2023 Impact 50: Mitch Rose

CO-HEAD OF CONTEMPORARY MUSIC
CAA

Mitch Rose has been with CAA since he started in the mailroom in 1982. He helped form the agency’s music department and has been a mainstay ever since. Now as co-head of contemporary music, Rose continues to help expand one of the world’s most successful agencies through marketing, tour sponsorship and corporate consulting.

It’s been a busy year for Rose, who represents some of the world’s biggest artists, serving as a consultant on brand strategy and career trajectory for stars including Harry Styles, Katy Perry, John Mayer, The Black Keys, KISS, Bill Maher, HAIM, Doobie Brothers, Steely Dan and comedy podcast “SmartLess.”

For Rose, the “Love On Tour” outing with Harry Styles changed the game. The British superstar played a series of arena residencies in the last year, turning each venue into “Harry’s House” for multiple nights, including 15 sold-out shows at Madison Square Garden in New York City.

“The ‘typical’ hotel/Las Vegas residency model has been changed forever,” Rose says, citing the tour as the most impactful business success of the year. And he’s unfazed by challenges.

“I don’t characterize the job we all do as having unusual challenges,” Rose says. “Life every day has challenges. Our mission remains the same as before during and after the pandemic, to keep our clients working, provide them with opportunities both inside and outside of touring and be 100% dedicated to the job.”

That ethos certainly paid off for Styles, who ended 2022 at No. 4 on Pollstar’s Top 200 Worldwide Tours chart for the year, performing in front of 1,460,936 paying fans — not counting festival appearances like the massive Coachella fest — and averaging $3,072,723 gross per show.

Consumer demand in 2022 and 2023 thus far may have been an anomaly, given the pent-up fan desire for live entertainment after some two years of dark stages and a pandemic-caused social shutdown. But Rose is hopeful that it will be the norm, rather than an exception, going forward, barring more calamity.