New Stadium Stars, New Venues And A Lot Of What-Ifs: It’s Time To Get Ready For 2025

A perfect storm of fears prompted the global stock sell-off of Aug. 5, in which the S&P 500 had its worst day since 2022.

There was a weak jobs report, with unemployment rising to 4.3%, while Japan’s central bank teased another interest rate increase. The summerlong unpredictability of a looming presidential election causes anxiety in high finance, an industry that loathes uncertainty.

The stock market tumble made big headlines and prompted calls for the Federal Reserve to cut interest rates, which seems likely at the Fed’s September meeting.

As interest rates have climbed in the Fed’s efforts to cool inflation, Live Nation and other venue operators have taken a more cautious approach to venue renovation, but cheaper money may goose a live entertainment building boom that may already be quickening.

In LN’s quarterly earnings report, the company said its Venue Nation arm planned to open 14 new buildings before the end of 2025. That number is up slightly from earlier reports of 10 to 12 in that time frame. In the post-release call, however, Michael Rapino, LN’s president and CEO, indicated that number is likely to climb in the long-term “with 75 in the pipe.” 

“I had a venue meeting this morning,” he said. “We looked at 10 new venues that we’re looking to build across the U.S., Latin America and Asia. … We think there’s still a great whitespace on a global venue basis.”

That call came before the stock sell-off — LYV hung in there, losing just 3% Aug. 5 — and before the clamor for a rate cut. CFO Joe Berchtold said on the call “it’s very early to start talking about ’25 capex.” 

It may not seem so early now.

Returns on venue upgrades are proving strong Live Nation said it’s seen more than a 30% return on investment for the amphitheaters it has upgraded since 2022 with a $10 per-fan increase at Northwell at Jones Beach in Wantagh, New York, since it reopened in June. Live Nation also hinted that worries of a softening touring market may be misplaced and likely reflect nothing more than a come down from the highs and that expectation management is critical.

“We never predicted that the industry was going to grow at 30% a year going forward,” Rapino said. Rapino said the basics of the industry are still solid enough to support “9-10% growth” on a “global basis,” particularly as the industry becomes more international — Latin continues to expand, country is growing in Europe, and Afrobeats is bubbling. Business is growing in Latin America, South Africa and now South Asia, from both an artist development and touring perspective. 

Berchtold emphasized that while high-profile cancellations — Jennifer Lopez, Black Keys and now The Fugees and Ms. Lauryn Hill and Aerosmith — stoke worry, on a macro basis, cancellations aren’t a concern.

“In terms of cancellation rates, we’re seeing historical norms below last year. They historically run 4% to 5% of shows, about 1.5% of fans, so we are absolutely in line with historical trends. I think most of the reports that we’ve seen have been efforts to take one or two data points out of a very large number, and we’re just not seeing anything unusual there,” he said.

The biggest shift in 2024 has been away from the stadium tours that took the industry to record highs in 2023, but even that seems like a timing matter more than a trend and that the pipeline for stadiums “is bigger now than it was two years ago,” according to Rapino, with Berchtold anticipating that ticket sales for 2025’s stadium shows will be the company big revenue driver at the end of 2024.

The best advice for the industry may be to keep your powder dry until the fall, when money will be cheaper. The “vibecession” that has made people feel the broader economy is far weaker than it is may be starting to infect the live industry in particular and in both cases, the fundamentals still largely point to strength. A continually weakening job market — was the June report a blip or an indicator? — may well show the vibes were right, but live has shown remarkable ability to hang in there when the bigger picture is gloomy. And get ready for another stadium summer in 2025. 

Of course, there’s no greater fool than the one who tries to predict the future and some things are forever unpredictable. Consider what happened in Austria, as three Taylor Swift “Eras Tour” shows in Vienna were abruptly canceled after police thankfully foiled an alleged terrorist plot. The what-ifs of the counterfactual are hard to imagine, but the effect no doubt would have roiled the industry and society.