a great response to the announcement of their November tour and with the addition of their old friend, Sophie Ellis-Bextor on the bill, announced right around the time when her hit Murder On The Dance Floor had re-entered the global charts, this Take That tour is reaching a broader audience than ever before.”

Back in Europe, Carsten Svoldgaard at CSB Island Entertainment is looking forward to welcoming the band back to Denmark, having hosted their only non-UK date in 2023.

“They played Hindsgavl Castle here last year and sold out 10,000 tickets, so we were very keen to be involved in this year’s tour as well,” says Svoldgaard. “We did not know how popular they would be for the Hindsgavl show because we had not worked with them before and it had been a long time since they had performed in Denmark, but it worked really well.”

Having sold out all 5,500 tickets for the 27 June gig at the Skovdalen amphitheatre in Aalborg, Svoldgaard reports that the fans span the generations. “We have many original fans, but we also have lots of teenagers coming to the show – it’s about a 50/50 split between the generations.”

“That’s what I find so inspiring – here they are all these years later, still going really strong and still massively ambitious in a way that not all artists are”

Further south, Will Anderson at Madrid-based Mercury Wheels is promoting six of Take That’s seven shows in Spain, including dates in Marbella, Seville, Murcia, and Jerez, as well as the capital city. “We have these outdoor concert series in Spain that are quite popular, so they’re sort of a festival vibe, but they’re all outdoor headline shows, essentially,” says Anderson of the gigs.

“Take That haven’t been to Spain for 17 years, so that was part of the conversation when Olly and James at UTA got in touch, as there’s a lot of pent-up demand from Spaniards to see them. But naturally, there will also be a lot of British expats that live here, as well as people flying in for the shows – the audiences should be a real mixture.”

While this will mark the first time that Anderson himself has worked with the band, he is relishing the experience. “Expectations are pretty high,” he tells IQ. “Just speaking with the agents at UTA, you get a sense of the ambition coming from the band themselves. That’s what I find so inspiring – here they are all these years later, still going really strong and still massively ambitious in a way that not all artists are. They could very easily sit on their laurels and not do very much if they wanted to. But they want to get out and see their fans in all parts of the world.”

In terms of ticket sales, Anderson reports, “In Madrid, the show sold out in a day, while Marbella was one of the fastest-selling shows they’ve ever had in the history of the concert series, so they ended up adding a second date. But right across the board, it’s going great guns, so we’re really happy with how it’s coming together.”

The agents are similarly enthused. “Spain’s been a big one,” confirms Wright. “We’re just delighted that having not been there since 2007, we’re now doing seven concerts. The show in Madrid sold out in 24 hours, which was one of the fastest sellouts ever by an international artist at that concert series.”

“The sales are tracking very well against our other recent arena shows, and the band have both a strong ex-pat and international following”

Also on the tour routing is a 25 October date in the United Arab Emirates where MAC Global previously promoted the band’s 2017 Wonderland Live outing.

“We fully expect people to travel from Dubai and other Emirates in the UAE: we are seeing the ticket-buyers more willing to travel from Dubai to Abu Dhabi for shows and vice versa,” comments MAC Global co-founder and chief creative officer, Daniel Goldberg. “Take That have a huge global following, and we fully expect to see fans travel from the UK to attend the show and build in a short winter break around it.”

With the band’s agents looking to potentially add dates to the Middle East leg, Goldberg notes, “We’re hoping Take That will do two or three regional plays. We are based in Dubai, but our remit, being part of the Sony Masterworks network, is very much regional routing. Even dating back to 2015, we successfully routed Ed Sheeran to Dubai, Oman, Qatar, and India in one regional run, and we always try and route artists to more than one market here.”

Indeed, he reports that demand for the October show is encouraging. “The sales are tracking very well against our other recent arena shows, and the band have both a strong ex-pat and international following. Robbie Williams recently sold close to 14,000 tickets in Abu Dhabi, so we’re hoping to hit a similar number.

“Their UK sales speak for themselves and there’s a huge amount of excitement for them coming to Abu Dhabi. The band and entire team are a delight to work with, and this will surely be one of the event calendar highlights for the UAE this year.”

“Generally, when it comes to the live show, it’s about communication of what it looks like, what it feels like, and how it works with new gags or new equipment”

Large-scale production
Having formed in 1990, Take That have worked with many professionals in the industry over the decades, but one member of their team who dates back beyond their first tour is creative director Kim Gavin.

“Weirdly, the band contacted me as soon as they had a hit, back in 1992, so I’ve now been 32 years with them,” Gavin informs IQ.

Recalling his first encounter with the band – which was then a quintet – he explains, “I was working for the BBC, doing the Children’s Royal Variety Show, and the director wanted a pop act at the beginning of the show. We saw four different acts, and when the director asked who out of the four I would put on stage, I said, ‘Without doubt, Take That.’ I remember having to splice in cheers and screams when they entered the stage in the edit, because nobody knew who they were.

“When their third single, It Only Takes a Minute, went to number seven in the charts, they decided they wanted to go on the road, so I did that first tour with them. I choreographed all the songs on the album and staged their tour, and that’s been my position with them right through till this moment.”

Renowned for their state-of-the-art sets, Gavin has been at the forefront of Take That’s spectacular shows since day one but reveals that this tour is putting more emphasis on the repertoire than aesthetics.

“Generally, when it comes to the live show, it’s about communication of what it looks like, what it feels like, and how it works with new gags or new equipment. On this tour, what Take That want to try and get across is more the singing and what the songs are, inherently. So, they’ve stepped back from the spectacular, even though they still do pyro and all sorts of special effects. But it’s the first production since 1995 where they haven’t had dancers, for instance.”

