2025 Impact 50 Honoree: Bill Silva

BILL SILVA
FOUNDER, CEO
BILL SILVA ENTERTAINMENT

ON LINKIN PARK’S COMEBACK LIVESTREAM: “Let’s just show the world. Let’s not explain it. Let them be the judge.”

One of the most innovative and impressive artist re-launches in the history of live, one that seemed to rewrite the rules for how artists can return from tragedy, happened this year. That initiative, helmed by veteran manager and promoter Bill Silva, was not without serious risk.

Bringing back Linkin Park, one of the most popular heavy rock and rap bands seven years after the tragic passing of beloved frontman Chester Bennington, with frontwoman Emily Armstrong was no easy task, requiring vision, strategy and oodles of courage.

 “Let’s just show the world. Let’s not explain it. Let them be the judge. And that’s how the concept of the livestream came about,” Silva told Pollstar in its June Linkin Park cover story. “Linkin Park avoided all the obvious questions that everybody would have asked, and we all embraced that the music’s unbelievable; the performance is unbelievable.”

Indeed, the band’s powerful and candid Sept. 5 livestream performance, featuring classic and new Linkin Park songs, silenced haters on its way to 14 million views and set up universal acclaim for their new album, From Zero (a tribute to the band’s 1996 inception as “Xero”).

Their strategic tour rollout by manager Silva, who also books shows at the Hollywood Bowl with Andrew Hewitt, was similarly brilliant. The band did two short global runs: Arena dates in L.A., NYC, London, Hamburg and Incheon in Sept. 2024; followed by five more in November in France, North America and three South American gigs. That set up Linkin Park for its extensive “From Zero World Tour,” stadium and arena dates across the globe.

The tour, which runs through 2026, is already in the Top 25 of Pollstar’s 2025 Top 200 Worldwide Tours with a massive $31.8 million gross, and it’s just getting started.

“Not even 90 days after launch,” Silva said, “we’d already sold over a quarter million tickets around the world.” For those taking notes, Linkin Park’s return was a masterclass.