Impact International: UK/Euro 2024 Honoree Mike Greek

“STRATEGY & PLANNING DELIVERS RESULTS”

CAA’s Mike Greek, along with fellow co-head of London Music Emma Banks, opened the agency’s UK outpost in 2006 with just “four or five” people, as he told the International Festival Forum in a keynote Q&A session last year.

Since then, he’s had a hand in growing CAA’s London office to some 40 staff members, representing many of the world’s greatest artists, and earning a spot on Pollstar Impact International’s Class of 2024.

Over the years, Greek has had plenty of opportunities to see favorite artists perform, and he tells Pollstar that of all those, “Seeing the Pogues at Hammersmith Palais, the energy of the show, the raucousness of the audience and the connection between audience and artists blew my mind.”

He now represents artists in the UK including Melanie Martinez, The Script, Zara Larsson, Paloma Faith, Jorja Smith and Valerie June, among others.

Greek points to Niall Horan’s “The Show: Live On Tour” global arena tour as his most impactful business success over the last year. Supporting Horan’s third studio album, 2023’s The Show, the trek launched in February with two nights in Belfast, Northern Ireland, at SSE Arena Belfast that sold a total of 19,997 tickets and grossed more than $1 million (813,500 pound sterling).

The tour concluded last month in South America after playing more than 80 gigs, with an average of 13,211 tickets sold per show and an average gross of $861,565, based on 74 headline reports submitted to Pollstar Boxoffice.

“The plan of playing selected festivals in 2023 around the release of his album, which laid the platform to announce and sell through the tour, highlights the fact that strategy and planning, along with a talented and committed artists delivers results,” Greek says.

Not surprisingly, he says pricing and ticketing strategies provided plenty of other challenges, as well as opportunities, in the past year.

Looking forward into 2025, Greek predicts, “Given artists rely on touring revenue more and more, creatively packaging artists together to increase the frequency of their touring and to grow their business, is going to become more important in international touring, which has traditionally been less focused on this area.”