“We make sure that things are fairly elastic, so that we can respond once we get into rehearsals”

Gavin says planning for the current production started last autumn. “We’ve gone with a very big stage on this because it’s got these two swivelling staircases, and it needs to be that big in order to do everything we want it to do. But the stairs portray the ups and downs of This Life, so they are integral to the show.”

Providing some insight into the creative process, Gavin says, “Even back in ‘92, Mark [Owen] would be concerned about what they were wearing, and he’d involve himself in the clothes. He still does that now, but now he also likes to be involved in the concept for the tour and what the album evokes. So, in the early stages of planning, Mark and I discuss what we could do, and that evolves until we bring the other two – Gary and Howard – in, when we’ve got something to talk about.”

When it comes to the video elements of Take That’s live performances, Luke Halls Studio has been working on the creative side since the 2007 Beautiful World Tour.

“It’s usually a collaboration between the guys, Kim Gavin, and myself,” says company principal Luke Halls. “Usually, the band will have an idea – Mark being the more visually led member of the band – then I will get a sort of amalgamation of their hopes for the show, which I can respond to with some ideas or concepts, and we take it from there.”

Using animation that can be quickly tweaked during rehearsals, Halls reports that This Life on Tour saw about 15 members of his team working on the video content.

“We make sure that things are fairly elastic, so that we can respond once we get into rehearsals. Thankfully, there’s a level of trust that’s been built over the years, so we’re left very much to generate the visual elements.”

“As soon as you go outdoors in the UK, you’re not quite sure what’s going to happen – as Middlesbrough proved”

Detailing some of the differences between the indoor and outdoor shows, Halls says, “We have to make sure that those images are bigger and clearer for the outdoor show just so that everyone gets the experience that they’ve paid for.”

He adds, “We call ourselves sculptural film-makers. Everything that we do has a sculptural outworking, so we don’t just generate for rectangular screens: we make sure everything is very bespoke to the stage and the shape and everything that we’re playing with. That’s really our skill.”

Backed for good
With production manager Chris Vaughan pulling the strings, many of the professionals working on This Life on Tour have been involved in Take That’s world for a number of years.

Audio expert Liam Tucker, of Skan PA, has been working in a senior role since 2015, although his relationship with production manager Vaughan dates back further on tours for the likes of A-Ha and Muse, while he also worked in a junior position on Take That’s 2009 Circus tour and 2011’s Progress shows. “I was the extra delay guy when they had extra speakers and things like that,” he recalls.

Highlighting one of the main challenges of outdoor shows in the UK, Tucker comments, “As soon as you go outdoors in the UK, you’re not quite sure what’s going to happen – as Middlesbrough proved.”

Recalling the deluge the crew experienced at the city’s Riverside Stadium ahead of the 24 May concert, Tucker says, “Load-in was just rain all day, from every single angle – it was coming in sideways, it was bouncing off the floor. Technology is as rated as it can be, but sometimes it doesn’t like the weather.

“From an audio point of view, the main issue was network, as some of the inclinometers decided they weren’t going to work, while the rain also refracted the lasers, so it was difficult to get a true reading. But those are hurdles rather than problems.”

“Festivals are always good fun because you’re walking into something different in every location”

While the audio team, including engineers, numbered seven on the arena shows, it gained two additional members for the stadium run. “They do the extra hangs, the delay masks, that sort of thing. And when we go into the European leg, we drop down to four audios, including the engineers.”

The difference between the indoor and outdoor shows also entails more equipment, although from an audio point of view, Tucker says, “The stage itself and the inputs stay the same, but outdoors it gets bigger and wider. It’s the way the show is put together that changes. So, rather than having one truck of speakers on arenas, we’re up to two trucks of speakers for stadiums. And when we go into festivals, we have no trucks of speakers because it’s all supplied by the festivals.”

However, it’s the festival run that Tucker is most looking forward to. “Festivals are always good fun because you’re walking into something different in every location – it’s not Groundhog Day. That’s why we get asked to come back. The challenges are what makes your day a bit different.”

Stewart Scott at Phoenix Bussing tells IQ the company had been working with Take That ever since Chris Vaughan became PM. “We supplied seven sleeper buses for the arena and stadium tour: two 14 berths, and five 16 berths, while for the European tour we go down to two buses,” says Scott.

“However, we need some double drivers for the European journeys because there are some long distances involved between some of the dates – in fact I’ll be going out myself to drive the Bologna to Barcelona route, which allows me to see the clients at the same time.”

He adds, “Chris Vaughan is one of our top clients and it’s always good to be involved on one of his projects because they are always superbly organised and run smoothly, with a lot of great people working on them.”

“Stufish did the set design, and they always come up with some clever things. It’s up to us to make it happen”

Having been involved with the band since 2017’s Wonderland Live tour, Belgium-based stage motion specialists WICREATIONS are used to delivering the complex scenic effects that wow audiences.

“Stufish did the set design, and they always come up with some clever things. It’s up to us to make it happen,” says key account manager Koen Peeters. “The main show elements are the two large tracking staircases, which are about 8 meters deep, 4 meters wide, and 3.5 meters high. They track over the stage at stage level, and can spin 360 degrees. But we’re talking about an object that weighs around six tons, each staircase, so we need to use an embedded and integrated tracking system that sits below stage level.”

Despite the complexity of those operations, the WICREATIONS crew numbers just six people on the road, managing and operating all the WIMOTION machinery. “There is a long term history between Chris Vaughan and myself,” says Peeters. “Before we did the Wonderland tour in 2017 with WICREATIONS, I worked at Stageco where I had done many projects with Chris since 2009.”

The performers’ entrance on stage hints at the production’s groundbreaking elements. Appearing from a hidden elevator behind a semi-transparent video screen, Barlow, Donald, and Owen effectively appear to walk out of that screen as the giant staircases slide apart, splitting the video wall in two.

