New ticketing platform, refit scheme for UK venues

Music Venue Trust (MVT) has announced a raft of new initiatives for grassroots venues, including a national ticketing platform, a scheme to refit 100 sites over five years and an emergency response scheme to provide professional advice.

The announcements were made at Venues Day 2016 in London today (18 October) during an opening address by MVT head Mark Davyd.

Set up in partnership with .tickets and Ticketmaster’s TicketWeb, Grassrootsvenues.tickets (GV.T) is a new national ticketing platform for venues which integrates a ‘maintain and sustain’ levy similar to restoration funds seen in theatre (estimated at 50 pence on a £10 ticket). The platform also aims to report nationally to PRS for Music, removing the need for MVT members to report directly.

Venues signing up to the platform will be given a new website and .tickets domain, which integrates into the national GV.T platform. “We’re going to push tickets in a much more effective way,” Davyd said. “We want to make sure that artists and writers who perform in these venues actually get paid.”

“We’re going to push tickets in a much more effective way. We want to make sure that artists and writers who perform in these venues actually get paid”

Also announced at Venues Day was Sound + Vision, an ambitious initiative that wants to refit sound, lighting and staging in 100 UK venues over five years. Partners on the scheme include AV supplier White Light, Ents 24, TicketWeb, Jack Daniel’s and Help Musicians UK, which MVT estimates will reduce the £2.2million annual budget to just £970,000.

“All we need to develop a touring circuit we can be proud of, and that does our artists justice, is £4.85 million over the next five years,” Davyd said. “The Royal Opera House receives five times that in funding, so we’re calling on the Arts Council, and others, to support this.”

Further initiatives announced included the Emergency Response scheme to help venues with issues in planning, licensing and legal issues; and an expansion of MVT activity into Northern Ireland this autumn, and Scotland by early 2017.

Get more stories like this in your inbox by signing up for IQ Index, IQ’s free email digest of essential live music industry news.