2018 In Review: Europe –Still Room For Everyone

Helene Fischer
Isa Foltin / WireImage – Helene Fischer
Promoter Dieter Semmelmann calls Helene Fischer, pictured here during TV show “Heimlich! Die grosse Schlager-Ueberraschung” in March, Europe’s most successful live artist.

As part of Pollstar’s 2018 Year-End Special Issue, we broke down the year into industry buckets which we are rolling out online over the 2018 Holidays.  To read this special issue in its entirety now click HERE; and subscribe to Pollstar HERE.

2018 will go down in history as one of the busiest live entertainment years Europe has ever seen. A mostly brilliant summer made for a stellar festival season in many parts of the continent, while tours by international and local artists sold out venues of various size across the board.
One European country that stood out this year is Germany, and here’s three reasons why: Firstly, German Schlager star Helene Fischer played 87 concerts in GSA and the Netherlands between Sept. 2017/2018, selling 1.3 million tickets in total, making her continental Europe’s most successful live artist, according to her promoter and CEO of Semmel Concerts Dieter Semmelmann.
Secondly, Rammstein gave CTS Eventim a new sales record, when the band sold 800,000 tickets for its 2019 European stadium tour shortly after the start of the onsale, Nov. 8. Of the 30 dates in 24 European cities, only three hadn’t sold-out at press time.
Thirdly, Ed Sheeran, the man who seems to have broken every box office record in existence this year, headlined the biggest single show of his career at Hamburg’s Trabrennbahn in front of 80,000. Sheeran’s mainland Europe trek, which sold more than 750,000 tickets in total, was promoted by FKP Scorpio, which continued its business expansion in markets outside of Germany, where the promoter is headquartered. The latest move in that regard was the acquisition of Danish booking agency and promoter smash!bang!pow! in November.
FKP co-CEO Stephan Thanscheidt said “our transition to a European-wide promoter is well underway.” He didn’t see any particularly new trends in 2018, just the “continuing concentration of power in the whole industry. Next to the continuously evolving activities of FKP Scorpio in Germany and abroad, as well as our strategic partnership with AEG. The live sector of CTS Eventim is also growing further with purchases in Italy and Spain.”
CTS Eventim’s acquisitions in 2018 included promoters D’Alessandro e Galli and Vivo Concerti in Italy as well as Doctor Music in Spain.
Other major acquisitions outside the U.S. in 2018 included Emirates Airline Dubai Jazz Festival by Done Events, Garorock Festival by Vivendi’s Olympia Production in France, ALDA Amsterdam by Insomniac, Rock In Rio by Live Nation and more.
“Another observation,” according to Thanscheidt, “is the formation of investors and investment groups who don’t have a background as a promoter buying up festivals all over Europe.”
He was referring to recent news of equity-backed Superstruct investing in Finnish festival Flow, and The Yucaipa Companies acquiring a minority equity stake in Spain’s Primavera Sound, and Beyond Capital Partners acquiring a majority stake in German EDM promoter BigCityBeats.
Live Nation’s executive president of touring, international, Phil Bowdery, told Pollstar, “The demand for the live show is bigger than ever. Although touring still suffers its peaks and troughs, the live side is a very lucrative part of an artist’s career. Being on the road is good for business and it adds more strings to the bow in terms of merchandise revenue or the promotion of another product. It just works.
“The current state of touring is as strong as I’ve ever seen it. I see 2019 as being a very strong year, maybe even better than this year,” he added.
Ticketmaster UK MD Andrew Parsons added: “The world is mobile, and it’s great to see the industry following suit. We’ve led the charge in this space and the fans have followed with 2018 displaying the highest percentage of mobile sales we’ve ever seen.”
Ticketmaster UK celebrated one of its busiest summers ever. “Stadium and outdoor tours kept everyone busy with Jay Z and Beyoncé, Eminem, Ed Sheeran and Little Mix to name but a few. And then we finished the year off with the Spice Girls, our busiest ever sale on record,” Parsons said.
On the agency front there’s been a lot of consolidation over the past few years. In Europe, one of the more recent cases includes the partnership between X-ray Touring and Paradigm. Steve Strange, one of X-ray’s partners, said the partnership “has really helped us at X-ray to gain a much stronger global platform, with regards to signings and income streams.” His highlights in 2018 included the Eminem Stadium tour and selling out the 45,000-capacity Finsbury Park show by Queens Of The Stone Age in London on June 30. Strange said “the biggest ongoing challenge for the industry is the breaking of new artists in the new modern world.”
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