‘Is It World Class?’ (And Maybe A Little Crazy): VENU’s JW Roth Looks To Reinvent The Amphitheater Model With $1.3B (And Counting)

It takes vision, business relationships built over decades — and maybe a few crazy ideas — to really shake up the live entertainment industry. Examples include Las Vegas’ Sphere, providing a unique, dazzling indoor experience in ways that haven’t been done before. On the stadium side, multibillion-dollar NFL landmarks like SoFi Stadium in Inglewood, California, and Allegiant Stadium in Las Vegas push the audio-video boundaries while bringing new levels of comfort to fans.

As CEO, founder and chairman of VENU, JW Roth is looking to make a similar impact ($1.3 billion and counting) on the live entertainment industry, with music-dedicated, outdoor venues offering unprecedented amenities at what has historically been one of the least glamorous types of concert venues.

“At the end of the day, I don’t think there’s ever been a $300 million ‘music coliseum’ or music amphitheater,” Roth tells Pollstar, talking up the 20,000-capacity Sunset Amphitheater under development in McKinney, Texas, scheduled to open in 2026. “This will be over the top premium.”

VENU’s Sunset Amphitheaters aim to raise the bar for mid-sized outdoor venues, with firepit suites, Troy Aikman-branded clubs, temperature-controlled concrete and grass seating surfaces and year-round operation thanks to major investment in construction. Roth is a fifth-generation Colorado native whose previous and current business ventures include Roth Industries, Centennial Real Estate Company and Touch 4 Partners venture capital fund.

While there’s nothing crazy about wanting to build comfortable, high-tech concert venues, it might take someone a little crazy to pull it off.

The first crazy idea was to open VENU’s flagship venue, the 8,000-capacity, $90 million Ford Amphitheater in Colorado Springs, in the same general vicinity and capacity as the storied Red Rocks Amphitheater. With booking partner AEG Presents having a strong presence and expertise in Colorado already, it still wasn’t clear if Colorado Springs could route in a complementary way with Red Rocks.

“We just didn’t know if Colorado Springs could really act as its own market, right?” Roth said. “The biggest risk in what I did at Ford Amphitheater was will it be a strategic partner to our neighboring amp, which is Red Rocks, the most legendary amp in history. The answer has been yes, which was a big relief when it happened.”

Shows this season include Jason Isbell and The 400 Unit, Seether, Dwight Yoakam, Leon Bridges, The Black Keys, Beck with the Colorado Symphony, Louis C.K. and more. Artists playing its opening season last year include The Beach Boys, Primus, John Fogerty, Dierks Bentley, Robert Plant and Alison Krauss, Cage The Elephant, Godsmack and opening act OneRepublic.

“The Ford Amphitheater is a standout in every way,” said Chelsea Cunningham, AEG Presents director of venue operators and events for North America. “It blends the natural beauty of the sun setting over Pikes Peak, America’s mountain, with modern design elements, creating a setting that feels both immersive and intimate. One of my favorite features is the firepits scattered throughout the venue – providing warmth and a great gather space for fans to relax and enjoy the atmosphere.”

The industry has taken notice of Roth and Ford Amphitheater and, with further opportunities for promoters, managers and agents, Pollstar readers will surely be interested in VENU, whose business model includes fractional ownership through signature fire pit suites, outdoor warmth in the winter months and new venues announced at a rapid pace, including a second Colorado venue in Centennial, 15 miles from Denver. Other amphitheater projects include El Paso, Texas, and Broken Arrow, Oklahoma, hopeful to be complete by the end of 2025.

This interview is part of Pollstar’s 2025 Concert Venue Directory, which can be purchased here.

Pollstar: Since the opening of Ford Amphitheater, the VENU pipeline seems fast and furious.
JW Roth: That’s right. Between the next 48 and 60 months, I’ll have 20 of these complete. When you have 20 amphitheaters, you can sort of put your own season schedule together. And that’s exactly what I’m going to do. I’m building five of them right now, I’ve got one open, and I got seven more I’m going to announce this year. I have $1.3 billion of construction going on throughout the United States as we speak. In the beginning, they used to say, “I think he’s crazy. I don’t think he’ll ever even be able to do the Ford.” The Ford was very, very expensive for a small, 8,000-seat amphitheater, but at the end of the day, I think people have changed their view of our business. They’re seeing them under construction, and they have scheduled dates to open.

You just announced that all of your venues will operate year-round for concerts and special events.
Every one of these amps has a small or 6,000-seat configuration that is actually year-round. So from November through April, we’ll do 30 shows outside. Right now, in my indoor venues, I do 100 shows a year in the wintertime, but they’re small 2,000-cap rooms, right?

I’m going to do exactly like I do everything else in my life. I’m going to test it and see what the market does, but everybody loves the idea. It’s a little crazy, right? People say, “Well, does that replace arenas?” I don’t know. I don’t even care. I build for my customer. I’m doing it because I think there will be an ambiance that artists will love, and it will definitely be an ambiance that the consumer loves.

