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AIF UK Fears Live Nation Dominance
The Association of Independent Festivals (AIF) has urged the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) to further investigate Live Nation’s control of the UK festival market.
Association of Independent Festivals – AIF Festival Data
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CMA is investigating Live Nation’s acquisition of Isle Of Wight Festival, and AIF wants it to “widen their investigation beyond,” seeing that the live entertainment giant “already dominates ticketing, secondary ticketing and venue ownership in the UK,” as the association stated.
The concerns come after new research conducted by the association shows that the U.S. company was “fast-approaching a 25 per cent market share of all UK festivals over a 5,000 capacity.”
UK festivals owned or majority-owned by Live Nation include Download, V Festival, Reading/Leeds, Parklife,
“In total, Live Nation now controls 28 UK festivals, including 8 of the UK’s 9 largest outdoor events,” according to the AIF. “On this basis, Live Nation are already almost three times bigger than their closest competitor (Global), who control an 8 per cent share of the UK festival market according to the data.”
The proposed acquisition of Isle Of Wight Festival, which is currently being investigated by the CMA, would increase Live Nation’s market shareto close to 25 percent of the UK festival market, according to AIF’s findings.
What worries the association is that Live Nation also owns venues, including those of Academy Music Group and former MAMA Group, security businesses, management businesses representing more than 500 artists including U2, Arcade Fire and Madonna as well as major primary (Ticketmaster) and secondary (Get Me In!, Seatwave) ticketing sites.
AIF fears, given the concentration of power, that “most artists will have little choice but to work with the California based company at some point in their career.” What did not help were exclusivity deals, “whereby artists can effectively be restrained as to where they can and cannot perform and the pool of talent available to non-Live Nation events is greatly reduced.”
While AIF GM Paul Reed acknowledges that “the live music sector is fiercely competitive,” the data “published today rings several alarm bells.” “A Live Nation monopoly would quite simply be a stranglehold with profound and serious consequences” for independent festival operators,” he said.
The exclusivity deals in particularly were alarming to AIF members, as they “are anti-competitive, restraining when and where even the smallest artist can perform and significantly diminishing the pool of talent that non-Live Nation promoters can draw upon.”