“That performer lift is also used to evacuate the technicians who operate each of the staircases for that opening scene,” states Peeters.

A further telescopic lift is used to bring Take That from stage level to the top level of the staircases, again hidden from the audience. A third elevator is used multiple times during the show to bring different sorts of pianos up and down stage, while other tracking systems are embedded in the stage to track the band’s musicians by around ten meters up and downstage.

“Every act seems to look for things that have not been done before, and that makes it so interesting and challenging to be in this business”

Finally, WICREATIONS also supply a six-by- six-meter B-stage, featuring a rotating and elevating circular stage for the artists.

“Every act seems to look for things that have not been done before, and that makes it so interesting and challenging to be in this business,” adds Peeters, noting that those those heavy-duty WICREATIONS motion elements and the complete rolling stage fill ten trucks.

“We had 34 production universal trucks for the arena run and a couple extra for the stadium shows,” says Matt Jackson at Fly By Nite. “This is a pretty unique scenario where the band has gone from arenas straight into stadiums, but the logistics issues are more for the crew than us.

“We’ve mainly been able to operate with single drivers in the UK because we’re getting into each new city in plenty of time. The most complex move was from Dublin into London, where we had to rely on a sympathetic ferry operator who delayed the crossing so that we would make it in time to The O2 Arena. We needed double drivers to facilitate that, but otherwise, Chris Vaughan plans brilliantly well, so it’s been a very smooth project,” adds Jackson.

Another regular supplier is special effects wizards ER Productions, which have been working with Take That since the company’s launch in 2007. “In a nutshell, we’re doing all the water effects, we’ve got a load of flames on the show, confetti, and a lot of pyrotechnics for the outdoor shows,” says ER director Dan Mott, who has been part of the company since it merged with his operation, Pyrojunkies, two years ago.

“We’ve fabricated some of the equipment specifically for the tour, such as a snowstorm, where we’ve created a custom dolly that mulches 60 kilos of confetti with high-powered fans and CO2 blowers that carry a whirlwind of confetti through the guys standing on stage straight into the audience as the show opens.”

“It was really refreshing to be involved in that early design stage and have input, to be honest, because we work in a last-minute industry, usually”

ER also supplied eight low-smoke machines for use during ballads, while the band are also the first beneficiaries of the company’s bespoke Flamber equipment used during Relight My Fire. “It allows us to set fire to the two automated staircases,” says Mott. “It involves 72 custom flame units, allowing us to chase flames and pulse the flames to the beat of the music.”

Elsewhere, ER has brought in multiple flame blazers, while a water feature activated for the song Back For Good that makes it rain onstage indoors, is replaced outdoors by over a ton of pyro.

“We’ve got a lot of stuff, but there’s a lot from every department,” observes Mott. “I think the crew is 150 people, who from the minute they wake up are busy. Everyone’s putting so much equipment in on the show, so we’ve all got to interact and work closely with each other, but Chris Vaughan runs a tight ship, and everyone’s really nice to work with.”

Indeed, Mott tips his hat to Vaughan’s approach to the tour, which engaged suppliers from the planning stages. “Myself and Marc Webber from ER went down to Chris’s house back in December, to sit down with Stufish and all the other departments to talk through the show from start to the finish. It was really refreshing to be involved in that early design stage and have input, to be honest, because we work in a last-minute industry, usually.”

But the results speak for themselves. “Ultimately, it’s a really good show; the whole concept is fantastic, and everybody puts the effort in, so we’re really proud to be working on it,” says Mott.

The greatest weekend
With a reputation as one of the hardest-working bands on the circuit, it comes as no surprise that Take That are once again setting new records as part of the current tour – including an astonishing 50th hometown show in Manchester’s AO Arena.

“Amidst all their ambition to go to all these other countries, there was also an idea early on of the band having essentially their own festival takeover”

“We’re delighted that we’ve been able to celebrate Take That’s 50th show at the AO Arena, right here in the heart of the action,” states venue general manager, Jen Mitchell. “Not only do we enjoy having the band here, we love hosting their fans and making every moment memorable.”

Always looking forward, the band’s tour itinerary also includes their first-ever curated festival – The Greatest Weekend – which will see the trio visiting Malta for the first time, where Festival Republic is organising the event.

“Amidst all their ambition to go to all these other countries, there was also an idea early on of the band having essentially their own festival takeover, which is what the Malta event is,” notes UTA’s Olly Ward. “It’s exciting. Four days in Malta with two Take That sets, one a never-before-seen front-to-back of the album, Everything Changes, and the other a greatest hits set.”

The event’s undercard of talent will include Sugababes, Ella Henderson, Daniel Bedingfield, Heather Small, and Sam Ryder, amongst others, while Howard Donald will host a DJ takeover at Café Del Mar, among a host of other bespoke experiences.

“For fans used to seeing the band in stadiums or arenas around the world, this is a chance to have a four-day Take That extravaganza in a much more intimate environment,” says Ward. “And it’s again credit to the band’s ambition that they wanted to do it this year, when they’re doing so much already.”

Delighted by their first experience of working with Take That, Wright concludes, “This is a band that had a huge amount of success pre-social media, meaning that not all the fans will be connected to the band via social media. Sean Hill who is head of music marketing at UTA, here, and Emily Rhodes from his team where a huge part of looking into this for us.

Consequently, there was a need to reverse engineer this a little bit with promoters to make sure they understood the value of traditional media and marketing alongside digital marketing, but that worked and that’s why these shows – and this tour – are a success.”

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Promoters of Oasis’ reunion concerts say they will cancel up to 50,000 tickets listed on unofficial resale sites for the tour’s UK leg.

Live Nation and SJM told BBC Radio 4’s File on 4 the invalidated tickets would be re-listed at face value on Ticketmaster.

