Michael Rapino

All you ever wanted to know about ticketing, and more!

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:08):
Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to the Bob left Stetts Podcast.
My guest today is CEO and President of Blave Nation,
one and only, Michael Rapino. Michael, good to have you
on the podcast. You just announced this new effort, Vibe.
What exactly is it?

Speaker 2 (00:28):
Biby is a destination event company. As you know you've
probably read over the years, there's more and more of
these on location companies where they're kind of taking the
current events doing a special package VIP. Maybe it's a
destination to see Lionel Richie just in Cabbo for a
thousand people. So anyway, you can kind of create above

(00:52):
and beyond special experiences around an artist event. So it
could be a current event, meaning we could do it
at La La Lose and do a jet in a
backstage and a VIP package. But most of it is
trying to create destination events for artists and fans to
have kind of an exceptional VIP experience.

Speaker 1 (01:14):
So what is already booked for Vibe?

Speaker 2 (01:18):
Well, we got a few going on. We've got a
hotel in can Kun, Mexico, Moon Palace. Luke Bryan the
Grateful Dead have done it there where it's a kind
of a three thousand limited package for three thousand people,
take over the hotel special two days live performance just
for those fans merchandise parties. We've got a couple ship

(01:40):
ideas that we've been working on, Holy Ship, where you
can go on to an Insomniac DC ship for three days.
So you've seen some of these before where the artists
take over the ship and kind of have that destination idea.
So we've got three or four ship projects right now
with DC Insomnia, got some Cabo Mexican, Luke Bryan, Grateful

(02:05):
Dead Adventures, and now we've got Lallapalooza we launched today,
and some of Vegas ideas that I think they'll launch
this week around special Formula one concert VIP experiences, So
just taking the experience VIP above and beyond what you
currently can buy at a typical concert and delivering a

(02:27):
higher end experience to the fan.

Speaker 1 (02:30):
You know, just staying on this. It appears most people
don't know, but the most expensive tickets go first on
most of these conferences. Is there any limit to what
people will pay for a VIP experience?

Speaker 2 (02:47):
You know, I think it's all new territory. You were right,
the house always sells front to back, so you've never
heard me say, you know, I can't sell the front,
but the back sold out. So it's always front back.
And what you see a lot of artists doing today,
even though they get a little bit of press from it,
is charge a bit more for the front. So the

(03:08):
real theory is you can actually charge a bit less
on the back and make sure that last row does
sell out. But right now, Bob, we've seen coming out
of COVID price resistance is not We haven't seen it
anywhere yet. As crazy as some of the secondary stuff
you see online where there are two three hundred times

(03:28):
what a face value is. Those things are selling out instantly,
So we have not seen yet. I don't think the
top end of what does a concert VIP platinum experience
look like if you want to go see that show.
I think this is new. You know, as I say
to my team, we've kind of been operating like American
airlines for a long time. One price not that much

(03:50):
of a variance from top to bottom. Probably a warm
beer and a cold hot dog and good luck. But
the idea that a concert is a memorable experience and
and fans will will pay for an upgraded experience all fans,
not just this isn't just for the rich the one
or two times a year you'll go to that show.

(04:12):
Our fans want a better experience, they want a higher
end experience, and they'll pay for it if we can
deliver it.

Speaker 1 (04:19):
Okay. Needless to say, ticket Master is a hot topic
in the news and Washington DC. You are literally at
the epicenter, So let's kind of drill down explain for
the average person how ticket fees are established.

Speaker 2 (04:38):
Yeah, I'd say it's definitely been the year to start
talking about this because it's been As you you point
out on your newsletter, you kind of understand the inner work.
So if you step back in the simplest context, a
venue wherever you are decides who is going to be
their ticketing company. Generally that venue and the irony of

(04:58):
this idea that we have control generally that venue is
a billionaire that is building a billion dollar plus arena
or stadium, SOFI stadium here in LA. You name the place,
the San Francisco New Arena, So you're the you're you
have a sports team generally, and you call us, you
call seak Geek, you call Access and say I want

(05:19):
an RFP to be who's going to be the exclusive
ticketing company for my business?

Speaker 1 (05:25):
Not not everybody knows what's an RFP is.

Speaker 2 (05:28):
They're gonna they're gonna call all of us and say,
we want you to bid on the rights to be
the exclusive ticketing company for our venue. And generally ninety
percent of time, here are the terms you're We don't
get paid on season tickets. That's a big unknown to
the industry. So we do all that one hundred and
twenty five million tickets that are season tickets. Uh, we don't.

(05:51):
We don't get paid on as a ticketing company. And
you get paid on the single ticket, the the one
off ticket for the game or the concert, and the
van You then dictates how much of the ticket fee
they're going to keep and how much they'll pay you,
and how how big the ticket fee will be. And
that's kind of the let's let's go a little bit slower, right.

Speaker 1 (06:13):
They stand out the RFP request request. We are basically bidding, Yes,
what would typically be in that bid and what would
the varying competitors put in the bid such that then
you might choose one one or the other.

Speaker 2 (06:29):
Well, there's a there's a fundamental technology, basic program to it.
Can you do these things for my team, my venue.
Maybe it's multiple teams and and every team. Uh geez,
we're dealing with the Clippers right now. That's a very
technical r f P because Balmer and Microsoft background is

(06:50):
very different. Are working with Mark Cuban in in Dallas.
So it usually a technical basic basis to the to
the to the bid what they want to get done
with that. With the ticketing company, they's got to work
with this CRM company, it's got to work with their
food and beverage, it's got to work with their access,
it's got to work with their charity. So they kind

(07:12):
of a long technical spec on can your ticket company
deliver all of these different needs we have amongst our businesses.
That's the that's probably the fifty percent of it. Then
the next part is going to be how are you
going to how are you going to market and sell
incremental tickets for us? How are you going to help

(07:33):
us deliver our business? And again that's going to vary, Bob,
as you know, if you're the hot team that sells
out in a minute, that's different. If you're the Phoenix
hockey team, you're looking for the best marketing partner you
can to help you sell tickets. So again it'll vary
on how much the marketing and the and the marketplace
you have matters to the team. And then let's call

(07:56):
the final piece the financial. How much how low will
you deliver the business for? Will you give us an
advance against that a bonus? And is it three five years?
They'll they'll usually dictate those kind of terms. So it's technical, marketing, marketplace,
and then financial.

Speaker 1 (08:18):
Okay, most venues, if not all, do want an advance,
isn't that correct?

Speaker 2 (08:25):
Yeah, most of them are going to ask for some
version of an advance or a bonus based on getting
the contract.

Speaker 1 (08:33):
Okay, And an advance would be recoupable and a bonus
would not be. Yes, okay. So going back to where
we were earlier, the venue is telling you how much
the fee is going to be. Yes, yeah, the venue
is going to define. You know, it's kind of evolved
over the last five ten years. It used to be,

(08:55):
you know, when Fred was on your call. You know,
it was easy in Fred's days. They would just say,
you know, add another dollar to the service fee and
we'll split it fifty to fifty. Today it's kind of
working backwards, where the venue says, I'll pay you three
four dollars a ticket, and then we're going to keep
all the upside and we're going to charge forty six

(09:16):
thirty seven whatever the service fee is. So it's still evolving,
but generally the net number is determined by the venue
because the venue has a net takeaway that they want
to take home from the ticketing business, whether it's a
percentage or whether it's a fee. Okay, and they established

(09:38):
it themselves and ticket Master has no negotiation with that
to raise it or lower it.

Speaker 2 (09:46):
No, and again I'm you know, we can. We can
come to the part where I am the venue Live Nation,
so I can I can walk in that shoe later.
But no, it is a you know, although it doesn't
seem like it on Twitter at times, it's a competitive process.
I mean, you have you know, we're just we just
lost the stadium in Washington. The seat geek. So what

(10:07):
they ask for someone will pay, whether it's US AEG
access to stub Hub seat geek. So if they want
to pay someone two dollars and fifty cents a ticket,
I can go back and say no, I want four
and I want the service fee to be lower, but
they'll go someone else will be standing next door to

(10:28):
me that says we'll do it for two fifty and
charge thirty six bucks.

Speaker 1 (10:31):
So okay, if I own an arena in a major market,
generally speaking, what is the advance in dollars?

Speaker 2 (10:41):
You know, on a it's the team part that's important
that drives most of the economics. So could be a
multi million dollar advance, anywhere from zero to ten million dollars,
could be over for longer term contract.

Speaker 1 (10:59):
Okay, so they're telling you what the fee is going
to be. But if someone is buying, let's focus on
concert tickets, where most of the controversy is the fee
is not the same for every ticket. Usually more expensive
tickets have a higher fee. Can explain that.

Speaker 2 (11:21):
Yeah, I think historically it's been a percentage. If you
look at Macro, the ticket percentage is somewhere in the
twenty to twenty five percent on average, So you're right.
If it's a ten dollars ticket, it's two fifty. If
it's a two hundred dollars ticket, it's twenty percent of that.
Sometimes it can scale from twenty to maybe thirty thirty

(11:43):
percent on the top end. But it's a percentage scaling
that's set out from the beginning, and it goes up
as the ticket price goes up.

Speaker 1 (11:54):
Okay, so let's just say that you have round numbers
and this would be extremely low. The fee is out
of that ten dollars they are going to pay ticket
Master a certain number which is negotiated in advance. Yes,
and okay, so I buy a ticket.

Speaker 2 (12:15):
Which, by the way, because republic we say it loud,
we would typically get two of that ten dollars. They
would get eight, right, which is the real unknown. Right,
that's where the you know you you would assume because
we have to take the punch that says it's the
ticket Master service fee, that we get more of it.

(12:35):
And that's the biggest kind of unknown to date.

Speaker 1 (12:38):
Okay, when I buy a ticket, there are multiple fees.
There is you know, the convenience fee and other fees.
So typically under this paradigm where you have given it
advance to an arena, what would be all the fees
in the ticket as a percentage?

Speaker 2 (13:00):
No?

Speaker 1 (13:01):
No, when you have negotiated with a building. We're using
the example of ten dollars, which is low, you get
two dollars. Let's say but when the customer goes to
buy the ticket, there are more fees than ten dollars.
There are additional fees.

Speaker 2 (13:16):
What are those could depend You could have a facility
fee which the venue would charge. That would be all
of their fee. So venues have a facility fee. Credit
card fee is separate. That's a small percentage that is
exactly what it is. It goes to the credit card company,
and it might there might be or it might be

(13:39):
dressed in a ordering fee which covers the ordering fee,
which would be the credit card fee within that that
might be three four percent as an ordering fee where
covers a credit card fee, and the venue and ticket
master would split that on that same kind of percentage.
So facility fee, ordering fee, service fee would be your

(14:01):
three typical fees.

Speaker 1 (14:04):
And since the building is really at the heart of this,
why would there be a facility fee in addition?

Speaker 2 (14:12):
I think that's just another way the venues have looked
to say, how can I get some revenue per ticket?
And we could. We're going to come later to whether
this is just or not, but I'm so now we'll
just talk to the technical part. But I think it's
a revenue stream that the venues put in place years
ago to gather revenue per ticket.

Speaker 1 (14:32):
And that is determined in advance. And is that a
percentage number?

Speaker 2 (14:36):
Now that's the venue add on.

Speaker 1 (14:38):
That would be with the venue of charge, and that
would be across all events sports, concerts, rodio.

Speaker 2 (14:46):
Generally. Yes, you know, again there's always going to be
someone going to tweet exceptions to the rules to all
of this, but yes, in generality, generally you would have
a facility fee on all your events. If you were
charging facility fees.

Speaker 1 (14:58):
Okay, using this ten dollars, ticket master gets two dollars.
Doesn't the promoter also share in the fees?

Speaker 2 (15:07):
No? Now you know this is like pulling one block
of jingle right, where does one? Where? Does? Where? Does
one get paid? Typically the venue is paying the promoter,
so you can in theory say did he pay the venue?
Did he pay the promoter out of his eight dollars,
or did he pay it out of his facility fee,
or did he pay it out of his parking fee?

(15:29):
But generally a venue has to incentivize the promoter to
bring shows, so there would be a promoter fee at
some sometimes that the venue would pay that would come
out of some version of their of their fees or
their revenue line, but we don't see it. And you know,
when you're doing a settlement at the end of the night,

(15:50):
the promoter doesn't have a cut of the fees. That's
that goes to the venue direct, and then whatever rent
and venue deal you have with the venue is separate.

Speaker 1 (16:00):
Okay, but the rent in the there's rent, right, But
you're also saying there's another line item where essentially the
building is paying you to have your concert in that building.

Speaker 2 (16:14):
They're called rebates. You've probably heard of them over time.
You know. The way the venue would work is if
you have a big arena and probably three arenas maybe
in town, it's competitive. So you would come to me,
you'd come to aeg, you would come to any promoter,
and you would try to incentivize them and say, listen,
if you could bring ten shows a year, we'll pay
you five dollars a ticket. If you could bring twenty

(16:36):
shows and thirty shows. So they're going to try to
provide an incentive or rebate to bring scale and more
shows to their venue if you can as an added incentive.

