Thought Leaders Think Ahead: Robyn Williams, Joe Litvag, Chris Dalston, Aaron Tannenbaum & Angie Rho, Wayne Forte, Judi Marmel, Peter Schwenkow

 2020 was a year like no other (see Pollstar’s 2020* Year-End Hub). That, we know. What we may not know is how this difficult year impacted and motivated top execs in the live business to strategize. In part six of Pollstar’s Year-End Thought Leaders Think Ahead Survey series, Portland’5 Robyn Williams, DWP’s Joe Litvag, CAA’s Chris Dalston, Aaron Tannenbaum & Angie Rho, Entourage Talent and NITO’s Wayne Forte, Levity Live’s Judi Marmel, and DEAG’s Peter Schwenkow give their insights into their year, how they adapted to the challenges and opportunities and what lies ahead.

–

Robyn Williams, CVE
Executive Director,  Portland’5 Centers for the Arts

In terms of scale and impact, how would you describe 2020 and the current crisis’ challenges and impact on your business?
 Can you print it has been a “shit storm”??? OMG. We prepare for a lot of things in the venue world but we never thought we’d ever see “zero business”. Our first half of the fiscal year was doing really well then suddenly we’re totally shut down in the middle of a 4 week run of “Frozen.” Now it’s primarily a focus on how to stay alive until we can do events again-which means social distancing has to go away. We’ve laid off more than 50% of our full time staff and all the part time event staff are in a no-hours work status. So far we’ve cobbled together funding to keep us up and running through the end of our fiscal year-no easy feat as we didn’t qualify for a lot of CARES funding because we are governmentally owned and operated. We have the bare minimum staff necessary to keep our 5 theaters healthy and to keep booking the venues until we can re-open.
 
What strategies have you and your businesses implemented and/or are you considering implementing to address these challenges?  
We became a GBAC Star accredited venue plus staff have been deeply involved in venue re-opening strategies so we feel pretty prepared on the re-opening front. But we’ll be opening in a very weak financial position so we’re focusing on how to do what we do with smaller staff. We are going position by position and asking “Do we need this level? Can the work be handled by someone else? Can we combine jobs? Is this position even needed?” Plus we’re combing through our operational procedures and questioning each one. “Should we be doing this? Can we shed this process?” We’re also looking at technology and how it can be used to make us more efficient and create more time saving between departments and staff. We’re also strategizing on how to build more robust reserves even as we work our way out of this quagmire.
 
With vaccinations reportedly on the near horizon, better testing technology, accrediting organizations, industry sanitization and safety protocols being established, a new Presidential administration and more, when and how do you anticipate the industry coming back?
Venues like mine-where social distancing is virtually impossible and wouldn’t make sense economically-won’t likely be allowed to open without a vaccine. We would love to see re-opening in summer of 2021 but feel it is probably more realistic to shoot for fall. I think recovery from COVID after the holidays will be slow but hopefully the vaccine can get widely distributed and people will get one! I think we’ll all come back leaner. Something as catastrophic as this won’t leave us unchanged. We’re approaching our reopening as if we were a brand new venue and opening from scratch. We’ll leverage this time to strategize how to come back better and stronger. We’ll also know what a pandemic can do and the need to prepare for something that nine months ago we never thought of as a possibility. We’re going to need to work hard to convince audiences that we’re a safe place to be and to come back into a theater. Our cleaning will be out front and visible and not “behind the scenes” as it was in the past. I’m hopeful though as I think people are desperate to get back to seeing live events.

Pollstar’s 2020* Year-End Hub

–

Joe Litvag

President of Live Entertainment, Danny Wimmer Presents

In terms of scale and impact, how would you describe 2020 and the current crisis,  its impact on your business and the biggest challenge (or challenges) our industry faces? 
2020 has been devastating for all of the obvious reasons.  No business owner or executive ever wants to be in a position of drastically diminished revenue and company layoffs, not to mention the health and safety implications and tremendous loss-of-life brought on by a pandemic.  But like every other business in this industry, DWP has had to face it head on.  Given that we were completely vested in the festival business prior to the COVID outbreak, the impact on us has been significant.  The biggest challenge for DWP thus far has been the constantly moving timeline targets along the way.  It’s been difficult to plan strategically for the near, intermediate, or long term future when each week it seems timelines related to testing, treatments, preventative measures, and vaccines keep changing.  