Oasis Live ’25 was the biggest concert launch ever seen in UK and Ireland, with over 10 million fans from 158 countries attempting to buy tickets for the 1.4 million tickets available for the group’s first shows since 2009.

Strict anti-touting measures were put in place in a bid to ensure tickets are resold for no more than face value and booking fees, with Twickets selected as the tour’s official ticket resale platform.

“Ticket resale is permitted at no more than the price you paid (face value + booking fees),” read a message on the Oasis website prior to the 31 August on-sale. “Please only use the official resale partners www.twickets.live and Ticketmaster. Selling tickets through unauthorised resale platforms will breach these T&Cs and those tickets may be cancelled.”

The promoters said they would begin the process of voiding tickets deemed to have breached the terms and conditions shortly.

“Fans will be the beneficiaries of this action when any cancelled tickets go back on sale at face value”

“These terms and conditions were successfully put in place to take action against secondary ticketing companies reselling tickets for huge profit,” they say in a statement. “Only 4% of tickets have ended up on resale sites. Some major tours can see up to 20% of tickets appearing via the major unauthorised secondary platforms.

“All parties involved with the tour continue to urge fans not to purchase tickets from unauthorised websites as some of these may be fraudulent and others subject to cancellation.”

Speaking to IQ, FanFair Alliance campaign manager Adam Webb praises the move.

“It’s great to see Oasis take these measures to enforce their T&Cs,” he says. “To be clear, they are not cancelling tickets bought by fans – they are cancelling tickets unlawfully acquired by touts. That’s a very different thing. Some of these tickets might not even have been resold. And obviously fans will be the beneficiaries of this action when any cancelled tickets go back on sale at face value.”

Viagogo’s Matt Drew told File on 4 that “2%” of Oasis tickets had appeared on Viagogo and Stubhub, and indicated the secondary sites would not be deterred from offering them for resale.

“We will continue to sell them in the way the regulator says we can,” he said. “We are serving a clear consumer need, we will continue doing it on that basis.”

“For the upcoming Oasis world tour, the only shows for which tickets are not being touted on Viagogo, StubHub and Gigsberg are the two at Croke Park in Dublin”

In a previous high-profile case, organisers of Ed Sheeran’s 2018 ÷ Tour stadium run cancelled around 10,000 tickets after Viagogo refused a request from Sheeran’s team not to list the tickets for resale. Labour MP Sharon Hodgson referenced the singer during last week’s secondary ticketing hearing in parliament.

“I do not want this debate to end without mentioning Ed Sheeran and how much he has done to try to tackle the scourge of ticket touting,” said Hodgson. “Lots of other artists, such as Iron Maiden, Arctic Monkeys, Mumford & Sons and many others have tried, but Ed Sheeran went above and beyond by cancelling tickets when they had been resold. Taylor Swift never did that because she did not want to break the hearts of all her fans, but Ed Sheeran has been a real warrior in that regard.”

With the new Labour government preparing to launch a consultation into the resale market, Hodgson highlighted the impact of ticketing legislation introduced in Ireland in 2021.

“For the upcoming Oasis world tour, the only shows for which tickets are not being touted on Viagogo, StubHub and Gigsberg are the two at Croke Park in Dublin,” she said.

Cast were this week confirmed as the opening act for Oasis’ 19-date UK and Ireland tour leg, joining previously announced special guest Richard Ashcroft on the bill. The  on-sale became marred by a dynamic ticketing row that triggered multiple inquiries in the UK and Ireland. In the wake of the backlash, the band’s team opted against utilising the pricing strategy for their subsequent North America and Australia sales to “hopefully avoid a repeat of the issues”.

“It is widely accepted that dynamic pricing remains a useful tool to combat ticket touting and keep prices for a significant proportion of fans lower than the market rate and thus more affordable,” they said in a statement. “But, when unprecedented ticket demand (where the entire tour could be sold many times over at the moment tickets go on sale) is combined with technology that cannot cope with that demand, it becomes less effective and can lead to an unacceptable experience for fans.”

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Chappell Roan’s agents and promoters have spoken to IQ about managing the live campaign behind the world’s fastest-rising artist.

The 26-year-old pop star (real name Kayleigh Rose Amstutz) released her debut album, The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess, in September 2023 but its commercial breakthrough didn’t come till almost a year later.

In the UK, the record slid into the charts in April this year at number 68 before a 17-week ascent to No.1 at the start of August. In her native US, it only hit peak position on the Billboard 200 chart last month.

Despite the record’s slow burn, her live team had no doubts that the Missouri-born star would get the recognition she deserved.

“It was only a matter of time before the world caught up with Chappell,” says Wasserman Music’s Adele Slater and Anna Bewers, who represent the artist alongside their US colleagues Jackie Nalpant and Kiely Mosiman.

The combination of Roan’s ‘campy-pop’ theatrical shows and a savvy live strategy helped to bring the ‘sleeper hit’ album to life.

“It was only a matter of time before the world caught up with Chappell”

“She started the year supporting Olivia Rodrigo across the US and really connected with her audience,” the agents continue. “Then she went straight onto Coachella and then with each festival appearance throughout the US, she gained traction, upgrading all her headline US dates.

“At Gov Ball, she emerged from a half-eaten apple in full Statue of Liberty drag as an homage to NYC, and then built up to the biggest audience ever seen on an afternoon slot at Lolla Chicago. The exposure gained from these festival appearances, and the growing loyal, global fan base showed what a force of nature she is.”

These live shows were matched by her performance in the charts, with multiple singles from …Midwest Princess skidding into the top 10.

With the world finally paying attention to Roan, the promoters of her already-underway second headline tour The Midwest Princess Tour were faced with the task of satiating ballooning demand.