Speaker 1 (16:48):
Okay, So let's just use the concert example. Ticket Master
revenue stream other than the percentage other than a couple
of dollars on the then you feed, are there any
other income streams for ticket Master?

Speaker 2 (17:06):
No, that's the complete business model is a percentage of
the fees.

Speaker 1 (17:12):
Okay, needless to say what you have saying, these are
costs that are going to be built in. The costs
are never going to go away. Just for some people, understand,
even though you and we have discussed this, the position
of ticket Master Live Nation is you're all for an
all in ticket price.

Speaker 2 (17:32):
Yeah, I would say that if you were a you know,
whether you're a small club owner or a Live Nation
you have a venue or these arenas that are spending
a billion dollars on their venues. The reality is the
artist has done a great job over the last ten
years or taking more of the door as you know,
so there's not any dollars left on the gross ticket.

(17:53):
The ticket goes to the artist. So as that kind
of has expanded. In order to pay for the venue,
to pay for the staff, to pay for your costs,
the service fees have become the revenue line. But you're right,
if you you couldn't take the service fee away and
then stay to the venue. Let's put the show on
the venue would say, well, who's paying all the costs?

(18:15):
I got to get paid, so they could crank up
the rent and stay to the artist. Hey, now the
rent's going to be a lot more money. And then
then the artist is going to say, okay, they're not
to charge higher ticket prices, so you wouldn't net it.
The same result is there is I think I think
Garstad at best on stage, there's one pizza to get
the show done. It isn't forty eight dollars, it's seventy six.

(18:37):
So the quicker we decide that it's a seventy six
dollars experience, the better will be as an industry than
what we're doing today. And you know, I use example
of Amazon. When I buy that hammer at Amazon, I
think it's a great deal. Now if I if they
said to me the hammer's five dollars, but the Amazon
service fee is four, I would think that's horrible. But

(18:59):
you know Amazon, Apple charge thirty to fifty percent distribution fees,
So call this fees the distribution fee the margin. The
challenge in our industry is we have we have kept
the margin the distribution cost, if you want to call it,
outside of the price generally in industries, when you buy
something at Walmart or Target, it's all built in the north.

(19:22):
Stroms gets paid that the Calvin client gets paid, the
distribution costs are paid, and it's ninety nine dollars to
buy the jenes our business for many reasons, it's stayed outside. So, yes,
we are, we as an industry think the We don't
think they're junk fees. We don't think there's service fees
that are just beautiful add ons to make a ton
of money. We're a very low margin company, so we

(19:44):
we we certainly are. Our numbers are public and financial
show you that we're not. We're not making a ton
of money on service fees other than the what you
need to pay for staff costs, structure and then have
a return on your capital.

Speaker 1 (19:58):
Okay, just to get this nailed down, your position is
you would go to an all in ticket price. You're
pro that position.

Speaker 2 (20:08):
Yes, we're we're happy pro Jam announced it today on
their tour. We're we're talking to others. We would we
would tomorrow go all in pricing. We need we would
love the industry to do it. I mean New York
went to all in pricing. We're the only person doing
all in pricing right now, no one's monitoring it. You

(20:30):
go go to New York right now and try to
buy a ticket at subhub or seek geek, No one's
No one's following the all in pricing mandate law that's
been put in place there. Because we know, if you
one guy says it's seventy six dollars and one person
said it's forty two, but really seventy six, check out,
you're going to win on Google every day of the
week on the forty two dollars ticket. So to be

(20:52):
to be a level playing field for everybody, you would
want everyone to have to show the right price upfront.
So yes, we think that. We think showing the fan
the real price to go to the show upfront is
better for everybody.

Speaker 1 (21:05):
Okay, what is impeding this process? Why can't it happen?

Speaker 2 (21:14):
Well, I think, you know, I think his StubHub tried
it a few years ago, five years ago, six years ago,
you know, and they ended up pulling out of it
and inciting that their business went down fifteen to twenty percent.
I think that's scared most people. You looked at that
and went, geez, if I'm going to be the only
solo player moving. That's a big hit. So I think

(21:38):
the date we all have probably been scared of. Do
I want to absorb any of the leakage in that
mission because you're going to do it on your own.
The artists aren't going to give you a break. Then
no one's going to give you a break that the
venue's not going to say that's too bad. Will help
you out here? If you're going to go, you're going
to go. I think we've been scared to date, and
then obviously COVID came. We all just had to get

(22:00):
ourselves back together and back on the horse. So I
think to date it's been the fear of the unknown.
Will it hurt your sales? Will the agent artists ask
for more money because they now say it's all one?
Is it better to keep it separate? I think the
sports teams have always done it separate for different reasons too,
So I think to date there's been a fear of

(22:23):
the unknown if you went all in. I think at
this point though, we have to start acting more like
the leader and standing stronger and taking some of the
short term pain for the longer term win.

Speaker 1 (22:36):
Well forgetting the resale market, which is where stub Hubbs
experience was and still is. You have all these acts
using round numbers, once again saying I said the price
was fifty dollars, but the checkout price was eighty dollars,
and that's terrible. So to what degree do the artists

(22:58):
not want all inke at pricing.

Speaker 2 (23:01):
I think it's I think it's split. I mean, as
you know, there's no one artist. There's you know, some
want the money and and some want twenty dollars tickets.
And there's a spectrum, right, there's no there's no I
wish I always joke I wish I saw Adam Silver yesterday.
I wish I had a I wish I was a
commissioner and can mandate a few a few few things

(23:22):
here and there. But we're dealing with fifteen hundred different
managers and artists a year, and they all have different
agendas and different parts of their life cycle. And and
so you're right, there are going to be some artists
that say, no, screw you. I'm not going to say
it's an eighty dollars ticket, it's fifty. Some artists like
Pear Jam, we're gonna say, I get it, let's let's

(23:42):
let's make it fair and do what's right. So you're right,
it hasn't been something to date. You know, this is
an industry we talk about is Live. It's very very unorganized.
As you know. The recording side is a bit more organized.
They've got you know, they got lobbyists, they've got kind
of organized, the Grammy's, the Riria. There's really no there's

(24:03):
no organization and Live we always joke the only actual
organization is the Ticket Broker Association. We're a really good lobbyists,
but there is not even a lobbyist group for us
as an industry, so we don't do well as an
industry making smart moves holistically. You're right. So I think
we're going to have to just move forward Live with

(24:24):
some short term pain of some artists or others, but
I think it's right for the fan and the experience overall. Now, Bob,
I would say, I don't want to you know, let's
go to the second part. I don't want to say
that there aren't times when the service fee is too
high and that doesn't have to be addressed too. This
isn't just jam all the service fees in. Put it
in one price so we can hide it there are

(24:45):
as you saw with the Cure. I think we do
have to look at some of our businesses on the
lower end ticket prices, the clubs, theater. I do think
as an industry we probably do have to absorb a
bit better and think a little smarter at what is
the add on fee because I think I think although
it's justified, I don't think it's justified probably at every
ticket price point. So we probably as an industry need

(25:07):
to be smarter there.

Speaker 1 (25:15):
Okay, let's be very specific since you brought it up,
what exactly happened with the cure because ten dollars were
given back, which is a first, right, you.

Speaker 2 (25:26):
Know, it was again when you you know, the system
isn't really built for artists like Robert the cure, right,
We're usually do a running fast put the ticket on sale,
and we kind of are proud of the ticketmaster's side.
We did a ton of work with Robert making sure
it was a non transferable, that it would be then

(25:46):
face valued exchange, and we kind of got verified and
doing all we could to put all the roadblocks to
help him deliver his ticket price to the fan. But
he's so active on Twitter, as you know, there was
a screenshot of a venue which wasn't even a Live
Nation venue. It was an amphitheater that we don't own

(26:06):
that showed a the ticket service fee of the twenty
on the twenty. Which it doesn't matter whether we justify
that the service fee is a good idea or not.
We have an industry where we got to build some
credibility back. So Robert reached out to me. We talked
about it. I couldn't defend that in any version of life,

(26:27):
we were going to add a twenty dollars service fee
to a twenty dollars ticket. So I made the decision
that we would go in, spend some money and help
on this case, give back the ten dollars, and get
it to a reasonable place for those fans.

Speaker 1 (26:42):
Okay, let's be very specific where did the ten dollars
come from? Because using the earlier paradigm on the fees,
the venue takes most of the money.

Speaker 2 (26:54):
Right, we went to the venues and said we're going
to reduce it by ten and we will eat the
car if you don't want to join us well as
a one time hit, we'll take the cost to make
this right. And I'd say half the venue said listen,
will help you out. The other other half said good luck,
eat it. So it was a fast, moved, fast decision,

(27:18):
and we thought it was worth the million dollars or
so to say, let's let's let's make the right message
with an artist that does care to this level.

Speaker 1 (27:28):
But if you leave all emotions out, is it reasonable
to expect to see the Cure for twenty dollars in
an arena which only holds fifteen to twenty thousand people.

Speaker 2 (27:42):
No, I think you're I think the you know, I
think the pricing of concerts in general, I don't think
we should. I think there's this fine line between yes,
we want it accessible, but I think it's a great
art and I think there's a price to it, and
I don't think we should fool ourselves. The fans will
not pay, especially the cure age fans that will not

(28:03):
pay for the great show. But as I said, my
job isn't a debate whether the artist wants to take
all the money or give or or or or or
Zach or Cure want to charge too little. I'm just trying.
My job is just deliver that platform for them. In
this case, I think I think we were we thought
we'd be better off to respond and address it than

(28:26):
leave it. Leave it as is.

Speaker 1 (28:28):
Okay, now Live Nation owns, clubs and smaller venues. Based
on what you just said, you believe in your owned
venues that you should address the fees because in some
cases you think they're inappropriate and too high.

Speaker 2 (28:50):
Yeah, listen, I think as a I think we are.
If you look at our fee structure, we're no different
than AG or Independence anywhere else. Sports concerts, nine to thirty,
club AG, We're all in the same ballparks. We're all
charging facility fee, service fees. We all have the same
economic challenge of running a venue, paying staff and as

(29:12):
you read about inflation, staff costs up, insurance costs, So
we're all in the same predicament. But I do think
as the leader, we probably have to make we have
to start acting and moving a little bit more on
the younger developing artists club and low ticket price. So yes,
I do look at my twenty dollars amphitheater tickets or

(29:35):
a twenty dollars ticket in general, and I don't care
if it's rational right now that we got to pay
staff and we have costs and the service fees should
be what it should be to a fan right now,
We've got to build some trust back, So I think
we got to go all in pricing. But I do
think at Live Nation we'll look at the lower end
ticket prices in the theater and clubs and say, can

(29:57):
we also scale them back and make sure or we're
a defendable fee on a service on a ticket price. Okay, well,
now we might have allay other ways Bob to get
revenue to pubblement that. But I think it's been too
easy to add a dollar to the service fee. And
I think I think at a certain point of fans
says listen, I get it. I even get a twenty percent.

(30:18):
We've done the research. I understand the service fee paid staff,
and I understand it. One, don't surprise me at the end.
Please tell me upfront. Two if it's more than twenty percent,
I don't understand it. Where's it going doesn't seem fair.
So I think we are looking at we got to
do a better job of saying where it's going and
how it's broken out. That would be a start. But

(30:40):
if we go all in pricing, I do think we
still also have to look at the bottom end of
the lower end and make it more accessible.

Speaker 1 (30:47):
Okay, as I say, a lot of people listening to
this are emotionally invested but don't know all of the process.
So let's start with the process of how Live Nation
gets a date or a tour and how the money
is established, both the paybact and what the ticket prices

(31:08):
will be.

Speaker 2 (31:11):
So an artist has an agent, and whether they are
selling a local date to an arena or a club
show in Philadelphia, or maybe the agent is trying to
sell twenty or thirty dates together as a tour. That
agent's going to call the promoters. Whether it's Live Nation,
it's going to be aeg, it's going to be the

(31:33):
local promoter, seth another planet. There's always a local promoter.
So the agent's going to call three promoters and say,
bandex wants to play October one in Chicago. Make us
an offer, and they might you know, they might say

(31:53):
here's the ticket price or not at the beginning, it'll
depend on the artist. But we want to an arena
or a theater on October one in San Francisco. Make
us an offer. We'll come in, we'll come we'll run
the math. Look at the arena. Thirteen thousand seats what
did they do last time, sixty nine, thirty nine, one

(32:14):
hundred and ten. Look at their scaling, they sold out,
didn't sell out. Put that math together and say, you know,
we think we think there's this business that is going
to sell eighty percent of the tickets. We think it's
a four hundred thousand dollars guarantee. And we'll send back
that guarantee and say four hundred thousand dollars against a
thirty fifty and one hundred and ten dollars scaling agent

(32:37):
will take all three of those. Generally come back to
all three of us and say we want four fifty.
Highest bid is four fifty, And now the ticket prices
gets rescaled based on the guarantee. So now your ticket
price will go to one twenty and seventy nine and

(32:57):
sixty nine. So you can look to scale and gross
that number at the door.

