The View’s Great From The Top: Europe’s United By Its Love For Live, Divided By The Cost Of Touring & Everything Else

People love going to live shows. The numbers this business has been generating in recent times are staggering. The question is, whether those numbers are generated by a select few acts right at the top, or whether the entire business is profiting from people’s willingness to spend money on live despite the challenging economy? To be clear, blockbuster business has always been limited to superstar artists, but live music fans would also spend money on smaller shows regularly. But when entertainment budgets are limited, they may need to make a choice, and that choice tends to fall to the superstars. 

Pollstar has been speaking to some of Europe’s most successful live professionals for this special Impact International issue, and their feedback has been mixed. Some see a widening gap between the top end of this business and its grassroots. Others say tickets are selling like hotcakes irrespective of the size of the show. Mojo Concerts head promoter Rob Trommelen in the Netherlands, for example, told Pollstar, “The market is healthy, we sell more tickets than ever, including at club level.”

When speaking with Riff Music CEO Chris Ortiz for our annual Spain Focus in July, he said, “There’s a lot of shows that aren’t selling well, and a lot of festivals that have been overdone, but that’s always been the case. Most new tours we’re putting on sale are all selling very well. We had a show in Seville with Melendi last night, an arena of 18,000 people, his biggest show ever in Seville. The night before, there were 50,000 people in the stadium watching Escope, another Spanish band with a very similar fan base to Melendi. Five years ago, having both shows on the same weekend would have meant that both would have suffered. Now we’re here, and both acts are doing record numbers on the same weekend in a city that is not Madrid or Barcelona.”

While fans’ budgets have a role to play, the bigger issues seem to arise from the fact that it costs so much to put on a show, let alone tour, in 2024. WME agent Chris Payne said, “It’s well documented that every part of the touring ecosystem is dealing with squeezed margins due to rising costs. The biggest challenge has been keeping ticket prices affordable for fans in order to protect long-term careers. If the shows are priced right, they are blowing out quicker than ever.”

The UK’s Music Venue Trust published figures, highlighting how artists are playing 11 shows on an average tour on the UK grassroots circuit in 2024, compared with 13 shows in 2014, 18 shows in 2004, and 22 in 1994. The research was conducted by two members of MVT’s own team, who took 15 tours from the selected years, and mapped the locations and number of shows. As MVT CEO Mark Davyd explained, “The tours were chosen on the basis of grassroots artists at similar stages of their careers, with Oasis as the example benchmark on which that criteria was built – first single released, second single around the tour dates, album released concluding the activity. We consulted with artists, agents and managers for anecdotal confirmation that the results aligned with their perception of the challenges facing touring artists.” 

According to the MVT, hundreds of UK grassroots venues are at immediate risk of closure mainly because of the costs they’re faced with. The UK’s Night Time Industries Association has similarly daunting predictions for the country’s nightclub scene. Germany’s Clubcommission speaks of a “Clubsterben” (“dying of clubs”) in the country’s capital of Berlin. Losing grassroots spaces doesn’t just mean losing performance opportunities for up-and-coming artists, but also employment opportunities for the professionals working in this biz, most of whom started small and worked their way up, just like the artists.

Production manager Paul English said, “I hope the gap closes between the small and the big. There is definitely a divide. And I feel that support is required for the smaller venues, because that’s where we came from. How long will those old bands carry on? There’ll be nothing in the middle ground, which is a little bit scary. We all need to pull together on this, but it also needs some assistance from governments, who I don’t think get that the entertainment industry is a real thing.”

English was part of the team that built a temporary, stadium-capacity amphitheater for Adele’s 10-date Munich residency this summer. Some 76,000 people watched the show every night, many traveling from far-flung places like South America, just to see their favorite artist live. The production, the sound, the surrounding Adele-themed adventure park – it was an opulent mega- event that really delivered an experience never seen or heard anywhere before. It also required a nine-digit investment to be built. 

At the other end of the spectrum, grassroots venues are shutting down, because of a lack of investment. How often do you read stories of a club being torn down to make room for housing or retail. It’s as if people cannot see the long-term investment it requires to make sure the next generation of artists has rooms to play and grow in. In this day and age, artists go viral on TikTok, and sometimes announce their first-ever show at an arena. But, as various agents and managers have been emphasizing in conversations with Pollstar, the high engagement on socials can be deceiving. On paper, an act that goes viral may be able to sell out an arena, but they may not be ready for it. Becoming comfortable on stage, being able to handle crowds of all sizes, etc., are things best learnt from scratch, i.e. by doing the circuit. 

Organic growth through gradually increasing capacities has become more difficult to achieve than ever, because it has become so expensive to tour that you need scale in order to be able to pay the bills.

The festival market is particularly tough right now, as festivals usually only have one weekend to recoup the gigantic investment it takes to build a temporary music wonderland from scratch each year. In the UK alone, 60 festivals got called off this year. 

What is more, according to DEAG Group CEO Detlef Kornett, “When you look at the outdoor and festival market in particular, I think all of us are challenged to actually deliver an experience. Delays, long queues, sanitary areas offering only the bare necessities; warm beer, and cold food – we have to question whether that truly is the experience people are looking for. For many years, a festival was a stage, lights, sound, people coming to see different bands, and everyone having a good time. It’s not that simple anymore. People are seeking experiences, and are willing to spend money on them.”