Geiger On Trans-Siberian Orchestra: ‘They Win Every Year’

Brett Schauf / T&J Studios – TSO
Trans-Siberian Orchestra lights up Intrust Bank Arena in Wichita, Kansas in this 2012 photo.

When the holiday season rolls around every November, there is a whole genre of music in North America that goes through an annual revival and plenty of acts earn their salt by performing audiences’ favorite hits with different spins. Trans-Siberian Orchestra has grown into a dominant force on the North American holiday touring circuit, with two touring companies, each often putting on two shows a night.

TSO reached No. 27 on Pollstar’s Year End Top 100 Worldwide Tours in 2017, with more than 1 million tickets sold to 102 performances and a gross of $61.5 million (incorporating estimates for unreported dates).

The group’s agent, Marc Geiger of WME, got on the horn with Pollstar and couldn’t stop gushing about the act, saying they were ‘the biggest band no one knows about.’ He praised the musicianship and the vision and management, and let us know just how amazed he was that such a spectacle operates with such a high degree of efficiency.

So I’ve heard you think TSO is underappreciated, or still sort of flies under the radar, despite the enormous amount of business it does.

It’s the biggest rock show on the road. I think that, in the old days, when Pink Floyd and other massive stadium artists used production: lights, lasers, pyro, all that stuff, people would make a big deal about how big the shows were. I go to TSO every year and they are the biggest show.

I think that if the world knew that they’d say “What is this show?” It’s that much eye candy. It’s that intense from a production standpoint.

Then you realize that they play two shows in different parts of the country and they do two shows per night in most of December, then they get to another town and do it again. You end up appreciating the engineering marvel that TSO is.

It might be the biggest and most efficient tour going. Period. No one else even attempts to do what they do. It’s a really fascinating case study.

The other thing I think is under appreciated about them is they’re playing rock/classical music. The actual playing itself is technically incredibly difficult. There’s another set of technical challenges which is the musicianship, which goes along with the intense production challenges. When you look at this with our “professional touring eyes,” it’s a massively underappreciated, even though it’s a huge band and asset. The complexity is amazing. And it really points to the musicians, to Paul O’Neill [the group’s founder who died in 2017], to how good their management team is. Adam Lind and Kenny Kaplan their whole organization is spectacular, some of the best people we work with. And they have to be when you pull this off.

Jason Squires – Trans-Siberian Orchestra
Trans-Siberian Orchestra fills the Sprint Center in Kansas City, Mo., with color, light and rock ’n’ roll Dec. 9.

It seems like the routing mostly stick to the Midwest, the Northeast and Regional South. Are those your bread-and-butter markets?

Listen they sold out two arenas in the L.A. market, in Ontario, they sold out in Sacramento in advance. They’re big in the Northwest.

But yeah, it’s not Cleveland, or Hershey, Penn., for them where they are enormous. They grew outside-in. They grew middle-America towards the coasts. They’re big everywhere frankly. They’re massive in Philly. They’re huge in Boston. It’s big.

The media is coastal, and the band grew from the heartland. Cleveland was the spiritual home, with Belkin productions really being what broke them from the beginning, and the band grew from the there.

But they do exist primarily as a seasonal act right?

Absolutely.

Do you think they would ever expand to touring beyond the holiday season with new content?

I think it’s yet to be seen as to where it’s going to go now. Their founder passed away, he was a large part of the vision. So I think we’ll see how it evolves from here. …

They’re VERY careful in their brand management. Even television, movies, very careful, because the live spectacular was so big and great. They didn’t want to expose that on platforms and where it might have threatened their core. But there’s a lot of creative ideas and we’ll see where it heads.

So you do think even just as a holiday-themed rock show, where TSO is already dominant, there is room for growth?

I think there is growth left. I think management believes there is growth left. But it is unlike, from a touring perspective, anything else that we deal with. In terms of routing, it has to exact, perfect. It’s very skilled. Every single decision every day and night costs thousands of dollars, tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of dollars.

I think one of the reasons it’s hard to compete with something like that, one they don’t have a Paul O’Neil, and they don’t know how good the management is the production staff. And they’re quiet, a little bit like Nick Saban. If I were using football analogies Adam Lind and Kenny Kaplan are the Bill Belichick and Nick Sabans of our industry.

They win every year, they just don’t make a big fuss. This thing wins every year. It’s massive. This year was a record year and it keeps growing and it keeps pummeling through any challenges. And they get up and do it again the next year and it’s a better show and nobody takes bows. That’s the nature of what this is.

So it sounds like everything on the table? A third touring company? Expanding into other parts of the country?

[The potential is] absolutely not finite. There’s a lot there.

They definitely do very well on Pollstar’s Year-End charts.

They’d be a lot higher, but part of the brand management is ticket prices. TSO ticket prices very low compared to how much business they do.

The stat you might find, is that their attendance is as big as a top touring act. [Incorporating estimates, TSO was listed as having moved 1,005,130 tickets in 2017, No. 13 in that category among the acts on the Year End Top 100 Worldwide Tours chart]

But with their ticket price and their audience management, they still grossed over $60 million, but when you look at their pricing, they do all the things that many, many other artists wouldn’t necessarily do in terms of ticket price management/charity. It’s a very principled organization.

That makes sense because it’s a Christmas thing.

And it’s a family show. The audience demographic is actually 8-80. I remember when I started working with them, people would say that to me, I’m like “There is no such thing” You go to a TSO show, you see a demographic that is 8-80. Literally. So you’re ‘OK it does exist.’ It’s not just words, there is an artist that has 8-80. And it’s massive amounts of families. Also that comes in, family ticket pricing is important. Those things are very important to the core.

So how much of a bear is the daily setup and takedown (in two places simultaneously) of such a high-production show.

It gives meaning to the word precision. Their playing. Packing of a truck. The light show. The routing. Every bit of TSO is about precision. Like a laser-guided missile or anything that has to run absolutely perfectly. …

And it’s across all levels. It’s easy to praise a band. It’s really hard to praise a light guy, a crew chief, a road manager, management, marketing. Those are your unsung heroes. TSO may be the example where all of it deserves awards for best in class. It’s nuts. …

I’m pretty experienced in this business and every year TSO goes out, I marvel at them, all of them. And they make the light show, which is already insane, better every year. This year my jaw was open. I was in Detroit at the new arena, I turn to Bryan Hartley, the lighting engineer and I just gave him two double high-fives, I didn’t know what to say. They are the swiss watch of touring.

It’s neat to think the act, which draws on classical music, is characterized by precision at every level levels of the organization.

It’s great for us to work with and admire. With TSO we don’t worry about a thing other than doing our job. We watch the whole thing work, it’s a magical thing to be a part of. …

I do think that the founders wanted to make it bigger than Kiss, bigger than Pink Floyd, bigger than Metallica, the biggest rock show. Bigger than the Stones. I think they achieve it but I don’t think the world understands or knows it.