Speaker 1 (33:03):
So in your original bit, your original offer, you do
put in ticket price points.

Speaker 2 (33:10):
As I said, it's it's it's both ways. Sometimes the
artist is clear on what. The agent will say, you know,
here's what we here's the maximum he'll charge. Here's the
ticket prices he'll charge it. Usually only the top end
they worry about. So they'll probably say, listen, historically he's
never gone above one twenty for a P one, so
come back with the scaling. There's some version of a

(33:33):
of a top end established by the artist, so we'll
come back with that scaling in it. Typically that scaleing
will spit out a number less than they want, and
we'll all probably sharpen our pencils, the eight promoters and
come back and say, listen, if you go to one forty,
we can pay you a four to fifty a night.
And that tends to be how it gets defined. So

(33:53):
the guarantee drives the ticket scaling. It's just math. Just back,
you're just dividing thirteen thousand seats by the guarantee and
then debating how many are each in each level.

Speaker 1 (34:03):
Well, let's be very clear, at the end of the day,
the act, through his agent, establishes the price of the ticket.

Speaker 2 (34:16):
Yes, why the cure decided he would have a low price, right,
he would have. We wouldn't have we wouldn't have put
an offer in those low prices. That wouldn't have been
historically what you do that would have came back and said,
I want to charge twenty dollars and I'll live with
a lower gross and a lower walk out, or other
artists will say, agents will say I want I want
a million dollar guarantee. Come back with the math.

Speaker 1 (34:39):
Okay, so let's just assume, based on your example, you're
paying the act four hundred thousand dollars. Now, just for
the newbies, there is a potential back end, an additional payment.
Explain that.

Speaker 2 (34:56):
Again. I'm going to use generalities, but typically you're going
to pay an artist a guarantee versus a ninety ten.
Maybe it's a ninety five to five. So if you
sell out whatever tickets you sell that night, you're going
to get your total gross. And if you grossed five
hundred and ten thousand dollars after at the top end,

(35:18):
you're going to take expenses out rent local, local ushers,
local security, local venue costs, and then you might end
up at four hundred thousand dollars net after venue costs.
If you guarantee them four fifty, you write to check
for four fifty, regardless if after costs it's five hundred,

(35:40):
they're going to get ninety percent of that five hundred
versus their guarantee of four fifty, So they're going to
get four seventy five and you'll make your your ten percent.
So at minimum they got a floor. Their job is
then to push us to keep expenses down, sell as
many tickets as we can, and try to get that
artist to what they call percentages.

Speaker 1 (36:02):
Okay, overall, what is Live Nations profit percentage? And where
do you actually make the money since the acts get
most of the ticket revenue.

Speaker 2 (36:17):
Well, listen at the core. This is a scale business, right,
you know, I had to build this over the last
fifteen years because you don't get rich on any one show.
It's the service global business. We're going to do forty
thousand shows in one hundred cities and forty countries. So
I remember an analyst wayback said it's the river and nickels, right,

(36:37):
So you have to build a business that has a
lot of ongoing nickels of revenue streams around that flywheel
called the show. So you know, if you kind of
look at our model, we're going to do forty thousand shows,
We'll spend about ten billion dollars on guarantees or those
walkouts at midnight. We'll make a bit. We'll make a
small percentage on that so called door where we're going

(37:01):
to make our money now is okay, we have one
hundred million people walked into the door, so we're going
to one We have one hundred and thirty one hundred
and fifty of our own venues, amphitheaters, clubs, theaters, three
hundred festivals, so in those places will be the venue
we're going to make the food and beverage, the parking,
the service fees, and the sponsorship. So you're kind of

(37:26):
vertical on the non live nation shows. We're going to
make money on those rebates as we talk about bring
our content to the arena, bring them forty to fifty
shows and get paid a rebate. And then third is
we're going to spoil our global sponsorship business just in
general delivering global sponsorships to our shows, our festivals, our venues,

(37:51):
our access, image programs, pre sale programs, all of those
ways that we can deliver sponsorships to big brands. And
then Ticketmaster service fees those twenty percent that they're going
to make on that side. So those are the main
buckets that you're going to put together that deliver your

(38:14):
profitability above your on your forty thousand shows.

Speaker 1 (38:19):
And at the end of the day, what's the margin
we're at.

Speaker 2 (38:25):
You know, we're a combined basis. We're a ten eleven
percent margin business. Concert business is a low margin two
two percent margin, could be four. Sponsorship is a high
margin business. And ticketings it's thirty five percent business. But
you're netting out to a ten eleven percent margin business overall.

Speaker 1 (38:46):
And compared to other companies. Apple strives for thirty percent margin.

Speaker 2 (38:54):
Yeah, if you're a tech company, you're going to be
in your thirty forty plus percent margins. You would You
wouldn't find a monopoly in history that had a ten
eleven percent margin, if you want to kind of use
that analogy. Typically, monopoly means you've exerted, you have enough
power and pricing power, et cetera. You probably have a
very high margin return. So you're right, it is a

(39:17):
low margin business. At the core. You have to have
global scale like we built ultimately deliver a consistent, global
good business. But it's a it's a hand to hand combat.

Speaker 1 (39:29):
How much of the income is from sponsorship.

Speaker 2 (39:34):
You know what is ballpark? Were about forty percent sponsorship.
It's a big business for us in our festivals.

Speaker 1 (39:45):
Okay, let's talk superstar acts and I'm gonna speak English.
Here there are a number of superstar acts, some of
them who used to be with AEG eight. But Live
Nation pays more, and sometimes the act goes with Live
Most of the time the act goes with Live Nation.
How can Live Nation pay more?

Speaker 2 (40:09):
Yeah, I don't. I don't go the pay more route.
I wouldn't say that's fair fair all the time as
I went to that earlier bidding process. When there's a
big global tour that AG and Live Nation are bidding on,
I can't remember the last latest one. We're both we're

(40:30):
both neck to neck. I mean, there's never a version
that a G they're calling me saying, oh god, you
so overpaid. It's yours. I mean, god, we're just we're
just too good as a company as is a G.
Nor are they overpaid. I mean, you're literally going to
win by a dollar either way. You're you you at
that point though, you're you're selling your global business, you're

(40:50):
selling your relationships, you're selling your marketing, you're you know,
so you're you're you're selling a bundle. But I wouldn't
tell you that we There would be no version that
we are waking up and stealing a tour from them
or winning a tour from them because we dramatically overpaid.
It's an inside baseball negotiating.

Speaker 1 (41:07):
Wait wait, wait, wait, there's a lot of dollars involved here,
and I certainly know specific cases. At the end of
the day, Live Nation paid more than AG was willing
to pay, and the act went with Live Nation, let
me let me, let let me go to a different spot.

Speaker 2 (41:29):
And while addressed, well, just I joke with my team,
right when we lose a tour, Age overpaid when we
went a tour for geniuses, right, So I deal with
this every day when when when we losed AG, my
promoter will come to me go, oh my god, they
so overpaid. They didn't you know. That's that's that's what

(41:49):
competitively wise, that's typically what you do is the only
way you must have lost is the other guy must
have dramatically overpaid. Most of us are every negotiation with
that agent, it's inside baseball. That agent is calling you
saying Age's at forty one million and you're at thirty
nine eight These calling Age saying they're at thirty nine Like,

(42:12):
it's not like we're at fifty and they're at forty two.
There's there's no version of that we're all it's none
of us and Nora's age. When they beat me, it's
not because they dramatically overpaid. You know, they won the
Luke Combs tour. They's got a good relationship with Capian
won that in the US, and and and and and

(42:33):
you know, there's kind of a combination of relationship meets
money meets you know, their package. But so I just
say that because I definitely don't believe that when we
win it's because we overpaid. We typically win because we
have a global business different than theirs. We have been
able to generally make artists more money overall, which really

(42:55):
matters not what you pay them. What the artist cares
about is what's the walkout in the end. And we
were the author of platinum and Dynamic Pricing and and
and VIP. So I do believe we've been able to
help deliver for the artists, but wouldn't say we overpay
to win. I think we both win on price, but

(43:17):
but there's always a package around it.

Speaker 1 (43:19):
Okay, let's talk specifically about Ticketmaster. Ticket Master is also
a secondary platform, okay, meaning the ticket's already been sold,
it can be resold on ticket Master. Let's start first,
the fact that the ticket cannot be resold at less

(43:43):
than in the original price. Is that a Ticketmaster policy
or is that an act policy?

Speaker 2 (43:49):
That's Ticketmaster. So when I took over Ticketmaster, our biggest
challenge of Ticketmaster and the reason it was to declining
five years in a row, Well, stubbub was kicking its
ass at ten o'clock. When you went to ticket Master
to buy that Tour of the Day ten years ago,

(44:10):
we said no tickets available, literally, and I followed it
one day and for the next six months, like eighty
six million people came to the page which we basically said,
go to stubhubb. So our sports clients then also our team,
team owners, NBA, NHL adopted exchanges and secondary fully at

(44:31):
that point. So number one reality was we need to
be able to say we need to open our platform
and let secondary dots live. We can't keep telling customers
we have no tickets at ten am. Well Secondary is
alive and well down the street.

Speaker 1 (44:48):
But one of the.

Speaker 2 (44:49):
Realities was what were we going to do that we
believe for the team and the artist would still be
something that is right for their business. Things we don't
do which hurt us overall market share is we don't
do spec selling and we don't underprice face. That probably

(45:09):
means at any given time we have fifty percent less
inventory than sea geek and stub Hub because, as you see,
a lot of this game that go on now is
spec selling where they don't have the seats, they don't
really have the ticket. They're masterful, they're very good marketers.
They'll put three seats together at eight hundred dollars and
two seats at two thousand, but they don't have any

(45:30):
of those. But if you buy the eight hundred because
it seems cheaper than the two, they'll email you and
they'll find seats a row difference and you'll buy them. Anyways,
So we don't do spec selling, and we decided that
we would always say we don't ever think content should
be underpriced from whatever the artist or team said it at.
So that's been our philosophy and we've stayed true to

(45:50):
that so far.

Speaker 1 (45:59):
Okay, what is the payment to ticket Master when a
ticket is re sold on its platform.

Speaker 2 (46:06):
It's the same. So the secondary has to be approved
by the venue because the venue, again when they select
a ticketing company, they mandate what the secondary is or
isn't so it's the same split basically the secondary. I
can't turn on the secondary and that venue without the

(46:26):
venue approving it. And the third thing that we do
that scalpers I guess don't do is we get approval
from the artist. So again, a lot of times if
the artist says I don't want TM to turn on secondary,
we don't, even though Seekeek and others will, well, you know,
we'll fill up Taylor Swift for example, we didn't turn

(46:49):
on DM plus and Seekeek and others made a fortune.
But but the ultimate is the reality is the venue
controls the ticket secondary and turning on and turning off
for their teams.

Speaker 1 (47:03):
Uh So on a concert, if the on a secondary
is the split similar to the.

Speaker 2 (47:12):
Primary, similar prime? Yeah, they're all the similar.

Speaker 1 (47:16):
And then to what degree does the fee change based
on the price of the ticket?

Speaker 2 (47:25):
I would assume it has the same up scales up
as the ticket goes up twenty, twenty five, thirty, whatever
the actual.

Speaker 1 (47:32):
St Okay, So Nicholas to say, on the secondary, the
venue is making the majority of the money's supposed a
ticket master, but.

Speaker 2 (47:41):
Just the fees, not the yes, just for the unknown
there for the people out there it's not. The face
is the third party person making the real money. The
fee is then just split between the venue and TM.

Speaker 1 (47:52):
Okay, there are many events the ticket master is the
ticketing company, but Live Nation is not the promoter. Yes, correct, Yes,
So if I am a promoter and Ticketmaster is the
platform I'm using for the gig, I would say, hey,

(48:17):
if their secondary market, why can't I share in that
income because Live Nation is sharing in the upscale upsell
on Live Nation shows, but they're also making money on
my show.

Speaker 2 (48:34):
Yeah, but you, as the promoter can say I don't
want to turn it on. So typically AG won't turn
it on. They'll say it's my show and we don't
want to turn on secondary in that venue. So the
promoter has the right with his show in that venue
to determine if if if TM does get turned on
for the platform and well and the promoter. You know,

(48:57):
remember the promoter is always going to go to the
venue and say, in general, I want to get paid
my rebate. So you know, his motive is always going
to be whether however much money the venue makes. Your
job is the promoter is to figure out how to
increase your rebates.

