2024 Impact 50 Honoree: Louis Messina

CEO AND FOUNDER
Messina Touring Group

BIZ PHILOSOPHY: Don’t chase money
MENTOR: Allen Becker, PACE Entertainment

There can be no question how Messina Touring Group Founder and CEO Louis Messina came to be included as one of Pollstar’s 2024 Impact 50 class. No artist has more impact in 2024, or 2023 for that matter, than super-megastar client Taylor Swift. And Messina’s eye for talent and ability to build it into huge box office numbers is unmatched.

TMG, by itself, was the No. 5-ranked concert promoter of 2023, having sold $500,394,737 and moved 3,815,843 tickets for a stellar roster of artists including Swift, Ed Sheeran, George Strait, Kenny Chesney, Blake Shelton, Eric Church, the Lumineers and more.

Messina’s golden touch extends far beyond his roster of stadium-level artists. Among Messina’s 2023-24 highlights was making Old Dominion into a headline act – and, in the process, helping to develop a new generation of superstar artists.

How great a year was it for Messina?

“I don’t feel like we had any challenges last year,” he says. “Everything went just as planned.”

He bases his success on a simple philosophy: “Don’t chase money. If you do what you’re supposed to do, the money will always be there. Keep raising the bar and always strive for the next level.”

Messina started his career 52 years ago come November, selling advertising for a New Orleans radio station, and came to work with the late Allen Becker, who founded PACE Entertainment Group and of whom Messina says “taught me about business, life, everything.”

Swift’s “Eras Tour” – now making its way across Europe – is the highest-grossing tour of all time, breaking the billion dollar revenue threshold, which once seemed impossible, and attendance records at multiple stadiums. Chesney has played 135 stadiums during his career and is ranked in the Top Ticket Sellers of the past 25 years, while only headlining the last 14.

In an interview with Pollstar for its special 50th Anniversary issue celebrating Messina, he was asked how he approaches working with acts he seemed to divulge his secret sauce. “I try to be more than just a promoter,” he said. “I try to get inside of the artists’ dreams. I always say, as I told Eric [Church], ‘Tell me your dreams and I’ll dream you.’”

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