“I’ve worked with a lot of overseas artists from the start of their careers but I don’t think I’ve worked on an artist who has blown up like Chappell Roan,” Luke Temple, promoter at SJM Concerts, tells IQ.

“I first heard her music back in 2020. Some of the singles released that year get some of the biggest reactions at the live shows. With her 2023 …Midwest Princess album and multiple singles being in the top 10 for the past four months this year, it shows what an unconventional campaign this has been….very much driven by people being exposed to her songs and falling in love with them. It’s great to see.”

“I’ve worked with a lot of overseas artists from the start of their careers but I don’t think I’ve worked on an artist who has blown up like Chappell Roan”

Having promoted Roan since her very first UK show, Temple is well-versed in adapting to her ever-growing fanbase.

“Our first show on-sale with Chappell was at Colours (300 capacity) in June 2023 and this was quickly upgraded to The Garage (600 Cap),” he remembers. “Fifteen months later we’ve shifted 14,000 tickets [to the Brixton Academy shows] in a heartbeat. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen that sort of increase in demand.”

Temple is referring to the star’s three sold-out nights at the 4,921-capacity Brixton Academy in London – a major upgrade from the single show at the 5,300-capacity Hammersmith Apollo that was initially scheduled.

“Normally when rescheduling dates and moving venues you expect fans to be unhappy but I think from the moment she played in the UK, Chappell has built a strong connection with her fans,” says Temple.

“The fans are on the journey with her and from reading her socials, when these dates rescheduled, they understood why they moved and the shows went smoothly with very limited refunds. However, satisfying the huge demand is clearly going to be a challenge going forward.”

“Chappell’s meteoric rise this summer has been nothing short of exhilarating”

DF Concerts’ Ellen McEleney had a similar experience when booking Roan’s only Scotland show, which ended up at O2 Academy Glasgow.

“Chappell’s meteoric rise this summer has been nothing short of exhilarating,” she tells IQ. “The original Scottish show was due to be in a 600-cap room, but due to the incredible demand, we upgraded it twice. Ultimately we settled on O2 Academy Glasgow (2,500), ensuring more fans could be accommodated. I had tried to see if we had the possibility of adding more dates in Scotland, but scheduling constraints limited us to a single show. It’s safe to say this was the hottest ticket in Scotland for 2024.”

McEleney says that closely monitoring fan reactions and social media trends allowed the DF team to be proactive and secure venue upgrades well in advance to meet the overwhelming demand for her shows.

Even with upgraded concerts across the board, demand for Roan’s highly anticipated shows has far outstripped the supply. As a result, a batch of tickets to her US concerts ended up in the hands of scalpers – but not for long.

The singer and her team cancelled “all the scalper tickets we could” before returning them to the market for fans to purchase.

“Due to the lack of regulations in the US, artists have very little control over ensuring tickets on the primary platform go to actual fans at the prices approved by artists and their team,” her US team at Wasserman Music explained.

“Secondary brokers who purchase for high-demand shows make large profits by exploiting fans on secondary ticketing sites but unfortunately that practice is largely not illegal. Ideally, we would have more control in the first place but until then we do feel cancelling obviously fraudulent purchases and re-selling them to actual fans with the help of a request system is the best path forward.”

“Every show is themed to create an all-embracing and devoted community into Chappell’s world, where everyone is welcome”

As McEleney points out: “A rapid rise like this brings challenges such as managing high demand and addressing issues like secondary market touts, which Chappell herself has always been incredibly vocal about protecting her fans from.”

Indeed, Chappell’s close relationship with her fans has gone from strength to strength as the star has gained traction.

“Witnessing Chappell’s intimate interactions with her fans during meet-and-greets and the excitement surrounding her exclusive merchandise, and of course, seeing 2,500 people performing the H-O-T-T-O-G-O dance, was one of the best moments of my career to date,” adds McEleney. “It’s been a privilege to be a part of her journey and we cannot wait to have her back to Scotland.”

Wasserman Music’s Slater and Bewers concludes: “From the start she has been conscious about making the shows as inclusive as possible, including gender-neutral bathrooms and accessibility for all, we want to ensure all fans feel safe and respected at every show. She creates a platform for local drag queens to open, and every show is themed to create an all-embracing and devoted community into Chappell’s world, where everyone is welcome.”

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Oasis have expanded their 2025 reunion tour by announcing a handful of stadium dates in North America.

Produced by Live Nation and SJM, the run will see the Gallagher brothers play stadiums in Toronto, Chicago, East Rutherford, Los Angeles and Mexico City next summer, supported by special guests Cage The Elephant.

The confirmed shows at the new Rogers Stadium in Toronto, Canada (24 August) and in the US at Soldier Field, Chicago (28 August), MetLife Stadium in New Jersey (31 August) and Los Angeles’ Rose Bowl Stadium (6 September) will represent their biggest ever headline concerts in the territory. They will also perform in Mexico at GNP Seguros Stadium on 12 September.

The Britpop legends built up a solid following across the Atlantic during their commercial peak in the 90s, but famously fell short of reaching a similar level of success as in their native UK.

“America. Oasis is coming. You have one last chance to prove that you loved us all along”

“America. Oasis is coming,” says a statement from the group. “You have one last chance to prove that you loved us all along.”

The general ticket onsale will begin on Friday 4 October at www.ticketmaster.com. As with the UK shows, Twickets will serve as the official resale partner.

Plans are also underway for Oasis Live ’25 to visit other continents outside of Europe and North America later next year.

The Oasis Live ‘25 Tour was the biggest concert launch ever seen in UK and Ireland, with more than 10 million fans from 158 countries attempting to buy tickets for the group’s first shows since 2009.

However, the unprecedented demand soon gave way to a dynamic ticketing controversy that has prompted multiple inquiries. There was widespread media coverage of fan anger after customers were offered “in demand” tickets for more than twice the advertised face value under surge pricing after queuing online for several hours.