Speaker 1 (49:16):
So theoretically, if you know it's an in demand show.
The promoter would be aware of this and say I
want to payment that in essence would be percentage of
your fees that you're making on the resale.

Speaker 2 (49:30):
Yeah, I just want to make clear we don't get
that misstated. The promoter in general isn't specifically saying give
me The artist or the promoter aren't specifically saying give
me some of that eight dollars or two dollars. That
conversation doesn't happen. The venue has already got a relationship

(49:52):
with the venue or the promoter, and the promoter is
getting his five, eight, nine dollars rebate as a business overall.
So if you are the venue and you want to
turn it on, the promoter isn't going to worry about
that one revenue stream that night. You're playing for the
full year, and there are some days where the show

(50:14):
loses money and the venues are great partners and help
you out on the rent or help you out on
you know, it's the bad shows. You want to save
the good days for the venue, not the days they
can make some money.

Speaker 1 (50:27):
Okay, let's talk about ticket prices. You know there have
been some amplified examples like Springsteen. Okay, you mentioned Pearl Jam.
It's a non transferable ticket. They're establishing the price. That's
what it costs. But there are other acts. Let's use

(50:47):
Springsteen who went over one hundred dollars, and people say,
I am a die hard fan, i am entitled to
be in the building. I'm entitled to get a good
seat at a low price. These are the same. No,
these are boomers mostly going to a Springstein show. If
they go to dinner, it's one hundred dollars a person. Yeah,

(51:09):
but for somehow to go to see Springsteen, one hundred
dollars is too much. What's the reality of pricing and
is it different for younger acts? And is it really
we should just charge what the ticket is worth.

Speaker 2 (51:27):
It's a it's a really interesting complex problem, right. You
have this fandom, as you know, that fan is so
emotionally connected to that artist. They've listened a thousand times
and they really believe they have rights. It's very different
than sports, which is a badge of honor to say

(51:48):
this court side's cost sixteen thousand dollars. You know, I
was talking. I was talking little bron James the night
he broke the record and ticket on points and I said,
you know, lebron tonight to sit courtside Laker games ten
to twenty thousand dollars, but they're mad. Beyonce's charge in
eight hundred for one tour every five years. But it's

(52:11):
a you know, the super Bowl. The sports business is
kind of embraced. It's expensive and for some reason that
Diehart fan doesn't get on Twitter and say that team
owner is an asshole because I can't see the Lakers
for sixty six dollars. So you're right, the fan is
very mostly connected. They've got great outlets now on Twitter

(52:33):
and other ways. They really believe that they have the
right to see that artist. But the reality, as you said, Bob,
then in this scarcity world of birkin bags and lbmhs
that you wrote about last week, the live experience is
a absolutely special moment in time. That front row is
a birkin bag and more. It's a an exceptional product.

(52:57):
And you're right, I do think the quicker the artists
figure out that we got to charge closer to market
for some of the seats. You know, Springsteen was a
great example. It was only one percent of the seats
were over one thousand dollars. All we did was transfer.
Last tour, the tickets went right to the scalper and
resold to the fan for two thousand dollars. So this

(53:19):
time we just took those same tickets and said, Bruce,
you should actually get the money, but let's make sure
we keep the rest of the house cheap. But the
stories don't get that headline. You know, ninety eight percent
of my shows don't sell out. Most shows are very affordable,
but you're going to have some burking bags in the
Beyonces and the Drakes and the bad Bunnies and these

(53:39):
these artists and the front rows are scarce business commodities.
And I do think that, well the secondary exists free
and free and clear in America, that you do have
to start saying, then, if the fan is buying it
from stub hub, they are fans, why wouldn't the artists

(54:00):
participate in that art and have more of it? So
I do think I think that they have to slowly
start charging closer to market at the front end. Now
you know, you know, we launched a fare ticket act,
and I'm sure you'll mention all that, you know. I
do believe that the reality is the Digital ticket is
a great tool that could help us out in this mess.

(54:22):
I mean, the mess we have right now is that
creates the Twitter storms, is that fan comes at ten
am and they're pissed off because at ten oh one
it's sold out and there's ten pages of scalpers selling
tickets for three hundred times face and I get the
d ms and the hate mail and the and the

(54:43):
death threats that say, you know you asked whole you
must have given all those tickets to the scalper at
ten o'clock. It's not fair. That's the drama that we created,
right and we do our best with verified fan and
speed bumps and it's but it's a it's an arms
race because it's five billion dollars in secondary of vail
to make a very very very high margin business. So

(55:04):
while we're letting that run wild, then you either have
to control it or you have to price to it.
But I think if we let it run wild like
we are today and then it's silly of us then
not to let the artists participate in some of that
and price it better. Or we got to control it,
and we could with digital ticketing. We could tomorrow just

(55:25):
say there's a cap on it, or there's some rules
around it. A lot of countries in the world have
figured out this is probably not a great idea to
run wild and have fans have to pay these prices.
So I do think that it should be some control
put in place, so we could put some limits on it.
I don't have a lot of faith that we can

(55:46):
get much done in the government probably right now, or monitored,
or actually execute it properly. So I think you do
then have to say, probably have to price closer to
market for some of those front rows and some of
those seats. So the artist who's already paying that anyways,
they're paying it today. It's not that it gets not
being paid, it's just not being monetized by the artist.

Speaker 1 (56:10):
Would you say people complaining about excessive ticket prices is
more of a boomer gen X phenomenon as opposed to
younger acts.

Speaker 2 (56:23):
Yeah, it's this. It's an interesting you know, to see
that which ones do flare up? As you're right. I
sat at the Bad Bunny Stadium show here in La
credible show, credible performer with the third highest grossing stadium
in history. He broke most records, and I said, I

(56:46):
said to his manager, credible. The fans are, they're dancing,
they're having their blast, they dressed up. This is a
party tonight. And the tickets were you know, price well,
but there was no social about it. But but definitely
the the Springsteen fans seem to get really upset, even
though it was probably much older and richer. So it
did seem a bit ironic that week.

Speaker 1 (57:08):
The other thing that people don't realize is the very
expensive tickets are not only going to the rich. The
hardcore fan will pay that price, even if I hear
from them all the time, even I'm stubum, and they're
very happy about being that close.

Speaker 2 (57:26):
I so agree with you, Bob. I said this to
an artist last week who went on this low ticket price,
and I just like you, just you know, you're missing it.
I came from no money and I remember going to
my Robert Plant tour in uh In, Toronto from Thunder
Bay on a bus and yes, I saved my money
and I worked hard and it was all my money

(57:48):
for that month or whatever it was. But that was
a great experience. And you know, I get these emails
now from someone that says, oh my god, I had
to work two jobs to get to the Bad Bunny Show.
And yeah, you know most most people look at concerts
as a really special moment in their kodact life. It's
it's magic moment maybe twice a year. Way cheaper than

(58:10):
Disneyland or the super Bowl, or the NFL or the
NBA playoffs or or an expensive night out. So it's
really cheap overall considering. And you're right, this is not
that the that the this just the rich people. This
is a great, great product that people will buy as
they're going to buy the Gucci bag. They're going to
buy moments in life where they will step up and

(58:33):
spoil themselves at the big screen TV or whatever it
may be. But you're right, this is a business where
we can charge a bit more. I'm not saying excessively,
but it's it's a great two hour performance of a
lifetime that happens once every three four years in that market.
You don't have to underprice yourself. Low low to middle

(58:54):
income we'll we'll, we'll, we'll make their way to that
arena for that special night.

Speaker 1 (58:59):
About twenty years ago, the concept of platinum started. You
got a seat very close to the stage, you might
get to eat meat, a member of the band, you
might get to hear a sound check, whatever. We learned
that the extras weren't what we're selling the tickets. People
just wanted the good seats. But when it came to Springsteen,

(59:20):
the term platinum was used for tickets that were not
right up front, and in addition, those were dynamically priced.
How did we get there?

Speaker 2 (59:34):
Yeah, you're right, the platinum, the VIP tickets, no different
ways where there were higher ticket prices outside of thep ones,
And you're right, they all got bought, regardless of whether
it was a cocktail, shrimp and a laminate. It was
just the good seats and they bought them. So recently,

(59:57):
over the last five years a those sound checks and
meet and greets and VIPs, especially through COVID, before and
after it started to wean out, they were the cost
to execute. They weren't that special anymore, and the business
converted to more of a platinum ticket. Let's just charge
for those good seats. Let's put some seats into an

(01:00:20):
allocation where they're more than the pre ones and we
can price them better. Started five eight years ago, band
started to embrace this idea that there was an idea
and again, artists are always just looking at the other
side of the equation. As everyday secondary got more sunlight
and went from the streets to the internet, and you

(01:00:43):
could start seeing what they were paying the obviously the artist,
the manager of the agent, promoter. We all looked at
that and went, geez, look what's happening over here. How
are we going to get the artists to charge closer
to market on some of the good seats. So that
that's when Platinum launched. It's done really well. Dynamics started

(01:01:06):
same thing eight nine years ago when you started just
we started with price Master, where you started to say,
there's different you know, this scaling shouldn't be the same
most dynamic products, hotels, airlines aren't sergeant the same on
the last day, in the first day of the middle seat.
So we started price Master years ago to say to
the artist, you know, a Friday night in New York

(01:01:26):
should not be the same ticket price as a Tuesday
in Cleveland. The aisle seat's worth more than the middle
You can monetize the house smarter, you can sell it out,
set charge less for the back seats more for the front.
Said it as three scalings, which was always kind of
the thirty years of doing three scalings and same markets
all the time. So dynamic price Master had been used

(01:01:50):
for the last probably eight years. And I think coming
out of COVID dynamic platinum adding more increasing the allocation,
the dry got a little sexy, and more and more
artists started putting and promoters we started putting more in
the platinum allocation to increase the gross and I think we're, uh,

(01:02:13):
you know, I think we're learning now. H We've we've
got to watch. If the definition of platinum is going
to be platinum, we better make sure it's a platinum seat.
And if we're gonna dynamic, we better put better rules
in place on when we change ticket pricing, not not
not in the price sale not or not in the

(01:02:33):
on sale. So we're I think we're I think we're
as an industry or learning how to price dynamic tickets
to demand. And that's kind of what's been going on today.
I think we're slowly putting better rules in place to
figure out how to do it smartly.

Speaker 1 (01:02:50):
Let's use Springsteen as an example. Demand was heavy and
tickets in the platinum area spike to momultiple four figures.
Anybody experienced in the business knows. No one's buying those
tickets at those excessive prices. They're waiting for them to
come down. What happened there was that purely a program,

(01:03:16):
an algorithm. Was that something Spreedsteam was aware of in
advance how expensive the ticket should be. Is this something
that needs to be done by hand? Was it done
by hand? Yeah?

Speaker 2 (01:03:31):
Again, artists are you know, as you and I talked
about there, there's nothing done in price in that a agent,
artist manager aren't agreeing too. There's no no promoter gets
to just run the clock. It's all part of your plan. Listen.
I think we're as an industry, we're still learning what
it means to dynamic and platinum. And you're right, there

(01:03:53):
are a few tours where you put a few tickets
in this twenty five hundred up to five thousand dollars
limit and said, let's put some platinums at that price.
Reality is ten of those sell. It's not a smart
strategy because the headline's so bad, but the volume is
not there. I think that's a lesson quickly learned. I

(01:04:13):
don't think you're seeing a lot of platinum now. That's
probably more than a thousand seems to be the quick
learning curve. I know we did it in Vegas and others,
So I think the imperfect science of how do we
manage the secondary business that's going to boom instantly at
ten o'clock, how do we get some of that captured

(01:04:35):
on this side of the ledger. The pricing isn't perfect
right now, and it is manually done, not complete algorithms.
You're looking at algorithms to figure out the pricing of
secondary and demand to come up with a range. But
I think we're quickly learning on platinum. Any major tour,

(01:04:55):
whether you can really sell a thirty three hundred dollars
ticket or a twenty seven isn't worth the small upside
You probably should just put some good platinum somewhere in
the five to one thousand dollars range seems to be
the sweet spot right now where you can sell a
decent scale of those in the good seats and the
good sections and be happy with that uplift that didn't

(01:05:16):
go to the secondary.

Speaker 1 (01:05:24):
Okay, conventional wisdom is that ticket Master is a monopoly.
You hear this from elected officials, you hear this from
ticket buyers. What is your response to that.

Speaker 2 (01:05:41):
You know, it's a it's a business that when we
merged ten years ago, the DOJ in there. I think
IRV and I spent eighteen months going through that process
of the DJ digging in deep. So and when the
DOJ digs in deep, I mean there's ten thousand emails later.

