Features
‘Remember, You Are Dealing With Human Beings’: Q’s With Matt Bates, Managing Partner & CEO, Primary Talent, UK
For this year’s UK Focus, we reached out to a selection of agents working out of London, to talk about everything from booking trends to ticket prices to regional differences to business philosophies. Here’s what Matt Bates, managing partner & CEO, Primary Talent, UK, had to say.
Pollstar: What are the most important questions to ask yourself as a music agent in 2024?
Matt Bates: How can I create longevity for my artists in their campaign? How can I create a profitable touring situation for my artist without the fans suffering? Remember, you are dealing with human beings…Is the itinerary sensible, safe and practical for all those involved on the road.
Are you booking shows and locking in dates earlier and earlier in order to get avails these days?
There is definitely a trend for booking earlier, but at the same time you are often finding as things are booked so far in advance that dates can also shake loose later on. There are so many factors to ensure a concert takes place at the right time and even with the best planning possible, it’s often difficult to foresee recording schedules overrunning, manufacturing delays or another hundred reasons outside of your control as an agent to why a tour might need to move.
Is there need and room to raise ticket prices?
Ticket prices are definitely on the rise it feels. Everybody’s costs are increasing and the need to try and maximize income seems to becoming more important daily. Platinum ticket, VIP tickets or other ways of maximizing a show’s gross are now creeping into genres that traditionally you wouldn’t expect to see, but normally without much backlash for the consumer it feels.
With that said though, there is a ceiling and we have to be very conscious of what we are passing back to the consumer as it has to have an impact somewhere. Even if the premier shows and artists are doing very well, the concern is taking money from ticket sales further down the food chain. In a time where the cost of living is only increasing, we have to be careful not to cut off the life supply of the headliners and stars of the future by inflating prices with our arena or stadium artists.
Aside from raising ticket prices, one way of ensuring a higher profit margin while touring in an inflationary economy would be to reduce production. How open are artists to that conversation in your experience?
Production is definitely an ever increasing conversation when it comes to costs. Traditionally the artists that tended to have the highest production values would normally be the ones that also grew into the biggest touring acts. With all aspects of production and touring logistics costs increasing, to make a show profitable artists are having to make tough decisions. I do see artists no longer striving the same way as pre-pandemic to put on huge shows with some now thinking more conservatively about how they tour in order to fit into their budget constraints.
What’s your business strategy or philosophy for newcomers, in particular, in today’s world where it’s never been more expensive to tour?
Make what you do count. Be clever and thoughtful with your actions. There is no need to tour for touring sake, so make sure you work with all aspects of the campaign so any live activity compliments release schedules etc. It is very hard now to keep touring over and over again at the same level so make sure every time you go back out that you can show some growth.
Any upcoming shows, tours, business developments you’d like to highlight?
Catfish and the Bottlemen are back after five years, and are now bigger than ever. Alongside headlining reading and Leeds in 2024, they have sold old massive shows in Edinburgh (28k), Liverpool (32k) and Cardiff (20k) on the day of general on sale. In 2025 they are looking to go even bigger and into stadiums in the UK.