Fighting For Fairness

This year’s LIVE UK Summit may be tempting providence by calling its ticketing panel “Fight For Fairness,” as a similar sort of panel at ILMC 2008 came close a brawl.

Even before the ILMC panel got onstage, artist manager Jazz Summers reportedly gestured as if he was about to attack Viagogo chief Eric Baker with a bottle.

 
Either Baker – or Summit organiser LIVE UK magazine – has apparently thought better of having the Viagogo founder turn up to London’s Radisson Blu Portman Hotel Oct. 9-10, as he’s not part of the conference schedule.
Programmes like Channel 4’s “The Great Ticket Scandal” and similar TV consumer affairs investigations in Denmark have turned a contentious live music industry issue into a very public debate and The Summit panel looks to have come at just the right time.
 
Iron Maiden co-manager and Sanctuary Group co-founder Rod Smallwood will likely get in a verbal battle with any secondary ticketer brave enough to fight their corner.
 
Apart from the fans who got turned away because their tickets to see what must be one of their favourite acts were invalid, the TV documentaries and the press reaction to the secondary market appears to be creating a groundswell of public curiosity about just how much extra money is in the trough and who has their snouts in it.
 
It creates an opportunity for the upcoming conference season to add to that groundswell by asking the instigators to come clean, detail the size of the pie and reveal exactly who’s getting big slices of it.
 
“What makes the live industry so exciting is that it’s in a constant state of flux,” said Summit producer and LIVE UK managing editor Steve Parker.
 
The Summit stands out in a very crowded conference season because the UK live music business appears to take it very seriously, which means it can attract such speakers as Solo Agency chief John Giddings, X-Ray Touring’s Steve Strange and Emma Banks from CAA.
 
It’s also got Phil Bowdery, , Live Nation Entertainment president of international touring; John Probyn, LN UK chief ops officer and festival chief; Rob Hallett, AEG Live president of international and Geoff Meall, agent for Muse and managing director of The Agency Group.
 
Along with others, they’ll tackle discussion topics including “The Social Beast,” which is about how bands such as One Direction sell so many tickets through social network sites, “Masters Of The Universe” – or how major London agents know how to add a nought – and “The Music Chamber,” which will have politicians discussing problems (or rubbing shoulders) with the live music biz.
 
“Meet The Agents,” with panelists who were likely trawled from the same circle as “Masters Of The Universe,” will have the bookers discussing how an act gets started, the process of growth from clubs through festivals to arenas and how to break globally and how to make it last.
 
“Captive Audiences” will be a panel that focuses on the fans, the source of 90-plus percent of the live music industry’s revenue, and will discuss whether enough is being done to retain their loyalty. 
 
This time the subject matter may overlap with the “Fight For Fairness” panel.