Pollstar Live! Panel Preview: International – Reconfiguring The Global Touring Equation

Pollstar Live!, the world’s largest gathering of live entertainment professionals, returns to Los Angeles April 14-16 and will be held at Loews Hollywood Hotel. The three-day conference is a flagship event for Pollstar magazine with compelling keynotes, panels, roundtables and the Pollstar Awards, celebrating the best in the business, along with plenty of opportunities to network and engage in insightful discussions.

Pollstar Live! kicks off with Production Live!, the one-day companion conference that features panels on all topics related to staging live events, including lighting, video, stage management, sound technique, concert production, regulations, security and more.

Click these links for the Production Live! and the Pollstar Live! schedules. Register for Pollstar Live! here.

Moderator
Gary Hutchinson, EVP of Global Touring & Content, Oak View Group

Speakers
Laura Chiplin, Major Stadium Events Director, Tottenham Hotspur Stadium
Tony Goldring, Agent, Creative Artists Agency
Ashish Hemrajani, Founder & CEO, BookMyShow
Simon Jones, SVP of Global Touring, AEG Presents
Matthew Kittle, Chief Executive Officer, Aramco Stadium
Nidish Varughese, Global Tour Promoter, Live Nation

International. It’s one word that is often used to describe everything happening outside of North America. Which is a lot. This year’s International panel will once again unite some of the best live professionals from across the globe.

There’s AEG Presents’ Simon Jones from the UK, who’ll be able to talk about what it took for Ed Sheeran to route the first fully developed Indian tour in history in 2025, visiting markets that had never seen an international tour come through before. A lot of it was achieved with BookMyShow, which is represented on the panel through Ashish Hemrajani, who’ll explain why the Indian market is ready to repeat this feat again, and again.

CAA’s Tony Goldring will be able to take the global perspective from an agent’s point of view and identify other territories that are worthy of consideration when putting together a world trek. Live Nation’s Nidhish Varughese will be able to do the same from a promoter’s perspective.

One global trend that has shaped this business since COVID is the stadium tour, and multiple speakers will have loads to say about that. Oak View Group International’s Gary Hutchinson can talk about the ins and outs of booking these blockbuster tours and how stadiums are essentially turning into what a UK promoter recently described to Pollstar as “super-sized arenas”. London’s Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, whose 2026 concert season includes confirmed performances by Zach Bryan, Gorillaz, Bad Bunny, BTS, and System of a Down, may be the best example out there right now to make this point, and it’ll be interesting to hear what the building’s Major Stadium Events Director Laura Chiplin has to say.

Matthew Kittle, CEO of Aramco Stadium in Khobar, Saudi Arabia, will not only be able to share how far along the construction the new 47,000-seat, fully air-conditioned, mixed-use project scheduled to open in the fall of this year is, but also how the current military conflict in the region is affecting those plans.

Given this speaker lineup, it stands to reason that the 2026 International panel will serve as a reminder that this business has never been more global, and that a trip across the pond in either direction can be worthwhile for North American artists with the ambition to meet their fans wherever they may be in the world.