What strategies have you and your businesses implemented and/or are you considering implementing to address these challenges?
If there’s any positive from all of the challenges of 2020, it’s that DWP has taken control of its situation and is making the best of it.  We had just closed a new round of capital investment prior to COVID, and the pause in festivals as a result has really given us the ability to utilize this time to reorganize, reevaluate our priorities, and strategically add to our team.  We’ve now actually accelerated the planned expansion of our overall business into new key areas like digital stream creation and distribution, live touring (socially distanced for the time being), venue management and booking, and agency services and consultation.  This expansion will create diversification and will compliment our festival business when it returns.  We think that DWP is really well positioned now to make positive strides forward in 2021 and beyond.  

With vaccinations reportedly on the near horizon, better testing technology, accrediting organizations, industry sanitization and safety protocols being established, a new Presidential administration, when and how do you anticipate the industry coming back?
That’s the billion dollar question, right?  At DWP we don’t consider ourselves optimists or pessimists.  We are realists. We believe that the good news we’ve been handed over the last month is really encouraging, and for that we’re thankful.  But we also believe that the timing of the recovery may take longer than some predict for a variety of reasons, so we are fluid with our plans.  While many of the DWP live show and tour models for 2021 are currently based on socially distanced configurations, we also have some built in flexibility with each of our setups to adjust to more open footprints if things move faster than anticipated with vaccines, municipal guidelines and the rebuild of consumer confidence.  Our team has done an incredible job in the interim of keeping up to date with the changing conditions and will continue to keep an open mind to new ideas and advances as they are known.  

DWP’s opinion right now is that most of 2021 will be in a constant transition phase of re-opening, and that segments of the industry, particularly those that appeal to the younger demographics will gain confidence quickly and will build faster than the those that appeal to older demographics, which will take more time.  But things will progress month by month next year, and by spring 2022 we think the industry will be back and fully integrated into the new normal.  In the meantime, we’re grateful for all of the positive feedback and support we’ve gotten thus far from our new and current partners, agents, managers, artists and our loyal base of fans around the country.  It’s been uplifting for all of us. We know for a fact that all live events will return eventually, and DWP is ready when they do!

Chris Dalston
Music Agent, Co-Head of International Touring, CAA

In terms of scale and impact, how would you describe 2020 and the current crisis’ impact on your business and the biggest challenge (or challenges) our industry faces?
Hopefully there will never be another year like 2020. We have never seen anything to this scale. The year was going to be a bumper year and then it literally all ground to a halt in March. We all became doctors and experts on something we did not understand or comprehend and we were all wrong. Originally it was going to be over by the summer and boy were we wrong. Over the last nine months we have been taught to distance from everyone. Now with a vaccine becoming more likely and we start our business again, we now have to convince people that it’s going to be okay to gather in mass again. Consumer confidence will be low and we will need to convince people that our events are safe. Not unlike September 11th when the airlines had to convince the public it was safe to fly again, we need to do the same with mass gatherings. It will also be challenging to get the economy flowing again and for people to find the discretionary income to attend shows.
 
I personally think as hard as the last nine months have been, the hardest part may be ahead while the business tries to start up again. Hopefully in 2022 we will all be saying how busy we are, how much traveling we need to do and god I wish I had some time off. 

–

Aaron Tannenbaum
Music Agent, CAA

What strategies have you and your businesses implemented and/or are you considering implementing to address these challenges?
2020 has been an incredibly challenging year to make long and short term strategic plans. For me the strategy has been to stay flexible, educate myself, and lean into the relationships and partners that I trust.  Flexibility has allowed me to pivot quickly as new information or opportunities become available.  In terms of education,  Angie Rho in Business Affairs has been an incredible leader advising and educating us on the potential legalities of mass gatherings, not only to protect our clients, but also the patrons. Being a good student has helped me immensely in advising and planning for client’s short and long term goals. Lastly, and I think most importantly, is trust…it is the backbone this business is based on in my view. I’ve always felt this way but 2020 has emphasized to me that with increased uncertainty, you want to be working with partners that you can count on to do the right thing on behalf of the client. Despite everyone’s best efforts, it is virtually impossible to game out every eventuality when confirming an event in this current climate. 2020 has shown us that in a dramatic way. What you are left with is, will this partner do the right thing when the chips are down or not?
 

