Features
‘I Had A Ticket, But On The Night Of The Show, I Watched Netflix’: Live UK’s Jon Collins Shares Audience Insights
People love going out to shows. As evidenced by Pollstar’s quarterly reports, this business has never been selling more tickets to concerts, family shows, and sports entertainment than right now. The full picture, however, also shows that the grassroots sector, the independently run venues and festivals, are struggling.
Pollstar spoke with Jon Collins, CEO of the UK’s live entertainment trade body LIVE, which consists of promoters, agents, artists, venue operators, managers, working at all scales of this industry. Among other things, he shared results from a study commissioned by LIVE among 2,000 Britains representing the country’s live audience.
Pollstar: What has your most-recent research into the UK’s live audience revealed?
Jon Collins: The first thing we see is the love of live music remains very strong across the UK public. We do twice yearly research looking at audience perception, and behaviour, and only 10% of the general population say, they don’t think about going to live music. But when you split that into different age groups, you start to see this recurring pattern where the the 18-to-34 market is feeling the broader economic pressures we all know about much more acutely than, say, the 55-plus bracket. When we asked the 18-to-34 year olds, how many wanted to go to gigs in the last 12 months, 88% answered yes, which is roughly in line with the 90% of the total population. But only 50% had been to gigs. When you start to dig into ‘why’, it’s cost of living, disposable income, and lingering post-lockdown habits.
What are some of the questions you asked to answer the ‘why’?
We for example asked, ‘Have you ever bought a ticket and not used it, because you knew you wouldn’t be able to afford the total night out?’ Out of the overall population, about 7% said yes. When you look at 18-to-34 year olds, it jumps to 20% – one in five having a ticket, but when it came to getting into town and back, buying drinks, etc.,
they decided not to go. Amongst the 55-pluses, only 1% say, that’s happened to them.
We also asked, ‘have you ever had a ticket but not used it, because when it came to the night, you just couldn’t be bothered?’ – trying to understand the post COVID psyche, after having been told to sit on the sofa for two years. Of the 18-to-34 year olds, 14%, one in seven, said ‘yes, I’ve done that. I’ve had the ticket, but when it comes to the night of the show, I’ve been sat on the sofa, and watched Netflix. Among the 55-pluses, it was 2%.
We asked quite a number of questions in this space, they all come back showing that disparity between the younger and the the older age group. So, we’re thinking a lot about how to engage those younger audiences to come out.
You hear questions about finding the next generation of headliners being asked a lot. But it sounds like we need to worry about finding the next generation of concertgoers.
And the light, and sound technicians, the tour managers, the artist managers, agents, and promoters – everybody learns their craft at smaller venues to begin with, and then they come through. There is an ongoing inquiry into the grassroots sector in Parliament by the Culture, Media and Sports Committee, about grassroots music, artists, and audiences. How do we protect and support the next generation of talent, the next audience of music lovers?
Aside from asking government for help, what can the business itself do?
We are in the process of establishing a Live Trust, which will be a charitable arm of the organization to raise money from industry initiatives. Like Enter Shikari, who toured the UK towards the end of last year, and dedicated a pound per ticket to supporting grassroots music venues. We’re looking at how that could be more widely adopted. Other initiatives include tap to donate, which has been in place at arenas; Ticketmaster did an initiative last year where they have customers the option to add an incremental 50-pence or Pound-donation at checkout to support the Music Venue Trust. Establishing that Trust is one of the big pieces on my desk at the moment.