(01:06:05):
So they did that when we merged and let the
let the let the acquisition go through. They let the
merger happen. So that that's step one that says they
didn't believe it was a monopoly. You know, it couldn't
find facts that said Ticketmaster was a monopoly, or they
wouldn't approved it. We agreed to a dissent degree for

(01:06:26):
ten years that said we will absolutely then if there
is concern, we won't leverage. We won't punish any venue
that doesn't use Ticketmaster. And that went on for ten years.
I think it was the ninth year. DJ opened up
the case again four or five years ago now said

(01:06:49):
we have a couple of cases where we think you
threaten threaten the venue and front of the venue means
you know, a random promoter. And of my nine said
you should renew a Ticketmaster. You're not going to get
a show. I mean, this isn't like you know of
thousands and thousands of shows, and nine years later, this
isn't as we always said, this isn't an ongoing structural

(01:07:11):
reality doesn't happen. And by the way, those venues when
you looked at him, they didn't actually get reduced. Show
camp facts didn't support that, so there was no real
actual venue that got punished. We just decided at that
point that we would extend the decree for five years,
as you always do, to make sure you just kind

(01:07:31):
of simplify this case and move on. But they spent
a year deposing me and going through it again. That
was the three or four years ago. So again I
would say to you, if we were the monopoly a
year after the DOJ probing, you trust me, if there
was real structural legal data that said Live Live Nation,

(01:07:53):
Ticketmaster together, single or momopoly, they would have sued us,
done something, gave us a five year extension, and moved on.
So you know, it's not like we haven't been already
investigated deep and haven't seen every email I've ever written
and everyone else's and all of our promoters and ticket Master,

(01:08:15):
they've been down the deep dive many times. So I
say that in the sense of, you know, that's kind
of a clean bill of health to date. Now I
understand why it's easy to jump on the wagon. The
ticket master and the service fees and what you and
I've been talking about. We haven't done a good job
as an industry, especially on my front as Live Nation Ticketmaster,

(01:08:37):
explaining out loud what happens to fees, how they're set,
what happens. It hasn't been a It hasn't been a
big motive historically for me to kind of go out
loud and say, hey, the venue, my client has taken
most of the money, or the artist is setting the
ticket price. I'm a B to B business. I serviced
the artists and venue and Ticketmaster's job is to been
to take that punch in the head for the industry.

(01:08:59):
That's been part of what people do why they hire you.
There's no glory in being the ticketing company who no
matter who you are, Sea Geek, Access, anyone, they all
have the same challenges when there's ten million fans that
want a million tickets and then secondary So I understand
why the flurry of energy can be spent on it

(01:09:21):
because it looks big and it looks like there's service
ticket master fees and challenges, but we don't think there's
any basis to a legal challenge that says in any
way we're monopoly. Our margins prove that our daily battles
to win that venue or lose that venue or win
that tour are live and well that's well documented. There's

(01:09:43):
nothing wrong with being big, nothing wrong with being great,
nothing wrong with offering a great product and being better
than the other guy and winning. We don't set ticket prices.
We're not harming fans. Artists have all the options in
the world. Do you know that as well as I do.
There's only one aerosmith that has one hundred dates of
a and a thousand venues that want those dates and

(01:10:03):
every promoter and partner that wants it. So the business is,
you know, widely misunderstood. As you know outside of the industry,
big as big as an easy target. Ticketing is an
easy target. But on the fundamentals on a monopoly, no,
we're We're far from that.

Speaker 1 (01:10:25):
So let's go a little deeper here. Administrations change, and
presently under Biden, the woman who's head of the FTC
lead at Khan is very active. Everything that she has
tried to uh get through has not ultimately passed. But

(01:10:46):
inside the business, it's well known that she is looking
at ticket Master in Live Nation questions of monopoly antitrust?
Are they asking you for information? Do you have a
team at Live Nation who is dealing with this?

Speaker 2 (01:11:06):
Yeah, just to be clear, though they there tends to
be you tend to either deal with the FTC or
the DOJ, and they kind of split it up. If
they're going to probe, it's the DOJ that are doing
the investigation on us right now, not the FTC. So
that wouldn't be in not that she couldn't, but she
wouldn't be doing it if they're doing it. So right now,
we have been working with the DOJ since November, providing

(01:11:30):
them all of the data. They want to take a
look at our business and see if there's any new
data that would support any thesises around our ticket monopoly
or descent decree. So we're working with them and that's
that'll be an ongoing process and somewhere in the next
somewhere this year. The sad part about the DJ is

(01:11:52):
they get to kind of leak when they're looking at you,
but you don't really get a final date when you're
going to be done with it. So we'll live that
this year and be cooperative with them, But we don't
we think legally. Dan Wall, who now works for US
full time, has not a great great article on kind
of the technical legal part the DOJ and the case.
So we think we're complying and we'll we'll get through this.

Speaker 1 (01:12:15):
What do you say to the people who say, since
you have an excess of fifty percent market share, you're
inherently a monopoly.

Speaker 2 (01:12:27):
Yeah, don't. I don't you know the market share? You know?
I could go down a whole bunch of you're a lawyer,
so I could go down a whole bunch of paths
on how big a market how big is the competition
today versus when we merged. I don't have fifty percent
market share with you, and I can debate how to
define market share. There's thousands of venues, there's lots of promoters.

(01:12:48):
The math will say on promoting side, I don't have
fifty percent in America. And when you look at the festivals,
the ticketing, the arenas, the theaters, the clubs, there's more
competition ticketing today than there was ten years ago. Seakeek
today announcing going public. Stub Hub Access didn't exist. I
mean when we merged this company, there was nobody. We

(01:13:10):
had to white label our software to AEG for three
years so we could start a competitor called Access. That
was the mandate from the DOJ. But that was at
a time when they didn't think we're and they didn't
think we're operly. Then there wasn't even close to the
competitive nature there is today. So I would say to
you we we have grown globally really well. In America.

(01:13:34):
Our market share since we merged to today has gone down.
Sea Geek, Access have taken more venues because they didn't
exist when we merged. So today, if you're a venue bob,
you're going to have no there's no debate. You're going
to be able to say, I got three great competitive
options that I can get the best deal I want

(01:13:58):
from Access, see Geek or ticket Master. I don't have
to pick ticket Master. Take Master maybe better than the
other ones that might have better technology. They may they
may they may have a better product, and that's where
we tend to win. But you don't have to pick
us as the Washington Redskins or Commanders just picked Seakeeek
for their stadium. So, you know, we think it's still

(01:14:20):
a really competitive business. Our margins are the best ultimate
dictation of that. If you're if you have margins of
where we are, you're you're not exerting or leveraging any
power against your your your your, your user base. So
we think the artists have great options. We think venues
have great options. We think we've been able to demonstrate that,

(01:14:44):
and we think the market's more competitive today than it
was before. Even as big and strong and great as
our businesses globally, we still think there's competition.

Speaker 1 (01:14:54):
Okay, in other territories ticketing is different and the you
k there are multiple ticket sellers for venues. Can you
explain a how that works and how you're involved in that,
and b you have your competitors who I speak with

(01:15:15):
who want that model in the US, so if you
could address that.

Speaker 2 (01:15:21):
Yeah, the UK, I think, you know, Germany is not
really like that a little bit. But yeah, So historically
outside of America, it was an allocation market. If you
were the venue, you allocated to multiple ticketing companies. The

(01:15:41):
exclusive venue model was a US red model. I would
say to you though, that if you look at where
the trend is going internationally. Generally, as the new buildings
are being built, they're looking to go to a more
exit exclusive model because they're you know, think about the

(01:16:03):
difference in internationalist. They didn't have NBA, NHL arenas they
have soccer stadiums, so not a lot of things were built.
As the new buildings were being built, whether it's a
soccer or or a hockey arena, they tend to now go,
you know what, if I'm building a billion dollar arena
or a football stadium, I should go monetize my ticketing rights,

(01:16:28):
and I probably could get somebody to pay me more
money to have exclusive ticketing rights than three people have
the rights. So that's where the model grows out. So
you look now at some of the businesses in the UK,
the football businesses, they tend to go exclusive. Now SEEKIK
had a few, We have a few. So I would say,

(01:16:49):
you know, I think the venues as they get built,
and you build a building, your job is to figure
out where am I going to get paid the most
for all of my revenue streams. And I think you're
starting to see some of those venues say I actually
think I can monetize it differently. Now, I'll back up up.
I'm not you know, the golden child that says that

(01:17:12):
all has to be exclusive. That's the model I inherited.
It's been working in this industry for long before my time.
It's the model we run to date. I'm not telling
you that I think the future needs to be exclusive.
I could Ticketmaster could operate on an allocation model as

(01:17:34):
well as an exclusive model and do really well. The
irony is the double side of the venue is if
you go back to the venue and say, great, you're
not going to be exclusive, we don't have to pay
as much. I'll be happy to sell sixty percent of
your tickets without having to buy exclusivity. If that's the
model we want to market. So it's a balance, right,

(01:17:56):
I don't have to be exclusive. The cost of exclusive,
so in the industry is expensive. Now the venues have
done a good job charging a very real premium for that,
and maybe at a certain point the business model is
better for everybody, meaning the ticket master and companies if
we don't have exclusive because the best, the best seller

(01:18:18):
still wins in the end. Okay, just to be.

Speaker 1 (01:18:21):
Very very clear for those not in the know in
the UK, let's just use an example of three ticket
resellers or ticket sellers actually A do they pay the venue?
B do they pull inventory from the same database.

Speaker 2 (01:18:39):
No, you're going to have a you know again, if
you look what's happening. AE g owns the O two arena,
So they're gonna in theory, they favor their ticketing company,
just like CTS does in Germany. So they're going to
run the They're going to run their database, the central database.
They're going to give most allocation to their own ticket companmpany,

(01:19:00):
and then they're going to give as limited amount of
as tickets as they can to us and others to
kind of finish off the market. But it's not a
free for all allocated. How to three companies equally access
that venue. I could give you the opposite there where
we're not getting paid or have the same allocation as
the venue because they're allocating to their own company, but

(01:19:23):
it's off one database, and they would the venue would
pay a piece of the service feed to the ticketing companies,
So the ticket companies would get a piece of the
service fee for the tickets they sold.

Speaker 1 (01:19:38):
But there's no advance from the other companies to the venue.

Speaker 2 (01:19:46):
It's starting now. Yes, there are because your job because
what really happens now is you want to be the
You want to get a higher percentage of the allocation.
So you're now going to start paying to be in
pollpase position of the good seats and more of them.
So that's where it's morphine. The venue is now figured out.

(01:20:07):
Oh someone will pay me. You know, you can us
to wake up and say here here ticket companies for free,
take all my tickets. Good luck. You're going to start going.
Someone wants the good seats and so we'll pay me
for it. So we are now competitively doing that as
an industry, and festivals tend to be more one one company.

Speaker 1 (01:20:28):
Let's talk about traditional new building arena meaning they have skyboxes, etc.
Inside there's always an issue of all the tickets are
not on the manifest. You reference this earlier, but can
you explain from my audience.

Speaker 2 (01:20:48):
Yeah, generally a venue in America, I'm you know, we're
going to talk arenas and stadiums. You know their primary
business is to sell that sports team season tickets, sweet
spotship and as you're selling those eighty games whatever the
sport is, the sponsorship, you know, your your box and

(01:21:11):
your premium seats are only you know, exciting for how
many of those eighty games. So the best way to
deliver that box season ticket sponsor is to say, listen,
spend this much money. You're going to get the season
tickets for the hockey team. You're also going to get
it for the thirty five concerts that come to the

(01:21:32):
venue a year. You're going to you're going to get
first assets those tickets. So that's generally every arena is
going to have some level of a club box system.
One thousand and two, three thousand tickets that are within
that venue system sold to their current client base, which

(01:21:55):
is a lot of reasons why people say, word its
scalpers get tickets. That's another big leaky bucket. But that's
so that's why when you sell, when you put this
inventory on sale, it's not the fourteen thousand seats in
that venue and then there's club seats and then there's boxes.
It's not everything in that venue is going for sale.

(01:22:17):
Some of it has already been pre sold or held
back for customer basis.

Speaker 1 (01:22:22):
Let's talk about the secondary market. You reference that. Yes,
they do get it from the people who receives and
ticket holders, To what degree are the bots a problem
on the on sale and to what degree can it
be addressed or possibly eradicated?