–

Angie Rho
Head of the Music Touring Department’s Business Affairs Group, CAA

With vaccinations reportedly on the near horizon, better testing technology, accrediting organizations, industry sanitization and safety protocols being established, a new Presidential administration, when and how do you anticipate our industry coming back?
While all of the most recent indicators listed above and others, such as successful shows and sporting events occurring in other parts of the world, are great data points as we imagine our future, the timing of them coming together is difficult to pinpoint. Enough have to come together to create consumer confidence. That said, if we have relaxed restrictions nationally as a result of accurate testing, vaccinations, and safety protocols, and we can start playing shows in late spring into the summer, it would be a great thing for the live business to have momentum into the fall. We know getting to meaningful show volume requires us to take initial small steps, so those early shows will not likely look anything like what we knew before March 2020 but we have to start somewhere. In addition, we may very well be living with some of the protocols for longer than we initially anticipate.
 
Sports and their experiments in conducting events and even limited public gatherings has been a great way to troubleshoot the issues we will face as well as we open up touring. Given CAA’s interests in the traditional media and the sports worlds, we have been keenly focused on thinking through as many issues as possible related to public events. In this regard, sharing information with and picking the brains over at CAA ICON, one of our divisions focused on strategic consulting for sports and entertainment facility owners and operators, sports leagues, and franchises, has been invaluable as the issues and shared risk among all of us as stakeholders in the live music business means we are on the same team. We share the goal of instilling confidence in ticket-buying consumers and keeping them safe as we get back to the dynamic, vibrant business we all know the live business to be.

–

Wayne Forte

CEO, Entourage Talent; NITO Executive Board

In terms of its scale and impact, how would you describe 2020 and the current crisis, its impact on your business and the biggest challenge (or challenges) our industry faces? 
100% NO business for me as of mid-March, and there are many challenges for me as well as the many other businesses within our industry:

1) Retaining key personnel. As the pandemic drags on, it becomes a greater and greater challenge to maintain personnel. In the smaller and independent businesses, many, if not all of these people are like family. The decisions are tough and it becomes a matter of depleting necessary capital to start back up or letting go of ‘key’ personnel that are integral to the business.

2. Being able to put actual ‘tours’ together, which many of the artists/bands need to be able to go out on the road and earn a living. Limited capacity situations and ‘one-off’ engagements do not work for 90% (or more) of the touring artists.

3. Testing at shows when the touring business begins to open again. Irrespective of vaccines (which we do not know the long range effects or results of) and social distancing alone won’t totally solve the problem. We are not certain how many people will actually agree to be vaccinated (currently, surveys have shown the number is in the area of 40-50%) and current thinking is that we will need between 60-70% to achieve herd immunity (which still doesn’t totally solve the problems of people being in groups and those that have the virus NOT infecting others).

4. Time is an issue.  It will likely take more than a year from now (and it’s already been 9 months) to get back to ‘normal’. Some current thinking leads some to believe that it could take until well into 2022 before things BEGIN to “normalize” and it could take as long as 4-6 years for things to be totally back to normal, including our economy.

What strategies have you and your businesses implemented and/or are you considering implementing to address these challenges? 
I have let go my office lease and relocated temporarily into much a smaller space, since we are currently all working from home anyway. I think it will remain that way through most, if not all, of next year. I have traded in the major portion of rent and utilities in order to maintain covering the salaries and insurance for my employees.  In addition, 14 of us independent booking agencies banded together back in April to form NITO (National Independent Talent Organization), a non-profit trade association, in order to have a seat at the table and a voice in Washington in order to advocate for ALL the independent talent representatives (and indirectly their represented talent, crew, production people, etc.) during this crisis. We plan to move forward into the future advocating for and representing our independent live talent representatives and touring professionals.
 
With vaccinations reportedly on the near horizon, better testing technology, accrediting organizations, industry sanitization and safety protocols being established, a new Presidential administration, when and how do you anticipate the industry coming back?
I believe I have answered this in my initial statements under 1: It will likely take more than a year from now (and it’s already been 9 months) to get back to ‘normal’. Some current thinking leads some to believe that it could take until well into 2022 before things BEGIN to “normalize” and it could take as long as 4-6 years for things to be totally back to normal, including our economy.

–

Judi Marmel
Co-Founder/Partner, Levity Live

In terms of scale and impact, how would you describe 2020 and the current crisis, the current crisis’ challenges, and impact on your business?
You couldn’t have people inside a small building to laugh. You couldn’t have people inside a large building to laugh. It’s huge. It decimated us, not as bad as, obviously, the music side, because we still had some clubs that could come open, and popped open here and there. The challenging side was we were constantly in a situation of, “Oh, this club is open. Now they’re closed.” From a routing perspective it was like playing whack-a-mole every week with what venue is going to be open that you could put a comic in.

