Impact International: UK/Euro 2024 Honoree Matt Bates

“GOING INDEPENDENT AGAIN
HAS BEEN A WONDERFUL THING”

Matt Bates grew up during the Britpop era, spending his youth going to see concerts by Oasis, Blur, Pulp and Supergrass, thinking how cool it would be to get paid to go to gigs every night.
“I was Oasis and Blur mad,” he recalls, “I went to see Oasis play at Maine Road in 1996. I came home from that show, and I had the poster on my wall, and it said: arranged by Primary Talent International. I remember talking to my mom about exams, and what I wanted to do with my life: Was I going to be a doctor, a lawyer? But I didn’t want any of that, I just wanted to put on these kinds of shows, and work for a company like Primary Talent International.”

Bates owns that company now – a true full-circle moment if there ever was one. A lot of things happened between that Oasis gig and joining Primary Talent in 2004.

“It wasn’t a deliberate thing,” he recalls, “I wasn’t sending Primary letters every day, saying ‘Please give me a job.’ I got a phone call out of the blue one day from the late Dave Chumbley, one of the directors of Primary, who said, ‘I’ve heard good things about you. Want to come meet me?’ That’s how I joined, 20 years ago. I came in with one act I was booking out of my bedroom in Stoke-on-Trent, and built my roster from there. The rest is history.”

Primary Talent International sold to ICM Partners in 2020. Shortly after that deal, ICM got acquired by CAA. The first thing Bates did when the pandemic ended was to buy back Primary Talent International and make it independent again.

“It’s been a wonderful thing,” Bates says, as going independent allowed his team to focus on what it means to be an agent. He explains: “I think lots of people got blinded by the big business pre-COVID, when I saw lots of artists’ careers being handled much like a commodity, when in reality you were dealing with human beings. The pandemic showed how human, how fragile this industry is, and how much you have to care for the people you’re looking after. For a lot of artists, live is the most important part of their career, so you have a great responsibility.”

Primary Talent International’s roster includes Patti Smith, The Cure, Zeds Dead, Imogen Heap, Dropkick Murphys, Indigo Girls, beabadoobee, Ethel Cain, Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds, Ziggy Marley and many others.

Then there’s The 1975, who’ve been going from strength to strength in the past years. “The last shows we did were in spring this year,” Bates recalls, “and we did the best business we’ve ever done on this last album campaign: 400,000 tickets in the UK alone.”

The UK run of their last tour included two sold-out shows at the OVO Hydro in Glasgow, Scotland, Feb. 8-9, selling 27,143 tickets at a $2,113,463 gross; and two sold-out concerts at AO Arena Manchester, Feb. 17-18, moving 30,466 tickets for $2,314,943, according to the box office reports submitted to Pollstar.

Returning to their indie roots enabled Bates and his team to “go back to working with artists one on one again, really build relationships, and not just think about it as a business deal, because it’s far more important than that. One thing I encouraged all my team to do during the pandemic and post was to check in on their artists, and make sure they were OK, just talk to them.”

Facing challenges can be a lot scarier as an indie, because there’s no one to help bear the risk in case a show or tour falls flat.

Bates admits, “There’s a lot of pros to being a part of a corporate: what they can offer, the safety they give you. But our decision was made for the artists, because we felt that we could definitely give a better and more personal service by being more nimble and hands on.

“I see a lot of agencies have big teams around artists, two, three, four agents. I’ve visited roster websites to find 10 agents listed for one artist. I wonder how that works? Is that good for the artists or not? I’m sure that for some artists, who love having big teams around them, it must work, otherwise they wouldn’t do it.”

He adds, “But the artists I work with in particular, and artists in general, really want to feel that someone’s got their back. If you have a good gig on a great tour, fine, high-five me coming off stage, well done. But, equally, if something goes wrong, if something needs to change, if you’ve got a problem, you need to know who to talk to, who can try and fix that.

“When it’s a big team, there’s often a lot of finger pointing. Knowing exactly who’s looking after their career is something that gives artists a lot of comfort: You’ve not chosen to be with a team of 10, you’ve chosen the agent you thought was best for you, the person that convinced you they understood what you needed. That’s the person you can turn to when you need advice or help.”

Bates says he’s always upfront with new acts, explaining: “Yes, I’ve got other artists, and, yes, a lot of artists are bigger than you, earn more money, and are therefore more important to my business than you at this point in time, I’m not gonna lie about that. But what I promise is that I will never forget that, to you, this is the most important thing in your life, probably your one opportunity of making it in this industry, because we don’t get many second chances in music. And I understand that when I take you on, I have a responsibility to not forget that, to you, this is the most important thing in the world.”