Speaker 2 (01:22:42):
Yeah, the bots are you know, it's an arms race.
It's it's an impossible mission right now because again as
an industry, you really only have ticket Master even trying
to stop them. There's no one else, you know, Access
isn't spending much money on it, and Seekik and stub
bubber obviously that's with their businesses. So right now, when again,

(01:23:07):
when you have that the famous tailor scrift moment, but
when you have that level of you know, if you
looked in the tailor script moment, there you go on
the dark web right now, you can buy a whole
bunch of software to try to hack the latest on sale.
You know, it's a very organized and unorganized kind of

(01:23:28):
underweb of five billion dollars that people are trying to access.
So there's bots, there's tons of software on the dark
web to how to break the code, what's the password?
That's what happened on Taylor. So you have a lot
of a lot of global parties trying to break and
allocate that on sale to try to get those tickets

(01:23:50):
and put them on a secondary platform. The Bought Act
has never been enforced, which is our big complaint. As
much as all everyone loved tweeting Taylor Swift and their
tweet to get a lot of likes, none of them
want to address the challenge, right. It's the challenge at
the end of the day is you know, I use
the example of when you see those videos of someone

(01:24:11):
breaking in the protest store on Beverly Hills stealing the purses.
You know, people go, oh, what's going on with the
Beverly Hills police department. We got to staff up. They
don't blame product. Well, what happened in Taylor Swift was
the product story, right is they broke they tried to
break the doors down. Really does we stopped them. Now,
we had to slow the system down, but we kept

(01:24:33):
them out and they didn't steal one bag. And we
still ended up by the end of the day delivering
two million tickets to Taylor Swift fans. And then you
have the congressmen putting their hands up, going, oh my god,
what's going on, And we're going, well, you're doing nothing
to enforce the Bought Act. We had a bought attack,
we had a cyber attack, we did our best to

(01:24:55):
fight it off ourselves. We're the protest store, so we're
now start to enforce the bought police, or you have
to enforce the plice. So you know, we kind of
get in that circle. Right. If you're gonna let if
you're gonna let Second run wild like we are today,
then you've got to just forget about even blaming anybody
for what happens on on sales. It's a free for all.
Or you have to then decide are we going to

(01:25:16):
legislate anything, Are we going to try to limit bots?
Are we going to try to limit that on sale mess?
And right now we have it, so right now the
on sale is going to be a mess. On a
high profitable show, the bots will end up getting seats
and they screw up the system and they try to
break the system for the hours. It's all part of that.

(01:25:37):
All their job is is to figure out give a mess,
scare you that they're all sold out fast, right. They
try to hold tickets forever. That's the big game they
play is get on the map and hold all the
dots so you only see a few dots for sale,
and you'll buy them, or you'll go to stubbub and
buy them. Then they release the dots later and that's
why you end up seeing at the end of the day,
why is there more tickets available? Because the they got

(01:26:00):
in and held tickets, you got scared. You went to
seat Geek bought tickets for two thousand dollars because you
thought it was sold. When you come back to ticket
Master and go, oh, there's tickets available, what happened. So
it is a big challenge, it's a big mission. Again,
we haven't been that vocal historically. We've we've stayed on
the sidelines and tried to battle it. But now we're

(01:26:22):
we're being pretty vocal on the Fair Act and we
do think that you got to start there. And I
think there's a bill coming up from NIVA and others,
so I do think it's time we do. Let we
do think about legislation around the secondary in some sense,
as a start we went to all in ticketing and
some legislation on secondary. The experience starts to get real,

(01:26:44):
bit real different.

Speaker 1 (01:26:52):
Okay, just going back to the Taylor Swift on sale,
the perception was every buddy's got an uh got a
computer at this point, and everyone knows if there's an
incredible demand. Even with Apple products, the system slows down.
Are you saying you intentionally slowed the system down? In

(01:27:15):
two you said you made it so the bots didn't
get tickets. Is that really what happened with Taylor's with
the bots really didn't get tickets?

Speaker 2 (01:27:23):
No, they didn't one hundred percent. Yeah, I mean you know,
I'm you know again, some some percentage I'm sure slip
in because bots can dress up as Taylor fans pretty
good too, But generally on a verified fan percentage wise
is we do a really good job of knowing the
difference between a bot and a fan, and the result

(01:27:44):
is you end up knowing instantly on what's on sale
on the secondary is if it's successful, right, if there's
less inventory on secondary, you absolutely cut out a lot
of the bots. So no, that was a that that
was about not letting the bots in. The bots didn't
get in for the bad guy didn't get the tickets.
But unfortunately it was a bad consumer experience for the

(01:28:05):
day as the system needed to get needed to operate
at a slow level to ultimately get those two million
tickets out. The single biggest ticket day in history was
nine hundred thousand tickets. So the mission that day and Tigamaster,
we actually sold one million pink tickets that day too.
So if you want to talk about the load that
that was able to deliver by the end of the

(01:28:28):
day was a huge, huge, deliverable although readily so the
fans jumped on and we're not happy, but but no,
we were proud at the end of the day that
the tickets didn't get the purse, didn't get stolen. We
were able to limit that and make sure that the
tickets got to the hand of the verified fans' hands

(01:28:50):
in the end.

Speaker 1 (01:28:52):
Okay, go back to Miiley Cyrus. She went on tour
this about twelve to fifteen years ago. All the mothers complained, Hey,
we can't get tickets. The next tour was totally paperless
and didn't sell out instantly. If we go back to
Taylor Swift, the last time she went on tour pre COVID,

(01:29:15):
she did not go clean in every market. So we
have all these competing interests that changed the perception of
the fan as to availability. Hey, can we say that
some acts want to put on a lot. I want
to create this demand which will incentivize people to buy

(01:29:36):
tickets and two. If another superstar came to you today
and said, I have thirty stadium dates unless they Taylor
Swift wanted them all on sale on one day. But
as the ticketing company, if the act was opened to
another take, would you say, let's not do it that way.

(01:29:57):
Let's do it market by mar market or fifty one day,
fifty the next week.

Speaker 2 (01:30:06):
Yeah. I think the lesson, obviously is we should we
should spread the load. That's the given. But Bob, I
want to just state something so we don't get it wrong.
I am not against secondary, just to be clear where
I stand, because you are right. Secondary is an incredible
distribution platform right now. Meaning you're right. They buy a

(01:30:29):
lot of tickets and they help out a lot of
on sales, and in the sports business, it's it's very
valuable because that's how a lot of people sell their
eighty games. I'm not against I'm not saying that we
should outlaw secondary, although that would be the simplest way
to fix it, all right, as Gar said on stage,
just outlaw but that's not going to happen in America.

(01:30:50):
I'm fine on the idea that tickets should be exchanged.
I'm first though, big believer that the artists should have
the ability to decide. And I know that sounds not
as simple as it is. But right now, as you said,
some artists don't care, some do. Right now, I can't
you know, as you know that secondary lobbyists are doing

(01:31:13):
any great job state by state, dressed up in fancy
bills around service fees, to say, don't let transferability get changed,
right that's the core challenge right now, And they've convinced
a lot of people that we must be the bad
guy because we want to limit transferability and we only
want the ticket a ticket master and resold a ticket master.

(01:31:33):
That's not the agenda at all. I believe that the
PDF that used to be on the airline and used
to be you know, in the hotel went digital, and
just like you used to be able to walk up
on the airline, the digital ticket, when it went to
PDF went to digital, means you can do things with
it now, you can have some level of control. And
I do believe when Pearl jam or an artist says,

(01:31:55):
you know what, I don't want my secondary ticket resold
at a premium, execute that or I don't care, you
know what, I want it sold. I want I only
want a twenty five percent uplift on the secondary. I'm
fine if people make money, but I don't want to
make in three hundred percent. We could deliver that as
an industry, not just Ticketmaster and or I don't care,

(01:32:16):
exchange it wherever you want free for all, great, then
then let the market deliver it. But right now, you
if we don't stop some of this legislation, the legislation's
moving towards, you know, this idea that you can never
have a non transferable ticket rule. And I've never said
that I want this to happen because I only want
the ticket resold. Ticket Master should I'm fine if it's

(01:32:38):
resold everywhere. You know. The NFL, I think, is the
great example on what we delivered on exchange. So the
NFL used to have a system where we would pay
the NFL to be the secondary preferred partner, but it
meant nothing because ticket Master would have secondary tickets, but

(01:32:58):
so would everyone else. So I was paying the NFL
a lot of money, but you could go get all
your same tickets at subub seat geek. They just didn't
have the NFL logo or they didn't have a few things.
So NFL smartly sat with us five years ago and
said how do we capture it all so it's more organized,
and we put a system forward that said, listen, we

(01:33:20):
should deliver an exchange for you. We should make sure
that c g Can, Stubbub and others have to abide
by the exchange rules and then that way they're authorized
and everyone should be able to sell the tickets. But
they're all authorized, they're playing by the NFL rules, and
the NFL can take a percentage of those fees. So

(01:33:40):
the NFL exchange today is an exchange where if you
seek Geek, StubHub have been authorized, they pay the NFL
an advance versus a percentage. And all of these platforms
are authorized NFL resellers now like an authorized Rolex reseller,
but it means they have to play by the rules.
They can't spec some they can't put Super Bowl on

(01:34:01):
sale before it's announced. Play let's all play by the
same rules, so the NFL fan and knows what they're doing.
Now there's a couple exchanges like Vivid that don't participate
in the program and still do it on their own.
But it's a big move forward where you had multiple
platforms playing by the same rule addressed by the NFL.

(01:34:22):
That's the model I think we should get to, right
where Access Seak, Geek, stub Hub, Live Nation, Ticketmaster. You know,
if the artist says this is the rule, I want
to play a twenty five percent premium on my ticket,
then we should all all execute that on our digital
ticket an honor written be authorized to do it. Or
if there's no exchange, like seat geek did with with

(01:34:45):
the cure, great, then let's all none of us got
to turn on the exchange. None of us made money
on the secondary business. But that's what the artist wanted.
We played that way other times artists won't be that
obsessed with it. Let the market exchange, let the market
run free. Great. So I'm not against secondary I don't.
I think we're an American market free enterprise. We're never

(01:35:06):
going to get to a place where you're going to
ban it. I don't want to pretend we have fake
rules around bots and it doesn't work. I'd love spec selling.
I would love all these deceptive websites and all of
these things to go away and be cleaned up. You
could get that done by FTC tomorrow. And I do
I do believe that content should have the right on

(01:35:27):
the ticket. Just like the sports teams get to do
whatever they want. They define the rules of the game
for their sports league. I think the artists should be
able to say this tour, I want it my way,
this way. If I'm Zach Bryan, I want to do
it this way, or I don't care, or I do care,
but right now so I'm a big fan of that.

(01:35:47):
I think content and the artists should control and put
the rules. We have the technology as an industry in
digital now to be able to do that. So I
want to state that I'm not an anti secondary I may.

Speaker 1 (01:36:03):
Want to. I want to weigh in here too, because
the public does not have clean hands. They want to resell,
and unfortunately they get caught up in what the secondary
legislation is uh saying. The other thing is if you
make it too tight, the public isn't happy.

Speaker 2 (01:36:25):
You're right.

Speaker 1 (01:36:26):
The public wants to know if I decide that I
want to go to the show tomorrow and there's no
limit to what I I will pay, there will be
a ticket for me.

Speaker 2 (01:36:37):
It's it's you're dead right. It's the challenge of you know,
the voices on Twitter versus the reality of the marketplace. Right,
and as you think you've written about me. I had
a fan rate me last week about some Taylor Swift
show and I'm like, I went onlines to this thoughts.
Tickets available at a decent price. You can still go
to see Taylor. So you're right, want it their way

(01:37:01):
when they want it. They've been accustomed to that on
every other platform and marketplace today, So you're right. It
is a It is a double edged sword right now
on how do you how do you try to deliver
some level of secondary legislation or rules that would simplify
the system for the on sale really all you're trying

(01:37:23):
to solve. But you're right, the free enterprise of the
American market says, I want to do whatever I own
that ticket, and I want to do whatever the hell
I want with it. The challenge we have, though, Bob,
is it's not you know, I'm not worried about Billy
that you know, the lobbyists are so great at doing.
You know, Billy in Texas just he's going, he's paying

(01:37:44):
for school by selling a couple of tickets. We're not
worried about him. That's not the problem being created at
ten am. It's the bots at ten am. That is
the challenge right now. So if we can address that
part at least, then the ca acsual secondary seller or
the seller, we're less worried about him. But we have
to address the first part on the ten AM free

(01:38:08):
for all right now is not being done by you know,
Billy who wants to sell a couple of tickets. It
is industrialized.

Speaker 1 (01:38:18):
Your CEO of the company, how much of your time
is dedicated to managing your stock price? And your stock
price now is a little depressed from where it was.
To what degree do you pay attention to that? Address that?

