MIDEM Live Summit Report: The State Of Global Touring

Gideon Gottfried – Live Summit at Midem 2018
From left: Ray Waddell, Anuj Gupta, John Reid, David Zedeck and John Boyle.

Midem’s first Live Summit, produced in association with Pollstar, kicked off Thursday (June 7) in Cannes, France with a power panel on the state of global touring opportunities. Moderator Ray Waddell, president of media & conferences for the Oak View Group (Pollstar’s parent company), welcomed Anuj Gupta (Business Head IPs and International Touring OML Entertainment, India), John Reid (president Live Nation Europe-Concerts, UK), David Zedeck (global head UTA Music) and John Boyle (president Live Nation Japan) on stage.

Of all the markets explored, Japan was amongst the most curious. The second-largest music market in the world, according to IFPI’s most recent figures, is dominated by domestic artists (88 percent) – with the rest of the market share going to K-Pop and international. “The domestic promoters dominate, the international guys kind of fight for venue availabilities and international talent. Our objective is to change that,” Boyle explained, which meant, “get some real market share, get in the domestic business, get in the ticketing business and establish ourselves as we have pretty much everywhere in the world.”

As far as ticketing in Japan was concerned, “I feel like I’m living in the 90s. You don’t buy a ticket, you reserve it. Each ticketing company is aligned with a different convenience store, where you pick up and pay for your hard ticket. You can’t buy a ticket online.” 

Gideon Gottfried – Midem 2018
John Boyle, president Live Nation Japan

Boyle also talked about the lack of venues in the country. Tokyo, for instance, which is the largest urban area in the world by population, had only five venues larger than 8,000 capacity. Since several will be refurbished in 2019, to host events during the Olympics in 2020, next year is going to be tough for promoters looking to tour the market.

“That being said, there’s a lot new venues being built for the Olympics. And we’re keeping our fingers crossed that Japan allows the casinos to come. Each of those casinos would come with a venue. I know there are going to be a lot more opportunities after the Olympics in 2020,” Boyle said.

Zedeck explained that a lack of venues wasn’t just a problem in Japan. South America, too, boasted a lot of stadiums but no arenas. Also, South East Asia was characterized by “a void of great indoor venues.”

The Indian market, too, has anomalies. It may boast a population of 1.3 billion-plus, but of the country’s 20-odd festivals only the top three managed to attract around 15,000 people, according to Gupta. “Currently most festivals are loosing money. Most festivals want to make an impact in the inaugural year, but aren’t thinking long-term. There’s a lot of festivals cropping up. The key to sustaining in the market is to just focus on creating the best thing you can.”

Gideon Gottfried – Midem 2018
Anuj Gupta, Business Head IPs and International Touring OML Entertainment, India

“When you have a quality program, you will be sustainable. For example, our festival is 95 percent Indian acts, and we sell 17,000 tickets a year, while other festivals are 50 percent international acts and sell about 8,000 tickets,” said Gupta.

He added, that “because there’s such a rarity of touring, fans don’t want repeat touring. The second time an artist comes, it hardly ever works.” He recommended to wait at least four or five years before returning to the country with any given act.

Live Nation’s John Reid pointed out that the worldwide touring business was stronger than ever, basically reiterating what he had already talked about in a recent Pollstar Q&A. He went on to explain how the streaming business drove the appeal of globe acts, such as BTS, who sold 20,000 to 30,000 tickets per market without any radio airplay. “Radio gatekeepers are becoming less relevant,” he said.

“Darwinism is alive and well in the festival market,” he continued, “the ones that survive have something special, whether it’s a Reading, Pinkpop, Werchter, Roskilde, Glastonbury, Coachella, Electric Daisy.” He said that a trusted, well-executed brand would work almost anywhere.

Waddell asked the panelists about their visa experiences, to which Gupta responded that visa issues were his “favourite hassle,” adding that it used to be far worse in India. He remembered sitting in the country’s Foreign Regional Registration Office for almost a day with acts such as Norah Jones, Megadeth or Russell Peters going through 40 pages of paperwork per person.

According to Zedeck, it was all about planning. “It could take three days to get a visa, it could take 14 days for the process,” he said. The hardest part was sorting all visas prior to a long run across continents, as there was no time to spontaneously send in passports to the respective consulates while on tour.

Another topic on the agenda was security, which used to be a rider item, according to Zedeck. Today, security is on the forefront of any event. Reid explained how Live Nation had an international network of security experts the company worked with in each market as part of making the safety of fans and artists a top priority. “Events are a safe place to be, generally speaking,” he said.

Gideon Gottfried – Midem 2018
Ray Waddell opened the first Live Summit, vowing to bring more live to MIDEM

Boyle said that Japan was ridiculously safe. He recalled being called into a “war peril meeting with the mayor and chief of police,” when EDC premiered in Japan in 2017. The reason: North Korea had just tested a new weapon, and Boyle was informed about Japan’s evacuation plan, should North Korea attack. He described the experience as “very strange, very surreal.”

The panel rounded out by talking about the most exciting markets, which included South America. Despite the venue challenge, the success C3 has with Lollapaloozas in Argentina, Brazil and Chile spoke volumes. Zedeck said that Asia’s been a great touring market for decades. The only problem was that there was usually only one viable city per market, and getting from city to city in Asia required many flights and freight movements.