Pollstar Live! Panel Preview: So 2026 Is Booked – What Does ’27(!) Look Like?

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
Jarred Arfa, EVP, Independent Artist Group

Speakers
Paul Davis, SVP of Booking, MGM Resorts International
Mike Luba, Forest Hills Stadium, Live Nation
Rob Markus, Senior Partner & Head of International Touring, WME
Lesley Olenik, Senior Vice President of Global Touring, Live Nation
Zack Borson, Music Agent, Creative Artists Agency

While performance revenue is still high, evidence started to surface in 2025 of a slowdown with similar market conditions predicted in 2026, which has industry leaders already looking at the shifting balance between content and demand in 2027. 

“We are bullish on ’27 with the continued growth of different genres of music and establishment of even more global territories as proper touring markets,” offers moderator Jarred Arfa of Independent Artist Group.

Experienced agents and bookers in the thick of planning ahead will discuss which acts plan on working in the year ahead, who is on the bubble and bears watching, the stadium trend and what venues are in the touring sweet spot.

“2027 is shaping up to be a banner year for what I’d call the middle class of touring,” adds Zack Borson of CAA. “With several A-level acts cycling out of their stadium runs – BTS, Harry Styles, Bad Bunny, The Weeknd all finishing major cycles in 2026 – there’s real space opening up in the market. I think we’ll see a meaningful wave of artists graduate into larger venues and onto festival headlining slots that simply weren’t available to them when the top of the market was this congested.”

Topics important to attendees will include some of the new ticketing sales patterns – later buying – and the potential impact on marketing around shows. 

“If costs keep increasing, how do we as an industry manage that while keeping shows affordable?” says Arfa, adding that despite the many challenges, the live business continues to thrive.

Borson is optimistic about 2027, especially the impact of emerging markets.

“The growth in international touring in Africa, India, and East Asia over the last few years has been significant – and I don’t think the industry has fully internalized how structural that shift is,” he says. “These aren’t one-off experiments anymore. We’re seeing year-over-year attendance growth in markets that were largely untouched five years ago, driven by a combination of rising middle-class spending power, new venue infrastructure and artists recognizing there’s real demand that hasn’t been served. … The artists who come out of 2027 as the next generation of headliners are being routed and developed right now.”