Speaker 2 (01:38:37):
Yeah, he listen. I don't want to sound like that
guy that says I don't ever look at it. Of
course I do. I've lived long enough now from when
we went public, I've been two dollars, I've been twenty eight,
been one hundred. I do say that. You know what
what I spend most of my time on is ultimately
what matters in any company, whether it's my stock or

(01:39:00):
AG's private company or your own, is the business growing.
How's the fundamentals of the business, Because the stock price
will ultimately follow performance, and you're always going to have
when you're as big as we are, and been doing
it this long, there's going to be moments of you know,
we'll have a little DJ overhang for a few months
or this year. While they will the investors debate what

(01:39:21):
that means or doesn't mean. All I really care though,
I obsess around the performance. That part is what really matters.
You don't want to be having a depressed stock and
having a business that isn't growing and healthy and has
a great future ahead of it. So I'm I'm blown
away at the resilience of this business, Bob. Coming out

(01:39:44):
of COVID, I mean, I'm I get that, you know,
we had a little bit of a kent up demand,
but seeing the continuation of it on a global basis,
it's just just mind blowing. Whether that's truly that experience
economy on steroids, your point of content being free everywhere

(01:40:07):
and driving all these customers, globalization of it overnight where
you know, we're doing ten sold out river stadiums for
Coldplay right now. By middle of the road festivals are
selling out bands more than ever want to have a
have a great experience. So that's that's the part that

(01:40:28):
your stock is. You know, you're kind of in your
mind debate the stock price is only relevant if you
if you if you don't think your business is going
to deliver, then that's a those those those kind of
companies are in trouble. This is a business where this
is an industry forget my own agenda, this is an
indituative for the next five to ten years is going
to have an incredible boom. Yes, we're going to live

(01:40:52):
with some pr realities at the ticket price, and the
artists are going to start charging a bit more and
right sizing their product and and and and and taking
some of that secondary and there'll be some news around that.
But this is an industry that is I think still
massively underpriced, still doesn't do a great job experientially. So
lots of great venues are going to be built, better venues,

(01:41:13):
better experiences, higher end premium experiences. I think there's a
lot of upsiding upsize in this industry. When I look
at the sports industry and almost how well they've done.
Look at the Masters four hundred and ninety dollars per
head spent that weekend sports has really done a much

(01:41:33):
better job at you know, the high end. It's not
and I mean again it doesn't mean the rich people
experience the just if I want to go to the Masters,
or I want to go to the super Bowl, I
want to go to the NBA All Star Game, or
or just the new Arena for the end for the
Chargers game. That's a beautiful arena with a lot of
great clubs and VIP rooms. We've been you know, I

(01:41:53):
think it's an industry. We've been playing backwards, behind on
the ball and all that. So I think as an industry,
you're going to see better venues built, better new products
being built around experiential stuff, more globalization more than ever,
and more of these great artists that you know, bad
money and international where it didn't it didn't matter before international.

(01:42:16):
I've been in forty countries and for most years there
was always a tragically hip in that market, but it
didn't matter. They weren't really going to break. What mattered
was Springsteen coming to the market, and you just been
able to see my local markets now where that's that
tragically hip does matter now because they get a TikTok
hit or they get some exposure and everyone knows who

(01:42:38):
they are now they're not they're not limited by that
kind of domestic media agenda. So I think you got
a huge supply of artists that are going to surprise
us from all over the world. So stock price will
will ultimately follow the performance of our company. And I
think this is an industry worth betting on.

Speaker 1 (01:42:59):
Okay, you we talk generally about the industry, but specifically
where are the growth opportunities for Live Nation and Ticketmaster.

Speaker 2 (01:43:09):
I've said it for a while, you know, it's a
global is our biggest kind of you know, I've always
been obsessed with outside of the American growth. We've got
a great US business. There's great opportunities to still do things,
but just grow. You know, this business is Latin America
has just been a huge new growth area. Obviously, we
bought Osessa in Covid. That was the big promoter we've

(01:43:34):
We've obviously can have a bunch of businesses in Brazil.
We just launched a new festival this week in Brazil
called the Town from our Rock and Real Company. So
one hundred and thirty thousand tickets on its opening day,
brand new festival Rock and Rio. So we like international.
I think you're going to see a lot of a
lot of expansion in South America Asia. We continue to

(01:43:56):
expand in so globalization there are tons of markets, Bob,
where there's crappy arenas, there's maybe a festival, there's an
under probably a crappy ticketing system, maybe no sponsors, you know,
so kind of professionalize these businesses when you roll in.
You launch Live Nation Brazil and we just launched our

(01:44:17):
Ticketmaster Brazil. We upgraded the festival team there. We're going
to build an arena there and a club there. We launched.
We brought a lot of palooza to those markets. So
we look ran Lollapaluza to India, launching them some new
businesses in Cape Town and Africa. So all about international

(01:44:37):
tons of great growth opportunity. Uh. Number two is we've really,
through COVID, really put a front foot forward on our
venue development. And it's something we had not historically been
as aggressive in on the higher end. We'd been more
a club theater amphitheater business. And then we stuck our
toe out in Austin with OVG and and that building

(01:45:00):
in Austin, that arena. It's been a home run success.
So we've been looking at markets where outside of mostly
outside of America, where you don't have that NBA, NHL
beautiful arena, we have a. We have an arena now
in Dublin, one in Copenhagen, Portugal. I've got a few

(01:45:20):
others in the pipe with OBG and Latin America and Asia.
So I think venue development is a is a big opportunity.
Going back to our math earlier, Bob, you know, it's
a vertical business, right, So the more the more vertical
you are with the content and the food and the
beverage and the peanuts, the better your businesses. So you'll

(01:45:41):
see us continually like a Netflix analogy, I guess is
you want to rent a lot of shows and put
them on other venues, but you got to have a
lot of your home grown brood shows in your own
venues and festivals where they're higher margin. So we'll keep
expanding our global venue platform, so in ant national global expansion.

(01:46:03):
And you know, every time you put a new venue,
you open up a bigger sponsorship opportunity and a ticketing
opportunity in those markets. So I think you'll see for
the next five years. We told the market, jeez, we
did about fifty million fans four or five years ago.
We're over one hundred and twenty five million, meaning they
went to a live nation show in twenty two, like

(01:46:24):
we've now told them, we're we can see one fifty
to one seventy five over the next five years of
fans going to our show. So we think the pie
gets bigger globally, our market share just growing. If the
pie gets bigger, we get bigger and before we have
to even take more market share in entering new markets
that we're not in. So we think this is a

(01:46:46):
global business that will grow, and we'll obviously grow as
the tide goes up.

Speaker 1 (01:46:53):
Now North America is pretty myopic. They don't really know
what's going on in these other countries. What is the
market and who are the competitors of live Nation around
the world.

Speaker 2 (01:47:05):
Well, you have CTS in Germany, they're done a good
job there, and then most of the markets that you're
going to go to are going to have let's call
it the Golden voices, right, they're going to have a
local and grain promoter. I mean, Japan is a big market,
big market, second largest market in the world, and we
have no market share. They're really small and there's four

(01:47:27):
historic promoters there that have owned the market. So you've
got to figure out how to be in business. Is
one of those four we've launched a live nation in Japan.
We're bringing artists there. But generally in a market place
that matters, there's an established Merrick Liberberg, there's a promoter
that probably owns the market market and has two other competitors,

(01:47:50):
so still a local business where they'd probably be a
festival and a promoter in those markets with their good
you know, good scale within their current market. Australia is
the same as you know, three or four old time
promoters own the market there. We bought one of them, Copple,
But so you tend to have to go into those

(01:48:11):
markets there's probably one or two historic promoters that own
the market. We tend to try to partner with one
of them and then help them supercharge their business by
bringing tours and sponsorship and capital.

Speaker 1 (01:48:26):
So what's a typical day in the life of Michael Rupino?

Speaker 2 (01:48:30):
Jeez, stressful now thanks to the check my Twitter feed
and they see who's see who's mad at me that day?
But you know, I think it's it's I think listen, let's.

Speaker 1 (01:48:45):
Slow down there. You're a CEO. How much time do
you spend on Twitter? And what's your feeling about musk
running it and where it's going.

Speaker 2 (01:48:59):
Well, that's a loaded one in Twitter. You know, it's
an addiction you hate, right because you know, you know,
you know, they don't go on there and say thank
so thankful, I got great tickets today. So it's it's
only the pissed off that are going to go hit
you up. But I do think it, you know, it
is a you know, as Kara Swisher and Prophergy who

(01:49:20):
we both like talk about, you know, it's still a
damn good lightning rod to figure out what's going on
in the world, right. I mean, you still go to
that I go to that trending Explore page and just
quickly go what's going on? And I still think it
is an incredible lightning rod and a quick way to
figure out whatever the drama of the day is going

(01:49:40):
on in the world. So I think I think he's
you know, I think he's a you know, obviously a genius.
But I can't imagine why he wanted this this mission.
This is a this is not a fruitful mission to
come back to. But I think so, you know, I
was my job, I would say, you're the reality is

(01:50:03):
the one thing that has changed is in the world
it's much more complex to run a comp business today.
I mean there's a lot of voices right every day,
So I think that's a new part of the business.
You have to figure you have to spend time on it.
You didn't before. You know, mostly it's going to spend
your time on your strategy and your business and your divisions.
And we're we've got a credible global team and that's

(01:50:25):
where I spend most of my day dealing with my
team's internal and figuring out what talent we're buying and
what models and venues and strategy we're pursuing. And I
think that just right there.

Speaker 1 (01:50:38):
To what degree do you delegate? To what degree do
you get your hands dirty?

Speaker 2 (01:50:43):
Oh? My team, would you know? They know I'm still nuts.
This is this is my baby. I'm I'm night and
day here, I'm three feet and thirty thousand feet. I
you know, I really look at running a business and
I love it still. You know, one of the realities
of being a CEO is you know, I always say
there's kind of three things you can spend time on,
your family, your business, and a lot of the external stuff.

(01:51:07):
And the external stuff is gratifying for for for a
lot of people, but you can't do all three something breaks.
So I'm pretty obsessed with my three boys. It's making
sure i'm a good dad and snowboarding and all the
things you and I have talked about. And then two,
as i'm internal focused, I really believe it's it's my

(01:51:29):
team needs me. So I'm you know, every Tuesday at
two and a half hours my concert team, and Wednesday
is ticketmaster for two hours, sponsorship Thursday and venues and
so I go. I'm I'm a I'm an active parent
making sure all these divisions have access to me, help
them cut through bureaucracy, make good decisions, deal with drama.

(01:51:53):
So I'm pretty. I'm pretty. I go deep and stay
stay very engaged. And as you know one of your
famous lines about the bunker, I'm an introvert, so I
don't spend a lot of time on the external. I
figured that that all comes with good results and all that.
You know, the good strategy and good results take care
of the profile and the other things. But so that's

(01:52:15):
kind of my day.

Speaker 1 (01:52:17):
Are you reachable twenty four to seven? Are you working
twenty four seven?

Speaker 2 (01:52:22):
Oh yeah, yeah, no, that's the that's the curse for sure. Artists.
Middle of the night, whoever it is, I'm always available, Yeah, absolutely,
you know, it's listen to a gift where we run
an incredible fun industry. I came from nothing and to
be able to sit here and work with some of
these great artists and have access and be part of
their lives and help them deliver it's a pleasure.

Speaker 1 (01:52:48):
And why are Canadians so prominent and play above their
weight in the concert industry?

Speaker 2 (01:52:55):
I don't, oh, you know, I do think this one,
you know, is so when I was in Toronto, I
thought Michael Cole and this idea of touring was an
everywhere experience. I didn't really understand that that was such
a uniqueness that you bought multiple So when when when

(01:53:16):
Steve Herman I started a core audience, and you know,
we bought tours across the country about the Rod Stewart
tour for the country. You bought fourteen dates and it
was you know, huge money for us at that time.
I remember we remember we bought Janet Jackson from Jack
remember Jack Usick? What was his name, the guy they
went to jail jack?

Speaker 1 (01:53:34):
Oh yeah, Jack Utsick? Yeah yeah, oh man, he was
a character.

Speaker 2 (01:53:38):
What a character? Hit off and we bought Janet Jackson
lost four hundred thousand dollars and we went to Mel's
diner that night, thought how are we going to pay
for this? So when you buy tours it was exception.
Only when I moved to America and then Europe, I
really realized that the promoter, as rich as he was
in his great he never left town like Don Law

(01:54:00):
made a fortune living in Boston or and whoever they Larry,
Larry Maggott and Philly Merrick Leberberg in Germany. So their market,
they were just buying these you know, they were buying
their market. So this idea that you know that I
was that that Michael and Canada you were buying tours.
It just was so foreign to these people because you

(01:54:22):
just you never crossed the lines here as you know,
it was that it was the mafia, right you had Philly,
you didn't buy a New Jersey, and so I do
think out of necessity in Canada because you didn't buy Toronto,
you bought the world. Michael broke that model for me
and Cole and Jerry Baird and Omar and myself and
Steve Herman. We just that's the model we thought was right.

(01:54:43):
So I think that did excel us because I think
it when I was sitting in the room, I was
able to talk about a bit more complexity than just
one market. And and and in Canada, uh, you know,
you had Quebec, you had some different geographies. You know,
you had the second largest landmass in the world, so
it wasn't like they were close markets. So you were

(01:55:05):
mine a gena cross country business. And I think that
was really really in the concert world that was so decentralized.
Still that that and still is still there's still a
fight for for for the local promoters, you know, versus
the tour. Still that battle exists. So I think I
think that kind of just unlocked why the concert business

(01:55:27):
moved fast with with Michael and that CPI model. When
he broke that model in the Stones and kind of
pushed that forward, we all looked at it and thought
that was business as usual. I didn't realize till I
moved here how much they hated us and in terms
of Michael and that and that model and in the
Stones and that history of breaking that local model. So

(01:55:50):
I guess that that was a bit of it.