I want to be the Sphere of amphitheaters. That’s what I’m building. I’m building premium, over-the-top amphitheaters. Not everybody is going to play them, but there are going to be a lot of people that do play, and I’m not worried. People always ask me, “Is there enough content?” Of course there is. I mean, watch the Grammys. There’s genres of music I’ve never heard of that I had to call my kids and ask them about (laughs). Will all of those genres and all that new music fit a 20,000-seat amp in Dallas, Texas? But will a lot of that new music fit a 6,000-cap. room; a 4,000-seat deal in the dead of winter? Hell yes.

There’s impressive technology in place to keep things cool in Oklahoma and Texas, for instance, but how do you stay warm in Colorado in the winter?
I built a small venue in my backyard, and part of what I built into my backyard was a mesh system. This mesh system goes underneath the concrete and is buried under huge boilers that bring water to 140 degrees, and then pumps that water through this mesh system underneath the concrete, which raises the temperature of the concrete by 40 degrees. So, regardless if it’s 32 degrees out at my house and snowing, the concrete is always warm. So in all my amphitheaters now, I’m building that in the first 6,000 seats, so it keeps warm. Then obviously we have the fire pits and massive wind walls that go around the first 6,000 seats, too.

We have a roof system on all my new amphitheaters and an air system, and then we have infrared built into the entire ceiling that then heats the ambient temperature. So, regardless of whatever the temperature is outside, we now have it to where we’re 37 to 40 degrees warmer than whatever it is outside. I was committed to doing it.

I didn’t care what it cost, so this is a $10 million add to my venues, but at the end of the day, it will create an ambiance year-round. It’s only 6,000 seats that are this way, but it’s super cool.

AEG Presents was chosen as a partner for Colorado Springs, and while you’re still in discussions for Broken Arrow. You’ve said you’ll partner with whoever makes the most sense in each market.
We are a long way down the road from putting multiple booking agreements together for all of these new amps. It’ll be a collaboration of promoters that we work with. Anybody that reads that sentence will know what I mean.

You’ve said you’re putting more than $200 million into the McKinney venue, with another $100 million worth of support coming from the municipality. That may be the most expensive concert amphitheater to date.
When I do something, I always ask myself, “Is that world-class?” Even the lawn, I say to myself, “Is that world-class?” For example, my seats are two and a half inches wider than any other seat in any other amp in the world. I wanted to be able to answer my own question. I’ll worry about how much it costs later, and it’s always worked well for me to do that. When people come, they always are going to know that I’ve sort of pre-thought about where they’re going to sit, what they’re going to eat, how their sight lines are, because I’ve sat in every single one of those chairs.

Every venue, regardless of its size, has to meet the world-class standards of my model. Which means that it has to be artist-centric and has to be built premium, in other words, with the fan’s desires. That’s everything from elevated food and beverage to rideshare, to convenience, cleanliness, ease of access, sight lines. So that’s number one. Number two, I can’t go into a market where the market is not friendly to the idea. So, in other words, I need municipalities as partners. It takes two to two and a half years to put a partnership together. It’s not something that I can just decide tomorrow that I’m going to go to Bozeman, Montana. It’s a process, so that’s a piece of it. Then the third piece is, would that demographic have an appetite to buy my firepits, to buy my “condos,” to buy tickets? All of those things have to fit in right now. I’m going to announce seven new markets this year on top of the five where I’m building, and then ultimately next year, I’ve got seven more coming.

The fire-pit suite is your signature concept, which acts as both an investment opportunity as well as a VIP club membership.
A fire-pit suite is just really fractional ownership in the venue. I build my venues on the same financial structure as a condominium building, where I own the condominium building, and then I sell condominiums inside of the amphitheater. So 50% are pre-sold before I ever break ground.

We haven’t had one yet that hasn’t sold out 50% of them after announcing. That’s how popular they are. What’s really interesting is that the banks all of a sudden, in the last 60 days, have come on board to actually finance them. The cheapest pit I sell is $298,000, and I also sell them for well over $1 million, and they sell really well. But you had to write a check. Not anymore. Now, there’s banks stepping up and providing 25-year fixed-rate financing, and you can buy a firepit suite, so it’s super cool.

How are you impacted by overall macroeconomic uncertainty, including a regime change in the White House leading to fluctuations in interest rates and the cost of raw materials, groceries and everything else?
If there’s anything that’ll keep you up at night, it’s inflation. Quite frankly, I’ve had to raise the prices on our condominiums about 5%, across the board to account for that.

The good news is that my sales have gone up. They’re more robust than when they were cheaper, so I don’t understand why that is, but it’s true (laughs). I think part of it, too, is that when I first started this thing, everybody said, “Will they really do it?”

Well, when I opened the Ford Amphitheater and it’s the coolest place on planet Earth, now a lot of people that are buying a firepit suite in McKinney will fly up here and they’ll come look at it. That’s really driven my sales – the fact that they can actually now stand in one or buy a ticket and go to a show. We’ve sold thousands of tickets this summer to people that don’t even live here. They’re coming up here just to experience what it’s going to be like when their fire pit’s done in whatever city they live in.