What strategies have you and your businesses implemented and/or are you considering implementing to address these challenges?
Bert Kreischer said to me late March, he was the very first person, before anybody was talking about drive-ins, he said to me, “I want to do drive-ins.” And we knew immediately that he had the act to be able to make that work. It isn’t something that every comic can cut through the clutter and make work, but it certainly was with him. So we went out and were immediately trying to figure out how to string together these, what are basically mom and pop’s across the country. And we ended up meeting Matt Feldberg at Hotbox, who was basically an EDM guy, and got on the phone with him, and was like, “You don’t know anything about comedy. You don’t know how it works.  And he was like, “That’s true, but I’m willing to learn, and I’ve cracked the circuit.”

After many conversations, he convinced me that it was worth trusting him with Bert to do this. And we went out with the assumption that we would probably do maybe four to six of them. And we started doing them the end of June, and we just wrapped right after Thanksgiving, and we ended up doing over 40 shows abd I think he was the highest grossing artist that did any of the drive-in shows. Wildly successful, sold out, adding multiple shows. I think he was very much the success story. And I think the model of what we did with Hotbox was then something ta number of people went at hard to duplicate, but I don’t think anybody came close to duplicating the success that he had with it, both creatively and financially.  It was to really make it like a barnstorming, “America, we feel you. You are hurting, we’re coming to you.” So a lot of it was not traditional big cities. They were very, very small markets. They were the Fort Collins, the Grand Junctions, they were definitely more feeder markets. But I thinkthe feeling was, we’re going to bring the comedy, we’re going to bring the entertainment to you. So we spent a lot of money on the setup being really good, so that the sound and lighting were really good. And he rented a bus and he brought four other comics with him. So the value of the show people saw was incredible. But I think that we also did a really amazing job capturing it all for social media and people following the tour. It became the thing that you could tailgate for safely. We had no COVID cases, but you could fill up your pickup truck with your friends, and have your own hot tub, and have your own grill, and be outside. But I think that the messaging behind it that was different was, “We’re coming to you, America, no matter where you are. And we’re going to give you a hell of a show in a few hours of your time. And even if you only forget for a few hours, you’re going to forget for a few hours and you’re going to have a good time with us.

With vaccinations reportedly on the near horizon, better testing technology, accrediting organizations issue sanitation and safety protocols being established, a new presidential administration, and more, when and how do you anticipate the industry coming back?
Well, obviously, we’re already seeing rapid testing, is going to be something I think you’re going to see for January, February, early March, the rapid testing is going to make a big difference in people going out, whether it’s casinos or different venues. I think for the upper echelon, that’s where you’re going to see the activity. But I doubt that’s an affordable option for the masses. But I do think that in the same breath that you see all of these people sitting in these long lines at Dodger Stadium waiting for a COVID test, if you change that and it ends up becoming a vaccine, I think you’re going to see masses of people taking the vaccine. And I would say by late April, early May, you’re going to see it start affecting attendance in every kind of venue. And I think by June, it’s going to be the roaring twenties. And I think people are going to consume more live entertainment and more comedy than you’ve ever seen previously. I think the pent up demand for it. Look, comedy has always been a high card every time there was a war, post 9/11, we’ve seen comedy as sort of the ointment for how people recover.  I think that the combination of comedy and a shared experience live is going to make it the hot ticket next year. And I think that you’re going to see people consuming it every way possible from small to large through the end of the year.

–

Professor Peter Schwenkow

Founder, CEO. DEAG Deutsche Entertainment AG

In terms of scale and impact, how would you describe 2020 and the current crisis’ impact on your business and the biggest challenges?
Without a doubt this worldwide pandemic has been like a meteorite strike for the entire live entertainment industry. This crisis has had an impact on every single player in the industry which makes this situation incomparable to previous crises. From one day to the other the entire live entertainment industry was imposed with a one hundred percent ban on working – “first one out, last one in” has so far unfortunately been the motto for this major industry. For DEAG so far the biggest challenge has been to convince the insurance company to pay for every damage caused by the Covid 19 pandemic.
 
 What strategies have you and your businesses implemented and/or are you considering implementing to address these challenges?  
In the course of this year we have taken different measurements: we successfully cut costs, applied for government subsidies and also developed new products, e.g. installing Covid 19 test stations and provide services for vaccination centers. We also use the time to develop further promising concepts.  
 
With vaccinations reportedly on the near horizon, better testing technology, accrediting organizations, industry sanitization and safety protocols being established, and more, when and how do you anticipate the industry coming back?
 Currently we are assuming that in spring (April / May) events with capacities of up to 5.000 people will be feasible, in autumn next year we will probably have again arena shows and bigger open air festivals should follow in summer 2022.