Speaker 1 (01:55:52):
Needless to say, to be an artist, people have no
idea what a backbreaking job it is. So to what
degree are residencies like Harry styles And to what degree
is Vegas where the act, where the audience comes to
the act. Is that just going to be a stasis thing?
Is that going to grow?

Speaker 2 (01:56:14):
Well? As a side note, you just hit on one
thing on going back to pricing, you're dead right these artists.
First of all, to go on the road right now
is expensive, and to run a venue is expensive. But
as you know, everything is increased dramatically. I mean every
costs went up. If you look at the ticket price
increases from twenty nineteen to today, know they've gone up

(01:56:37):
nineteen percent, but so did labor, rentals, lighting, transportation, and gas. Right,
so the costs are expensive for these artists. They're all in.
They all want to have the greatest production arms race,
so their production costs are intense. Now you can see

(01:56:57):
Taylor's show or Beyonce's, but Dona is what they put
on that stage. It's crazy expensive. So you are right
there are I think Vegas has unlocked this idea that
I could I could have a bit of a life
and still deliver an incredible gross So I think Adele
really really took it to the next level of being

(01:57:19):
a modern artist that could have just done a stadium
tour and decided to sit in Vegas for a while.
So I think you're going to see, you know, the
Harry style fifteen fifteen venue, fifteen amphitheaters or a fifteen arenas.
But I would back up and say, every artist that
you talk to knows that ultimately, when they get to

(01:57:42):
the market, they make lifelong fans. You don't make a
lifelong fan on Spotify. You make it when you show
up at the city and they see you in stage
and live. So every artist will still talk to me
about they got to go play the world like they
get that model now. I think once you've done it
a few times, yes, then you can start saying do

(01:58:02):
I need to go back to South America or can
I I'm going to do thirty dates and I'm going
to pick five cities. So I think you're going to
see a bit of those models where the artists will say,
you know what, I'll play five markets. I'll play London
and you know, New York and Miami and Brazil and

(01:58:24):
try to do more residency that way. So I do
think the cost of production, transportation and the wear and tear.
I think you'll start to see some of those models
emerge where they won't do the one hundred dates, so
they'll do sixty, but they'll be in five cities, not
fifty cities. But I would say it all depends on
your life cycle, right. Every artist knows Coldplay knows right

(01:58:47):
now that they're making worldwide, global fans for life. They'll
run around the world. Maybe there's a point where they say, Okay,
we won't run as far now that we've done it,
but they all know they got to go. They all
everyone in the touring business, and you know, it has
the stories of the artists that didn't do it and
why they're not today able to be that global star.

(01:59:09):
And then there's the Metallica model and lars on why
they're selling and then their brand is so big forever,
or the U two model, the Stones model. So most
people look at that model and go, Okay, if I'm
gonna have longevity, if I'm going to make money forever
and be a global brand, I got to go actually
do those one hundred date global tours. But I think

(01:59:32):
you're right, there'll be artists now that once you've done
it three or four times start to say, can I
still make money doing that sitting down in a city,
and that's definitely happening.

Speaker 1 (01:59:44):
Okay, what's the health of the festival mark? You talked
about that great on sale in Brazil. So we had
a couple of huge festivals Coachella, Lallapalooza, bon Aru, and
then there were a million imitators. What's the health of
the market now?

Speaker 2 (02:00:01):
You know, if you'd asked me a few years ago,
I might have said I was worried that there was
the headline, kind of the big ones that made it,
and there were a lot in the middle trying to
be big but didn't have soul. What I see today is,
you know, if you are the if you've crossed the

(02:00:22):
line like Coachella obviously has, or Lollapalooza, Blastonbury, E d C.
They seem to be passage to rite. So they there
there's and there's Rock and Rio and Brazil and Rector
in Belgium. There tends to be one of those in
every market and they're reading leads. They're fine. I think

(02:00:43):
where the market got smart and we're seeing successes. Oh
quickly the market whoever you are, realized you can't just
rent this field and put Drake, Billy, Joel and little
weighing on like that kind of idea that there was
that was happening everywhere the festivals had, you know, wherever

(02:01:04):
they were, we had some, everyone had them. And I
think quickly those those got killed. Quickly you you realize
you lost three million bucks who you didn't stand for anything.
And and then what happened, though I'm seeing now is
they quickly went to these one and two days, these
nicher ideas that have more focus, and we're having a

(02:01:26):
really really big success with these this year. You know
when when we were young, last year in Vegas and
again this year one day, two day festival, but really
meant to be a one day tim Sweewood's got a few.
We got this year, C and C. We just did
one on the weekend. Charlie Walker texted me, I didn't
even know we're doing in Texas a one day. So

(02:01:47):
what I'm seeing is either you were already made it
to the big big league and you're established and you
just got to keep reinventing that brand and do what
you do at the top end, or you're probably playing
for a local or a niche idea that bottle Rock,
for example, where or the market or the idea is
niche enough to be a better experience, But it's probably

(02:02:11):
a one day, maybe it's two on a on a
good day. But so I think you've seen a lot
of those pop up now where the risk is less.
You're not betting on a three day, fourteen million dollar
all in idea that's that's this multi genre festival. I
think those are dyed. You've got to now be a
more single shot festival that stands for something. And that

(02:02:36):
idea that festivals, you know, that old idea that you
could you know, put in the middle of anywhere. It
doesn't work anymore. Like you've got to put that festival
where you and I want to go on Saturday anyways.
So why it works in Vegas, why it works in
Palm Springs. But you can't put them in the middle
of nowhere anymore. People want to want to want to
go to either a destination or a town or a

(02:02:58):
location where it's already got built in cool factor or destination.
So so I think it's actually in a good space
because I think a lot of we had a lot
in the middle. We had some of those in the
middle where you're bent and big. You're trying to be
the next Coachella. You're never going to get there. You're

(02:03:18):
trying to be the next Law of Palooza. So you're
almost stuck in the middle. You don't stand for any
you know, I always joke with my team, you know,
a bad logo, a Ferris Will, an artist village and
free headliners and they think they have magic, right, and
it was formula, but it wasn't standing for anything. So
we're seeing in the UK here Europe, if you're starting

(02:03:40):
smaller and simpler, you're you're probably going to have success.
And you're also in our view you can start five
or six of those a year and if two don't
make it, you're not You're not going down for ten millions.
They're simpler to start more and if they got a
flash like whence we were young. When we were young
was on you. We put one day on an epssee

(02:04:01):
one hundred and forty thousand tickets. If you hit a
little mark an idea that can run, then you can
run with it. But you don't start in a multi
genre big idea. So top Pen seems to be doing
we Coachella did well We're having a record year in Lollapalooza,
Bonna rue is roared back, so I'm thrilled. I mean,
the lawas outside of America are doing really well. Rock

(02:04:23):
and rear, so the big boys and kind of the
established ones seem to be doing really well this year.
And I think if you're starting something smaller and niche,
you're probably going to be Okay, what we miss?

Speaker 1 (02:04:37):
What do you have to tell my audience that we
didn't cover? Well?

Speaker 2 (02:04:42):
I think we talked. I mean, listen, I think the
idea that you know, it's as we're not a perfect business,
but I think the industry of the venues and the
cost that they're incurring, I don't think, you know, I
think people just have not that everyone's going to understand
or have a sympathy. But being a guy that owns
a lot of venues, I looked at my venues this morning.

(02:05:02):
You know, my amphitheaters. We you and I have talked
about this before. My Amphitheater's lost one hundred and forty
three million dollars at the door. So you wonder why
I have a twenty dollars service fee right That means
I'm paying not just the one hundred percent of the door.
I'm paying one hundred and something percent of the door, right,
So you got to pay for that somehow, right, So

(02:05:22):
you got to pay for the perky and the booze
that you know, the food. So this is an industry
where your capex is going up, your costs are going up,
and your artists costs are going up. So guess what
that means. The fees are going to go up or
revenue has to be generated to cover the costs. None
of them are none of them are are evil in themselves.

(02:05:43):
They're all part of the plot that says, to put
a great show on in a great venue with the
right staff and the and the insurance and the capex
and all the things that come with putting a show on,
it costs this much. And I think we're finally as
an industry ready. I think we will move towards that
all in because my my point is the artists should
take all the money they deserve it, they should charge more,

(02:06:06):
and the venues deserve to figure out how to pay
for those venues and put that show on. So I
just think as an industry, we've got to be presented
it in a way that we can no longer proceed
with because it's not defendable the way it's broken out today.
So I think that's you know, you've been always it's

(02:06:28):
a complex problem. I mean, I meet with you meet
with a Senator, a congressman. They look at you and like,
oh my god, the service fee, and you try to
explain why the service fee at this, you know, and
then you talk about the hockey game down the street
and why the service fee and who the scalper is
and why the scalper. I mean, it's a complex industry,
hard to win any public opinion polls on explaining it.

(02:06:52):
So it's a challenge in that front. But I do think,
you know, we talk about the crisis in the last
year has been our opportunity to actually start talking about
it because I think I think will be better for
it in the end, whether it's all in pricing the fair,
some legislation will happen around secondary. There's enough movement now

(02:07:12):
around that I think there'll be something that'll come around
all in and or secondary. So I think that's a
step forward because it's a sideshow to the actual great
growth that the industry has.

Speaker 1 (02:07:25):
And what do you look for in hiring somebody, you know, it's.

Speaker 2 (02:07:32):
It's always a challenger. Your batting rate is fifty sixty percent,
it's usually the the IQ is easily, it's usually I'm
looking for EQ. Right. A lot of smart, smart people
can get things done. But this is a rare industry
where you can. You can come from Harvard, it don't matter.
Can you actually get things done with people? You know?

(02:07:58):
I joke that I, you know, I went to university
and got an accounting a psychology degree, and I need
them both every day here because this is not about.
This isn't whether I have great strategy. I tomorrow could
write down the April fruls idea you had, which was fabulous.
I could give you the thirteen things we should do
tomorrow to make this a better industry. It's irrelevant because

(02:08:18):
I got get a lot. I got to herd a
lot of cats. We got to move a whole industry
and a lot of agendas at odds, and we got
to find like common ground that we can move it
somewhere forward and move the business forward. So we get
lots you know, we'll hire them in sponsorship sometime and
they'll come from somewhere and they have these great ideas

(02:08:39):
and you know if we could just get Beyonce it
on stage to do its like, Okay, that's not going
to work. So you know, it's a it's an industry
where you know, you got to understand and bring people
in that definitely have the IQ. But can they manage
understand our industry well enough to make sure we can
move the people, manage the egos involved, put your egos

(02:09:00):
and hopefully try to get something done.

Speaker 1 (02:09:03):
Okay, you're in your mid fifties. How long are you
going to do this? This is a business where people
tend to work in touring until they drop, unlike on
the record side. And as we've discussed before, you know
Liberty has a position in Live Nation. Greg mcfay is
active as they have in Serious they have other interests.

(02:09:27):
Could you ever be tempted to take a different job,
another job?

Speaker 2 (02:09:34):
Well, so you know Greg does read your emails because
he forwarded me or April Foles. So I didn't He said,
I didn't think I had any See I must have power.
Now Liberty has been a Greg and John have been
incredible shareholders. They've been fabulous shareholders today. No, I think
this is listen. I think the you got to be

(02:09:57):
self aware as the CEOs to trust me, I don't
take anything for grant in it. I know I'm not
on the golf course. I get. I I don't do
this for money. I do it because I love it.
But I do think I think we have another chapter left.
So I think there's I think there's another another move
and another chapter left. We you know, when I launched

(02:10:18):
this company, we're a few hundred million dollars market cap.
We we started to build, we went global. Ticketmaster was
a huge moment to differentiate our business. I think I
got a few other moves in the in the playbook
still that can make us a different business. So I'd
like I'd like to I'd like to, you know, this
new five year deal I have, I think we got

(02:10:39):
some some moves left in the tank in this five years.
I'm certainly not going to go run another business at
this level, you know. I you know, I guess never
as long and I love Disney and other companies, But
I don't think I'm I'm I think I got I
think I got a trick or two left here that

(02:11:01):
we can unlock and make this an exciting place. And
I think that's the way I finished the game.

Speaker 1 (02:11:10):
Okay, Michael, thanks so much for taking the time to
speak to my audience. You've been very open and honest
and forthcoming, and I thank you for that.

Speaker 2 (02:11:19):
Thank you, Bob, much appreciated.

Speaker 1 (02:11:21):
Until next time. This is Bob left Sets