Garth Brooks To Close Out Pollstar Live! Conference With Keynote Q&A

– Garth Brooks

Garth Brooks will help wrap up the Pollstar Live! 2018 conference with a bang by participating in a Keynote Q&A, along with key players from his extraordinarily successful North American tour.   

The country superstar’s Feb. 8 Keynote closes out the 29th annual conference, which is set for Feb. 6-8 at the InterContinental Hotel in downtown Los Angeles. Brooks will be joined by Jared Smith, Ticketmaster’s President for North American Concerts, and David Kells, Bridgestone Arena’s Senior Vice President of Booking.  

“When Oak View Group acquired Pollstar and the Pollstar Live! conference, our mission was to make it the most compelling and relevant conference in all of music, and there is no better way to make that statement than to host the biggest touring artist in the world in Garth Brooks,” Oak View Group CEO Tim Leiweke said in a statement. “Garth’s juggernaut tour with Trisha Yearwood blew up the paradigm for megatours in terms of ticketing, production, and thrilling performances, and I can’t wait to hear him and his team discuss it and anything else he wants to talk about at the Pollstar Live! conference.”

Ray Waddell, president of OVG’s Media & Conferences division, added, “Garth’s return to touring was one of the most highly-anticipated events in the history of live music, and the resulting tour exceeded all expectations from both critical and industry perspectives. The industry has never seen anything like it and we’re thrilled Garth and his team are coming to Pollstar Live!”

Brooks thrilled the music world by coming out of retirement in September 2014 to launch the Garth Brooks World Tour with 11 sold out shows at the Allstate Arena in Chicago. That year he also released Man Against Machine, marking his first album since 2001’s Scarecrow. 

With the exception of a handful of one-off shows and residencies including Kansas City’s Sprint Center in 2007 and the Encore Theatre At Wynn Las Vegas between late 2009 and 2013, Brooks hadn’t toured in 13 years. 

His historic comeback tour significantly impacted the live music industry in the way onsales are announced and conducted, the way the secondary market is dealt with, and the sheer volume of tickets sold. 

In anticipation of the sheer deluge of ticket-buyers, Brooks (with Ticketmaster) changed the way high-demand tours are executed. Rather than putting scores of dates on sale at once, Brooks put each city up individually, announcing two or three shows and then adding dates in real time as demand dictated.

And demand certainly dictated, resulting in mini-residencies at arenas across the country, with anywhere from five to 11 shows in most markets and even two performances in one day. 

– Garth Brooks Keynote Q&A At Pollstar Live! 2018

Brooks solved the scaling conundrum by pricing all tickets the same, maintaining that he never wanted price to be a roadblock for anyone to see him live. To take the secondary market out of the equation and prevent resellers from selling tickets at quadruple face value, Brooks simply sold tickets until demand was met.

As a recent article from Forbes put it: “Garth Brooks’ World Tour Solidifies His Status As The Best Arena Act Alive.”

The North American portion of the impressive trek concluded with a run of gigs at Nashville’s Bridgestone Arena in December.  

Overall, the mammoth tour has sold more than 6.3 million tickets, according to an announcement from Brooks’ camp.

Brooks’ accolades over the years include being inducted into the International Songwriters Hall of Fame in New York, the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame, the Country Music Hall of Fame and most recently, the Musicians Hall of Fame. He also just won Entertainer of the Year at the CMA Awards for a sixth time, a first for any artist.

Pollstar Live! 2018 is preceded by Production Live!, Feb. 6, a day of programming dedicated to the production side of the industry. 

The conference is the largest gathering of live music professionals in the world. Programming at Pollstar Live! includes executives from Live Nation, Ticketmaster, UTA, Paradigm, C3 Presents, Roc Nation and far more. The Feb. 7 schedule features a Keynote Q&A with Live Nation President and CEO Michael Rapino, as well as a Q&A discussion with Apple senior vice president of Internet Software and Services Eddy Cue, interviewed by veteran music business journalist Shirley Halperin of Variety.

Pollstar Live! culminates in the 2018 Pollstar Awards. The Feb. 8 awards show, presented by Live Nation at Los Angeles’ Wiltern theatre, highlights outstanding achievements in live music over the past year.

Click here for the Pollstar Live! schedule.