2025 Impact Intl. UK/Euro Honoree: Toby Leighton-Pope

TOBY LEIGHTON-POPE
Managing Director
TEG Europe

RIDING THE ‘HEAT’ TO ARENA SUCCESS

Australian live entertainment powerhouse TEG launched its European presence in 2022 and hit the ground running with Toby Leighton-Pope as its European MD. As Pollstar Boxoffice reflects, TEG Europe promoted some of the biggest arena tours in the UK each year since launching: a Busted 20th anniversary arena tour in 2023; a reunion tour by famous UK girl group Girls Aloud in 2024; and the Busted vs. McFly tour this year.

It’s no wonder Leighton-Pope considers his team’s biggest success to have become “very dominant in the UK arena space. We have promoted over 150 arena shows in the past three years, and had the three biggest arena tours in this period.”

The key to these successful tours, according to Leighton-Pope, is heat. “It’s never been harder or easier to sell a large volume of tickets. You just need to have heat around an artist. Without a well-thought-out launch campaign or plan, you will struggle to get off the mark. We have been lucky enough to work with great teams who are willing to do the work at launch to create hot shows.”

Arenas plus heat, it’s a formula that has served TEG Europe well in its three short years operating in the UK, and so the plan for the immediate future is “to continue to build on this.” Another opportunity Leighton-Pope sees is the ability of artists “to leap straight into arenas off just one record, sometimes just a couple of singles. We never had this speed in growth before.”

Remaining challenges include “accessibility and inclusion,” according to Leighton-Pope, “whether it’s ticket affordability, physical access for disabled fans, or diverse representation on stage and behind the scenes. It’s a tough one to crack, but we as an industry are getting better all the time. We are doing, and need to do more here though.”

As the son of an iconic UK agent, Toby Leighton-Pope grew up in the business. He remembers being “5 years old at Reading Rock Festival on the side of the stage thinking this was very cool. And the first time I heard Astral Weeks, it changed my life.”