Michael Coppel On Building Up Live Nation Down Under To The Top Spot (Australia/New Zealand Special 2025)

In 2012, Australia’s international touring scene was dominated by eight independents. In terms of sales that year they were Chugg Entertainment, Michael Coppel Presents, Frontier Touring, Bluesfest Touring, Adrian Bohm Presents, Garry Van Egmond, XIII Touring and Dainty Group.

MCP ranked second with sales of 366,082, and its founder Michael Coppel fired the first shot that changed Australia’s touring scene. He sold 80% of MCP to Live Nation, becoming its president and CEO (now its chairman), and receiving condemnation from some competitors.

“I was the first of the major promoters to join a multinational because I could see the world, and our industry, was globalising,” he recollects. “Far more deals were being done not by territory-by-territory but for the whole world. I just felt the future of the independent promoter in Australia was over.”

In 2025, five of those promoters are owned by multinationals, and one no longer exists.

Of the Top 5 promoters ranked in this week’s ANZ special, only two are independent.

Live Nation Australia and New Zealand tops the list with a gross of $312,166,481 and ticket sales of 2.7 million.

Through the years, LN ANZ has sold “in excess of 35 million tickets, probably about 31 million in Australia and over 4 million in New Zealand.”

Australia has a population of 26 million and New Zealand just over 5 million.

Coppel pulls no punches about this level of success: “I think it’s unbelievable! I can remember as an independent promoter, moving 500,000 or 900,000 was a big year. When you’re seeing certain artists, like P!NK and Ed Sheeran, selling a million tickets in the market, doing well over 600,000 or 700,000 on a single tour, these are unparalleled times.” He adds, “The market is 40% to 50% bigger in the past few years.”

In this issue’s biggest ANZ tours chart, Live Nation had four of the five highest ranking.

Coldplay topped the list, shifting 723,271 tix and grossing $85.9 million.

Pearl Jam were third place with a $42.3 million turnover with 314,095 stubs, Travis Scott at 4th place with 278,662 tix and a $32.2 million gross, and The Weeknd rounding off with a $26.1 million aggregate as a result of 211,062 seats.

But for LN Down Under, it is P!NK who does the victory lap. On last year’s “Summer Carnival Tour,” she performed 20 stadium shows to over 1 million.

The trek broke attendance records at Sydney’s Alliance Stadium and Melbourne’s Marvel Stadium. P!NK also became the first female artist to headline at Auckland’s 120-year-old Eden Park, and set a new crowd milestone drawing 100,000 over two nights.

It was a different story when Coppel first toured her in 2004 under the MCP banner. He lost $700,000 after shifting 25,000 seats.

But he saw she had a future. Five years later her “Funhouse Tour” sold out 58 arenas to 650,000 fans.
P!NK has, over six tours, clicked over 3.1 million tickets, making her “the biggest ever artist that has ever toured here, I believe,” Coppel says.

Earlier, in the late ’70s, as a favor for an agent friend, MCP toured little known British band Tourists for a club run. The visit lost money and the band broke up mid-tour.

But Coppel saw the potential in two members, Annie Lennox and Dave Stewart, who returned as Eurythmics.
“We did two massive tours with them, like six, eight, nine nights in Melbourne and Sydney each,” he says.
In his teens, Coppel tried learning guitar. “I gave up after three years of weekly lessons and not being able to play one single song,” he says. “So I remain in awe of people who have the facility to do that and I am in awe of people who have personalities which allow them to project out to 50,000 or 70,000 people and they can entertain and inspire at that level of pressure.”

Coppel studied law at Melbourne University, finishing second in his final exams. Ready to change the world, he qualified as a barrister’s solicitor and applied to colleges in the United States.

But he became disillusioned with law after a year as an articled clerk.
Around this time, a friend from college, Zev Eizik (now a promoter in Israel) asked him to help out in his music stores “for a couple of weeks,”

That “became 48 years later. I’ve never regretted my life’s choices, never thought I should get a real job. I still feel inspired and feel the need to work hard,” Coppel says.

For him, it’s inspirational “to see the world as a friendlier place because it’s a terrible time. Music allows us to escape the headlines and focus on something of beauty.”

In 2017, Coppel was awarded Member of the Order of Australia “for significant service to the entertainment industry.”

His first tour, in 1978, was Elvis Costello. The Sydney show ended in a chair-throwing riot when Costello refused an encore. The crowd tried to set the PA on fire, and Coppel’s partner got into a fistfight with Costello’s manager.
MCP tours included U2, Roger Waters, Metallica, Beyoncé, Eric Clapton, Taylor Swift, Katy Perry, Foo Fighters, Jay-Z, Lady Gaga, Celine Dion and Whitney Houston.

Festivals included Narara, Australia’s first EDM gathering, Apollo 97, Livid and V Festival.

An expansion into theatre and musicals proved just as successful. Among these, Queen and Ben Elton’s “We Will Rock You” played to 750,000 in 2004 and 2005.

“It’s an opportunistic business. When I started with Live Nation, they said, ‘What’s the five-year plan?’” Coppel says.

“I replied, ‘Hey I’ve been in this business for over 30 years and I’ve never had a five-week plan much less a five-year plan!”

He chuckles. “I’ve learned the errors of my ways since then. The business does become structured and we do have a lot of ambitions.”

In 2019 Australia LN acquired the Moshtix ticketing agency and a number of independent promoters including Secret Sounds, which ran major festivals Falls and Splendour In The Grass.

LN’s venue portfolio includes Festival Hall and Palais Theatre in Melbourne, Kings Park in Perth, and Anita’s Theatre in New South Wales.

The 3,000-capacity Music Hall brand, already in Brisbane and Adelaide, next emerges in Perth, with plans eventually for Sydney and Melbourne.

“We’re really focussed on giving people great places to go, and artists great places where they can expose themselves,” Coppel says. “It’s not just for international acts. This year, Fortitude Music Hall (Brisbane) will have a million people go through that venue, and 60% of them will have seen local artists.

“That’s part of the gameplan. Make venues the right size and keep audiences and artists coming back.”

In June, LN ANZ awarded Legend status to two long time employees – President Alex Klos for 10 years, and Jackie Antas VP of communications, Asia Pacific, for 15 years.

Coppel cites other long service executives as Luke Hede, SVP of touring & commercial APAC, who joined LN when it started 2010 as a stand-alone, and Kristy Rosser, SVP, head of media and sponsorships, who started 15 years ago.

“Live Nation has a focus on supporting people and that’s why they have stayed that length of time,” Coppel says.

“It’s a great company to work for. Michael Rapino has spearheaded a lot of initiatives particularly in the States but also internationally, to reward the people who put in all those unsociable hours.

“It’s a tough business, very demanding, you have to embrace it to be part of it and be successful.