The Year In The Biz: Market Moves Mark Busy Year & Why Wall Street Still Loves Live

The economy is wrestling with a stubborn and pungent affordability crisis and cratering consumer confidence. Those factors should militate against an industry predicated on discretionary spending and yet Live Nation, to use a large and obvious avatar, reports record revenues nearly every quarter and is all but certain to see 2025 as its best-ever year revenue-wise when its earnings report is delivered in February.

And investors know it. Shares of Live Nation and Grand Ole Opry owner Ryman Hospitality hit all-time highs this year. Sphere Entertainment’s price nearly doubled.

For Live Nation, that’s against a backdrop of regulatory and legal pressure, with lawsuits brought by government actors and consumer plaintiffs swirling and a strategy built around placating the returning occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue not working, as Donald Trump’s populist instincts outweighed his big-business friendly ones, at least on the issue of live entertainment.

Hey, no one’s ever lost an election complaining about Ticketmaster.

Sphere’s recent triumphs come off the overwhelming success of “The Wizard of Oz,” with Dorothy, Toto, et al. proving to be a reliable, every-day cash cow at the Vegas venue.

In addition to the moving and shaking, the market had comings and goings, notably the $25 billion take-private deal that took WME parent Endeavor off the big board in March. Endeavor CEO Ari Emanuel became executive chairman of WME Group — which includes agency WME, along with marketing agency 160over90, brand licensing giant IMG and nonscripted content provider Pantheon Media Group. He stayed on as TKO’s CEO — the combat sports leader is still publicly held — and began gobbling up former Endeavor properties under his own shingle.
Joining the market was StubHub with its IPO becoming fully realized in September. An initial price of $23.50 raised $758 million. Unlike the aforementioned live-connected public companies, StubHub’s had a less than rosy performance. Share prices are roughly half what they were when the company made its debut after its first quarterly earnings underperformed, with company officials blaming uncertain cost pressures and declining to offer fourth quarter guidance. The company now faces a shareholder class action.

That’s an acute and specific headwind for one company, but the question is whether live faces more generalized difficulties going forward.

The annual “Music In The Air” report from Goldman Sachs reported that the music industry had a “hiccup” in 2024, growing 6.2% — respectable, but far less than the 15.6% in 2023. It prompted analysts to revise downward go-forward growth predictions. Even still, the report predicts global revenues approaching $200 billion by 2035; that figure was $105 billion in 2024.
And live is well positioned to weather a downturn.

“Our analysts expect live music to grow at a 7.2% compounded annual growth rate between 2024 and 2030. This is underpinned by demand from millennials and Gen Z. The live music industry shows resilience in times of economic uncertainty. Spending on live music in the US has, in fact, grown during recent recessionary periods,” the analysts wrote.

Cyclical factors may pump the brakes in 2026; at some point, the post-pandemic tour glut must ease, as acts need to get back into the studio, a situation that became apparent at the club and theater level this year. Whether the broader economy proves to be a drag is anybody’s guess.