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Size Matters In Germany: The Bigger They Come, The Higher They Go (Annual Germany Focus 2024)
Size isn’t everything, but it counts for a lot in the current economy, where the pressures from rising costs across the board seem to be most manageable if you’ve got a stadium crowd, ideally with a large portion of VIP experience buyers, or a fully sold-out arena tour. The artists that can do that are limited.
In Germany in 2024, they include Coldplay, Taylor Swift and P!NK in the stadium category; Justin Timberlake, Karol G and Madonna in arenas. Domestically, Roland Kaiser continues to be a mainstay, selling 40,000-plus tickets at venues like Leipzig’s Red Bull Arena, or Cologne’s Rhein Energie Stadion, grossing north of $3 million on each occasion. Helene Fischer, Germany’s bonafide stadium act, will only tour again in 2026. Inside arenas, Apache 207 is the man of the hour. The rapper and singer has been performing up and down the country since May, selling 321,365 tickets at a $21,641,223 gross, based on 16 box office reports submitted to Pollstar since then. That’s an average of 20,085 tickets per show. German cult rock band Böhse Onkelz are about the wrap their 12-date open-air tour of some of Germany’s prettiest outdoor venues, for which they sold some 300,000 tickets in two hours.
These shows, presented by major promoters including AEG Presents, Live Nation, Eventim Life and DEAG, are the tip of the iceberg. Scrolling through box-office reports submitted to Pollstar, one also finds a number of tours and family shows that sold 60% to 70% of available tickets, sometimes less. This is nothing new, but serves as a reminder that there’s a vast amount of talent out there that isn’t included in the headlines about the ever-booming live entertainment industry. The overwhelming success generated by stadium tours, international and domestic superstars, as well as brand-new mass-scale event concepts like Adele’s Munich residency are a phenomenon. But the speed with which tickets for these shows sell out doesn’t translate to the entire business.
Detlef Kornett, CEO of DEAG, observes “a bit of a reluctance of consumer spending across Europe,” the pressures of making a living in 2024 forced a lot of consumers to budget more carefully. The increased costs for goods and services have also affected the sector, festivals and open airs in particular. “There seems to be a market cleansing going on,” said Kornett.
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The other reason people buy their tickets later is the weather. According to Kornett, “it has become less a matter of if the weather will hit you, than when and how hard it will hit you.” Many people therefore wait until they have a better idea of what the weather is going to be like on event day. “That used to be different,” he continued. “The perception used to be, ‘I need to buy early to secure my place on the festival.’ It gave fans a feeling of comfort to already have their ticket secured. That’s changed, and that makes it more challenging
for every festival producer to finance the entire operation.”
Festivals that have built a loyal customer base over years have it somewhat easier. German EDM mega events Airbeat One and Nature One, which have been around for 20 and 30 years, respectively, are great examples. Others are twin festivals Southside/ Hurricane, as well as Rock am Ring/Rock im Park. Rock am Ring turns 40 next year, Rock im Park 30. At the end of August, more than 90,000 tickets for both events, scheduled June 6-8, 2025, had already been sold.
Hurricane and Southside celebrated a new pre-sale record, after fans snatched up 60,000 tickets in 24 hours after the onsale kicked off. That’s almost half of the available contingent for both events, which are scheduled for June 20-22, 2025. Earlier this year, the promoters of both events – DreamHaus, eventimpresents, and Argo Konzerte for RaR/RiP, and FKP Scorpio for Hurricane/Southside – announced that they would be collaborating closer on these mega festivals going forward.
“Cooperating just makes sense,” Eventim Live MD Frithjof Pils told Pollstar in July, pointing out that Eventim Live has some 2,500 band slots to fill each festival season, which was “a big task,” that made it “immensely important that festival bookers know at all times what’s happening where.” Touching on growth potential within Germany, he said, “we’re very well positioned already, with promoters like Semmel Concerts, FKP Scorpio, DreamHaus, and others. The number of projects we’re adding onto our plates each year in Germany shows that there’s still scope and that the market still has growth potential that all players can tap into.”