“Ticketmaster’s dynamic pricing model will not be applied to the forthcoming sale of tickets to Oasis concerts in North America”

A statement from Oasis’ management says that dynamic pricing will not be employed for the US, Canada and Mexico shows.

“Ticketmaster’s dynamic pricing model will not be applied to the forthcoming sale of tickets to Oasis concerts in North America,” it reads. “It is widely accepted that dynamic pricing remains a useful tool to combat ticket touting and keep prices for a significant proportion of fans lower than the market rate and thus more affordable.

“But, when unprecedented ticket demand (where the entire tour could be sold many times over at the moment tickets go on sale) is combined with technology that cannot cope with that demand, it becomes less effective and can lead to an unacceptable experience for fans.

“We have made this decision for the North America tour to hopefully avoid a repeat of the issues fans in the UK and Ireland experienced recently.”

The full list of 2025 tour dates announced so far is as follows:

July

4 – Cardiff, UK – Principality Stadium

5 – Cardiff, UK – Principality Stadium

11 – Manchester, UK – Heaton Park

12 – Manchester, UK – Heaton Park

16 – Manchester, UK – Heaton Park

19 – Manchester, UK – Heaton Park

20 – Manchester, UK – Heaton Park

25 – London, UK – Wembley Stadium

26 – London, UK – Wembley Stadium

30 – London, UK – Wembley Stadium

August

2 – London, UK – Wembley Stadium

3 – London, UK – Wembley Stadium

8 – Edinburgh, UK – Scottish Gas Murrayfield Stadium

9 – Edinburgh, UK – Scottish Gas Murrayfield Stadium

12 – Edinburgh, UK – Scottish Gas Murrayfield Stadium

16 – Dublin, IE – Croke Park

17 – Dublin, IE – Croke Park

24 – Toronto, ON – Rogers Stadium

28 – Chicago, IL – Soldier Field

31 – East Rutherford, NJ – MetLife Stadium

September

6 – Los Angeles, CA – Rose Bowl Stadium

12 – Mexico City, MX – Estadio GNP Seguros

27 – London, UK – Wembley Stadium

28 – London, UK – Wembley Stadium

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In November 2018, IQ spoke to Chris York about the promoter’s integral role in the rise of the SJM Concerts empire and the chance encounter that changed his career trajectory forever. Following the sad news of his passing this week, IQ is republishing the article in full below for those who might not have met Chris in person, or want to remind themselves of his astonishing career…

The first time that Chris York recalls meeting Simon Moran was at a Levellers concert at London’s Brixton Academy in 1993, promoted by Moran’s company SJM Concerts. “I was there purely as a punter and this man came up to me and berated me for trying to steal his acts,” remembers York with a smile. “I pointed out, probably not as eloquently as I might have done, that that was actually my job seeing as I didn’t technically work for him. He retorted, ‘Well, you should do then.’”

A few months later, York made the 200-mile journey up the M1 from London to Manchester to take up Moran’s offer and join SJM. Back then, there were five of them working out of a nondescript workspace shared with post-punk band The Fall, where the “much-missed” Mark E Smith could regularly be seen “swaying in the lifts in the mornings.”

Fast-forward a quarter of a century to today and SJM employs 65 people, puts on around 2,500 concerts and events a year, and proudly stands as the UK’s biggest independent promoter, with The Stone Roses, Take That, Coldplay, Muse, Robbie Williams, Peter Kay, Adele, The Killers, Arctic Monkeys, The Courteeners and Little Mix just a few of the many acts it has worked with in recent years.

“In order for the company to keep progressing and be relevant to new challenges, you’ve got to find people who aren’t doing exactly what you do”

“I’ve always felt at home at SJM,” says York, who recently celebrated 25 years at the company that he has played a key role in turning into a promoting powerhouse. “It’s always had the right ethos. We’ve always been artist-focused and tried to develop talent, and I think Simon and I share the right attitude about how we want to take things forward. Certainly, whenever we’ve been recruiting new staff we are always keen to add people who aren’t identical to ourselves. In order for the company to keep progressing and be relevant to new challenges, you’ve got to find people who aren’t doing exactly what you do.”

“Chris has been a huge part of the SJM story over the last 25 years,” says Moran. “He’s made a massive contribution in all facets of the business – clients becoming bigger, getting and retaining new clients, growing the business and gaining people, [investing in] buildings. He’s a very, very bright guy. He works hard. We’ve become really good friends and we’ve got implicit trust.”

“I think Simon’s style and my style are distinctly different, but they work well together, and I guess the biggest barometer of that is that we have gone on to be a very successful company,” reflects York, whose personal clients include Noel Gallagher, Foo Fighters, Massive Attack, Stereophonics, Lily Allen, Smashing Pumpkins, Underworld, Fatboy Slim, Green Day, Placebo, Lorde, Robert Plant, Morrissey, Kraftwerk, Swedish House Mafia, and The Chemical Brothers, among others. York is also one of SJM’s four directors alongside Moran, Rob Ballantine and Glenn Tyrrell.

“Chris is, if not the best, one of the best promoters that I have ever worked with in the world. He is loyal and sticks with his artists”

Respect and admiration for the 49 year old extends throughout the industry. “Chris is, if not the best, one of the best promoters that I have ever worked with in the world,” says Underworld manager Mike Gillespie, who has known him since the mid-1990s. “He is loyal and sticks with his artists. Whereas a lot of promoters are naturally very cautious and hedge their bets, he is a bold and confident risk taker and is always looking at what the next step can be.

