2025 Impact 50 Honoree: Michael Rapino

MICHAEL RAPINO
President & CEO
Live Nation

SECOND QUESTION TO JELLY ROLL DURING POLLSTAR KEYNOTE: “Before we get into the heart of it, how’s the donkey doing?”

It’s been 20 years since Clear Channel Entertainment spun out its concert promotion division, creating Live Nation – now the global leader in live entertainment. Throughout its two decades, the company has had but one CEO: Michael Rapino. In that time, Rapino has led the company to astounding heights, with LYV’s stock price up 1,100 percent since it went public in December 2005.

Even in a tightening market unaided by a surfeit of stadium tours, the company had record revenues of more than $23.1 billion in 2024, according to its year-end earnings report, 2 percent better than last year’s record-breaker.

A slower market in 2025 is merely a bump in the road – plus, Live Nation still predicts a big year – for Live Nation and Rapino, who have stared down far worse including the Great Recession and the global COVID-19 shutdown. Rapino is also having to navigate the company through one of its biggest challenges yet: an antitrust suit brought by the Biden Department of Justice in 2024 that has kept its momentum despite the change in administration at the White House. 

And then, of course, there’s ticketing, which elicits perpetual public and political vitriol and calls for reform, while seemingly doing little to get at the root of the problem (which many put at the feet of the secondary market).  

Significantly, in his Keynote with Jelly Roll at the 2025 Pollstar Live! conference, Rapino asked the artist pointedly about his recent Canadian tour and being “very involved in making sure the ticket prices were low.” Indeed, the artist recalled seeing shows like Lynyrd Skynyrd for $15 at Nashville’s Starwood Amphitheater with his family (when he wasn’t sneaking in) – which pointed to the fact that artists can and often do set ticket prices. 

Despite all, though, fans still love live music and none of the headwinds blowing at Live Nation are slowing it down.

At press time, Live Nation had announced a $1 billion investment to build 18 “new and revitalized” venues across the U.S. in the next 18 months. What headwinds?