While Germany hasn’t yet experienced the wave of festival cancellations and permanent closures that has hit the UK, the country had to bemoan some prominent losses. Melt Festival announced that this year’s edition, July 11-14, was its last. Festival director Florian Czok cited insurmountable changes in the festival landscape as the reason for ending this longstanding event, stating that these changes no longer align with the core values of the festival, which always had a boutique approach. Melt, Czok said, “cannot withstand the developments of recent years without radically altering the festival concept.”
Stuttgart’s Hip Hop Open is another casualty of (price) war. MD Matthias Mettmann said, “The German and global market situation between large solo shows, long-established festivals, changing buying behavior, constantly rising prices for infrastructure and fees, falling sponsorship budgets, lack of funding, and many other big and small scapegoats are forcing us to be realistic, and end this project that is so close to our hearts.”
Looking indoors, a similar picture emerges: the enthusiasm for live can be mostly felt on the blockbuster tours. Stadium and open-air shows are the main driver of growth, according to Michael Brill, CEO of D.Live, which runs several venues in Düsseldorf ranging from 65,000-plus to 13,000 to 4,000 capacity. “We are very satisfied with the booking situation in 2024,” he said. “At Merkur Spiel-Arena, we were able to present a record number of visitors in summer. With a total of three outstanding shows by Coldplay attended by 48,000 fans each, the first time in the arena’s history that a band performed three shows in a row. Mitsubishi Electric Halle and the PSD Bank Dome are also well booked this year. We also welcomed some new formats to our venues, such as the Final Four of the Baller League in the PSD BANK DOME and Red Bull Gameball Royale at Castello Düsseldorf. From a booking perspective, 2024 is just as stable a year as 2023, if not with growth potential in all our venues.”
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Sabine Loos, CEO of Dortmund’s tradition-rich 15,300-cap Westfalenhalle, one of Germany’s oldest yet modern concert venues, also looks back on a successful first half of 2024. “We have already staged numerous highlights — in many cases in front of a sold-out audience,” including concerts by Judas Priest, Scooter, Apache 207, Marius Müller-Westernhagen, and others. There have also been sporting events, including the German men’s and women’s handball teams prep for the Olympic Games in Paris,” she said.
Both Brill and Loos agreed that the effects of COVID have lessened, but emphasized that the current economy was still tough to navigate. Said Brill, “Although the price increase has stabilized in many areas, it remains at a consistently high level. These costs will not decrease short term, but may adjust over a longer period. Companies are trying to mitigate the rise in costs through long-term contracts and strategic partnerships. However, these measures cannot completely halt the general rise in operating costs for venues. The rising costs for personnel and materials have penetrated deep into the value chain and have a lasting impact on calculations.”
Loos confirmed, “increased energy prices, inflation and the need for staff and specialists remain topical. Our solutions are very clear: transparent communication with visitors, a high level of commitment from the organization team, identifying and exploiting potential savings — together with the concert organizers. However, it is also important to continue to offer these promoters added value so that they choose us again and again. We try to achieve this through forward-looking investments — such as in modern LED technology, which opens up new marketing opportunities for us.”
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She emphasized that, “the desire of people to mingle, have fun, experience concerts and events live and up close again can be felt across Germany.” Brill confirmed, “With all the disruptions, challenges, and terrible wars around the globe, live music has become more important to all of our lives than ever before, and I feel honored to be part of our industry.”
As the planned investments of both buildings show, event organizers continue to bank on the big blockbuster events. D.Live plans to open the Open-Air Park Düsseldorf with a capacity for 80,000 people in 2025. Loos said, Dortmund’s Westfalenhalle “is to become even more attractive for major sporting events. Among other investments, the city of Dortmund is planning to invest €3.5 million in modernizing the video and audio technology, the lighting concept and the sound design for high-quality 4k and 8k broadcasts in HD.”
Meanwhile, Germany’s clubs and grassroots venues, just like all over Europe, are having a hard time. Headlines coming out of Hamburg as well as Berlin speak of “Clubsterben,” a dying of clubs. The reasons are manyfold, from the inflationary economy to investors seeking to build hotels or apartments in city centers, where many of these clubs are located. Just before this issue went to print, the German federal cabinet decided to introduce the new category of music clubs into the country’s building code.
As Germany’s Clubcommission pointed out, this meant that the uniqueness of clubs, and the positive effects of music clubs on urban development are finally being recognized, giving local authorities more options for protecting clubs and music venues.