“At the same time, he can be stubborn, belligerent and awkward, but that’s part of what makes him brilliant. He will tell it you like it is and he doesn’t hold back. When you have an act that is doing well people tend to tell you what you want to hear. Chris isn’t one of them, and I really like and respect that. He understands that you’re only as good as your last gig and he’s not afraid to say to the manager or the artist, ‘That’s not good enough.’”

By way of an example, Gillespie turns the clock back five years to when “Underworld had reached a ceiling” in terms of how many tickets they could sell. Through working closely with York over a series of releases and tours they rebuilt momentum and were able to sell-out two nights at London’s 3,000-capacity Roundhouse.

“Chris’s response off the back of that was, ‘Now we do the (10,000-capacity) Ally Pally,’ which really knocked me out,” recalls the manager. The gig sold out six months in advance and Underworld are now selling more tickets in the UK than ever before, he states. “A huge part of that is down to Chris’s willingness to take a risk, his determination to be bold, and his clear vision.”

“It was a steep learning curve initially, but through that I developed good friendships”

York-shire
The Roots of York’s promoting career can be traced back to his childhood in Yorkshire where he developed an “unhealthy interest” in music from a young age and became immersed in Leeds’ post-punk and goth scenes as a teenager. To earn some extra cash while studying chemistry at Warwick, he began crewing and stage managing bands that visited the university. That led him to being elected cultural affairs officer in 1989, booking gigs by The Sundays and De La Soul, and gaining a first real taste of how the industry operates.

“It was a steep learning curve initially, but through that I developed good friendships with people that I still work with today,” says York, who moved to London after finishing his studies and spent 18 months as a booker at punk and indie club The Venue in New Cross.

“It was a really exciting time in music and we put some great bands on,” he says, listing memorable shows by Lush, Pulp, Suede, PJ Harvey, New Model Army and Carter The Unstoppable Sex Machine. The job also saw him establish with Steve Lamacq the inaugural NME On Nights with On For ‘92, which ran at The Venue from 1991 to 1993, later evolving into the NME Awards Brat Bus tours.

A brief stint working for John Curd (“a legendary promoter with a brilliant handle on street promotion and what’s important in the job: tell people that it’s on”) followed, which saw York put on a series of now legendary gigs by Suede (who he still promotes) at London’s Africa Centre and 100 Club. After that came a short-lived solo endeavour, Sunrise, putting on shows by Radiohead, The Auteurs and Aphex Twin in the capital. “It was the beginnings of something that could have gone somewhere, but then I met Tim Parsons at MCP, which I thought was a better horse to back at the time.”

“As a promoter, doing the ‘same old, same old’ sometimes isn’t the right approach”

Although his time at the Midlands-based company (later acquired by SFX and incorporated into Live Nation) lasted only six months, the experience proved hugely beneficial in teaching him how a high-level national promoting company operates, along with the value of not resting on your laurels.

“Tim had a very cerebral approach to promoting, in that sometimes he saw it almost as a challenge to do things in a more difficult, unconventional or circular way, just to see if it could be done. That was very influential in terms of thinking outside of the box. As a promoter, doing the ‘same old, same old’ sometimes isn’t the right approach. Great agents are the same. You have to start with a blank sheet of paper and think, How can we do this differently and not be constrained by previous bad thinking?”

Working at MCP also gave him hands-on experience of working on U2 stadium shows. “Seeing the scale of the stadium operation stood me in good stead for when I ended up doing things like Oasis later down the line because it didn’t seem as difficult a proposition when you’ve already seen it on the ground.”

It was in the autumn of 1993, while York was working at MCP, that Moran approached him about joining him in business. “I’d noticed the stuff he was doing and he was obviously making some waves,” remembers the SJM founder and owner. “Plus he came with some great recommendations from people like Charlie Myatt, who I’d worked with on The Levellers.”

Supersonic
For York, the opportunity to join a fast-growing, although still young and relatively small operation like SJM was too good to turn down. “I felt there was a lot of room for growth and a lot of room to have an input into the direction of the business.” Relocating to Manchester (where he knew only one person other than Moran) just as Britpop was simmering over proved to be a case of being “in the right place at the right time” and brought him into the orbit of local guitar band Oasis, who he promoted from the start of their touring career.

“It sounds ridiculous now, but when we put Knebworth on sale there was only me and one other person in the office”

Within a few short years the group went from playing 500-capacity rooms to being the biggest band in Britain, selling out huge era-defining shows at Manchester City’s Maine Road Stadium and two nights at Knebworth that York co-promoted with MCP and famously saw 2.5 million people apply for tickets.

“It sounds ridiculous now, but when we put Knebworth on sale there was only me and one other person in the office. We sold 220,000 tickets in a day – all of them over the counter, or through people calling ticket offices and all of them in ticket books, which is utter lunacy when you look back on it now. There were people queuing for tickets in Portsmouth, Plymouth – all over the country. To be around that was extremely exciting,” he states.

Promoting Oasis also gave York – who moved back to London in 2001 – one of his toughest days at the office when the generators failed on the first of three sold-out nights at Manchester’s Heaton Park in June 2009 (co-promoted with Metropolis). “Instead of living the dream, we were all of a sudden living the nightmare,” recalls Oasis manager Marcus Russell. “[There were] 75,000 restless and anxious fans and ‘gaskets were blowing’ backstage in both dressing room and production offices.

“Chris, however, was calmness personified in amongst the ensuing panic,” he explains. “Considerable contingencies had to be arranged with local authorities, police force and transport, as, if the show were to still go ahead, it would now be finishing well after the agreed curfew. Chris oversaw all of these rearrangements, as well as ensuring that the fans were fully informed. What he couldn’t do was personally fix the generator, but he did seem to do pretty much everything else that needed attending to in order for the show to still go ahead. Eventually, some 60 minutes later, the ‘gennies’ were fixed and the gig went ahead. Everyone went home happy and safely, if a little later than planned.”

“Most of the acts that I promote I’ve worked with since they began and I like to have an ongoing developing relationship with people who share that creative mindset”

For his part, York identifies the creative side of the job as the aspect he finds most rewarding. “Most of the acts that I promote I’ve worked with since they began and I like to have an ongoing developing relationship with people who share that creative mindset. Managers, labels and agents all have a massive input into the decision-making process but it’s nice to be able to offer an insight into things that they probably haven’t thought of. I think one of our main roles as a live producer is to be able to throw those ideas into the mix and make it happen for them.”

Touring the country
One project that called upon all his creative and promoting skills, not to mention his vast experience, was helping devise and launch Country 2 Country (C2C), a multiple-night country festival at London’s O2 Arena that was far from a guaranteed success when it debuted in 2013. “I’ll be the first to hold my hands up and say that in 2012, I was somewhat of a country outsider,” admits York, who was approached by AEG Presents CEO Jay Marciano (then head of AEG Live) to help deliver the marquee event. Nearly seven years later, the festival has become a tent pole fixture in the British music calendar with C2C events also taking place each year in Dublin and Glasgow.

“To go from a standing start to effectively creating a touring market for country outside the US is one of the things that I’m proudest of. The UK is now regarded as proper touring market by Nashville and part of that is down to us approaching it and developing it in a modern way, reaching fans through social media and partnering with BBC Radio 2 to make country accessible to new audiences.”

Another source of immense personal pride and satisfaction for York is his long-term involvement with Teenage Cancer Trust’s annual concert series, which he has promoted since 2006, working with live producer Des Murphy and The Who’s Roger Daltrey to bring the world’s biggest artists to London’s Royal Albert Hall. “I really love doing that. It’s a week of my life in the Albert Hall working with great people for a great cause.”

To date the concerts have raised over £29 million (€33m) for the charity – an achievement that Murphy says wouldn’t have been possible without York’s tireless commitment and hard work. “His support is incredible and he’s always a calm influence who is ready with a sensible solution to any potential problem. It’s a pleasure working with him and I’m glad to count him as a friend.”

“It’s a very competitive market out there and we’re not in the same landscape of promoting that we were 20 years ago”

You gotta roll with it
Looking ahead, York says the biggest challenge for SJM will continue to be competition from rival promoters, but calmly notes, “that’s always been the case, and competition evolves and changes in the same way that we constantly evolve and change.

“It’s a very competitive market out there and we’re not in the same landscape of promoting that we were 20 years ago. We’re now in a world of giant, multinational promoting companies and that presents both challenges and opportunities for a company like ourselves that is independent.”

Ongoing relationships with AEG on C2C; and Live Nation/MCD over many years on V Festival, T In The Park and Academy Music Group, the UK’s leading venue operator (which SJM has shares in), illustrate how the business can continue to thrive in a dynamic, highly competitive market, he says. “We have a very productive relationship with both of our main rivals. The secret to being independent in the market at the moment is understanding our strengths and understanding their strengths and how those work together. That model will hopefully continue to grow.”

Technology, too, will play a big role in determining how SJM, like every company in the live business, operates in the future. Gigsandtours.com, its own ticketing platform, was launched in 1999 – a market-leading innovation, instigated by York, that’s since been adopted by numerous other promoting companies.

“It’s an old adage that you always need to surround yourself with the most intelligent people in the room, and I think we’ve done that over the years”

“Obviously, everybody has got one now, but that’s the way of the world and it was good to be first. It’s been a very useful and well-received tool. When opportunities like that come along with new technology, you need to be open-minded enough to embrace them at the right time.” He identifies the “big black hole” of secondary ticketing as a particular problem that blockchain technology should “hopefully” eradicate in the next few years “and we can focus on what’s really important, which is putting on great events and delivering for our clients.”

It’s a philosophy that exists at the heart of SJM and flows through York’s three decades in the live business. Yet to turn 50, he envisages “many more years” at the touring coalface and says he remains just as committed, driven and focused on developing SJM as he was when he first joined 25 years ago.

“The day you stop having that inquisitive attitude, you start going backwards. Our goals are to keep progressing, stay relevant and keep competing at the highest level. It’s an old adage that you always need to surround yourself with the most intelligent people in the room, and I think we’ve done that over the years and will continue to do so. You should always try and employ somebody who will ultimately replace you,” he says with a hearty laugh. “That’s the sign of a healthy business.”

Further diversification into non-music areas is likely to be a growing part of the business going forward, he predicts. “I think now you’d probably say we’re an entertainment company because the spectrum of what we do isn’t just music. We’re always very opened minded about diversifying into new things, be it sport or TV-related or comedy, and we take on people to reflect areas that we think are going to grow, which aren’t necessarily areas that Simon and I specialise in.”

“The greatest pleasure has been working alongside Simon for the last 25 years. He is singularly the best music business leader of this generation”

Outside of SJM, York is the guvnor of a Cotswolds pub, where his skills have helped the hostelrie win numerous awards. But even The Royal Oak hosts an annual music festival so it’s clear that promoting remains his principle passion. Asked to pick some personal highlights from the last quarter century, York reels off a long list of names, events and artists – Oasis, Jeff Buckley and Morrissey among them – but reserves a special mention for the man that brought him to SJM.

“The greatest pleasure has been working alongside Simon for the last 25 years. He is singularly the best music business leader of this generation,” declares York. Standout memories from this summer’s touring schedule, meanwhile, include Foo Fighters’ gigs at London Stadium, which York describes as “two of the best rock shows I have ever seen.”

“There’s nothing better than seeing a live gig when it has that level of excitement around it,” he says. “It’s very intoxicating and it’s that excitement that keeps me inspired and coming back for more.”

WORDS: Richard Smirke

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