IQ60

LIVE MUSIC INTELLIGENCE

Issue 60

An ILMC Publication. July 2015

BRANDS TAKE CENTRE STAGE

THE EVOLUTION OF LIVE MUSIC SPONSORSHIP KISS AND MAKE-UP • 30 YEARS OF ROCK IN RIO • SWISS MARKET PROFILE • FAMILY ENTERTAINMENT

Cover photo: Cotton Claw performing at Open Air St Gallen in June © Tatjana Rueeggsegger

Contents IQ Magazine Issue 60

News and Developments 6 In Brief The main headlines over the last two months

20

8 In Depth Key stories from around the live music world 12 Busy Bodies NEW - Industry associations share business concerns and news 13 New Signings A round-up of the latest acts that have been added to the rosters of international agents 18 Techno Files Revealing the hottest new technology in live entertainment

Features

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20 Brands Take Centre Stage Giles Fitzgerald unpacks the new rules of deal making in the evolving sponsorship market 26 Like Clockwork It’s time to revisit Switzerland for a market report 36 We Are Family Dr Eugenia Durante conducts her annual health check of the family entertainment sector 42 KISS and Make-Up Olaf Furniss discovers the secret to the thunder gods’ unwavering universal popularity

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50 30 Years of Rock In Rio Richard Smirke takes a look back over three decades of the world’s biggest live music event

Comments and Columns 14 The Changing Nature of Festival Booking Richard Moffat discusses the mercurial world of festival booking 16 A Country Worth Touring Tony Nagamaiah talks about Malaysia as a live music touring destination 17 Challenges, Competition and Constrictors Jouni Markkanen on Finland’s Tuska Open Air Metal Festival and Finnish metal events

42 50

58 Members’ Noticeboard

Keeping you posted on what ILMC members are up to 59 Your Shout

Who will be the top five headline acts in 2025?

IQ Magazine July 2015

3

Mixed Fortunes Gordon Masson observes that while many country economies are growing, financial hardship is still having a real impact internationally...

For those of us lucky enough to live in countries that have emerged from the global recession, it’s perhaps too easy to forget that many territories elsewhere are still suffering from the economic meltdown. As IQ went to press, the people of Greece were waiting to find out the results of a referendum to decide whether the country should remain part of the European Union. But even in perceived strong economies such as France, the fallout from the recession continues to take its toll, with cuts in public subsidies and high unemployment hitting the live entertainment sector hard (see page 11).

Elsewhere in our news pages, there’s a fascinating MMF investigation involving BUMA Stemra in the Netherlands, which has been giving live performance fee ‘discount’ paybacks to promoters, thereby short-changing performers, songwriters and publishers (see page 9).

And hot on the heels of the ongoing battle between promoters and collection society SGAE in Spain, artist representatives around the world are now being urged to scrutinise tour settlement accounts to make sure they are not falling victim to similar practices.

Away from the news, we’re delivering you an issue packed with some stellar features.

On page 20, brands expert Giles Fitzgerald has written a compelling article on the evolving partnership between sponsors and the music business – a must-read for anyone looking to attract sponsorship support for their tour, venue or event.

And our market specialist Adam Woods has been interrogating those working in the complex Swiss market (page 26) to examine the repercussions of this year’s controversial currency cap removal.

Eugenia Durante reports on the efforts of the family entertainment sector (page

IQ Magazine July 2015

36) to develop new shows and take productions to new markets in their attempts to drive growth. And talking of family attractions, Olaf Furniss talks to the inner circle of rock legends KISS (page 42) to discover the secret behind their 40 years of success and their ability to appeal to fans across the generations, from infants to great-grandparents.

Finally, Richard Smirke chronicles the history of Rock in Rio – the world’s biggest live music brand, which this year marks its 30th anniversary. Given exclusive access to founder Roberto Medina, IQ discovers that the evergrowing, country-hopping festival might never have got off the ground, if it hadn’t been for crooning legend Frank Sinatra (page 50).

And as if that wasn’t enough to keep you all informed, we’re using this issue to launch a couple of new regular pages: Busy Bodies, which gives the various live music industry associations and societies around the world a platform to share news and concerns; and our New Signings page that agents can use to announce the latest additions to their rosters. Both of these pages are works in progress, so we’d love to hear your feedback about any ways in which they can be improved. And on that note, we’ve gone all 21st century and ramped up our presence on social media. So, as you’ll notice, there are a number of friendly reminders to use our Twitter account to comment on stories and developments reported both in IQ and on the ILMC website. It’s an ideal way to generate and participate in debate and it’s a tool we intend to use to your advantage when planning the agenda topics for next year’s ILMC, so follow us on @iq_mag and we’ll be sure to do likewise.

Issue 60 LIVE MUSIC INTELLIGENCE THE ILMC JOURNAL, July 2015

IQ Magazine Unit 31 Tileyard Road London, N7 9AH info@iq-mag.net www.iq-mag.net Tel: +44 (0)20 3743 0300 Twitter: @iq_mag

Publisher

ILMC and Suspicious Marketing

Editor

Gordon Masson

Associate Editor Allan McGowan

Marketing & Advertising Director Terry McNally

Design

Martin Hughes

Sub Editor

Michael Muldoon

Editorial Assistants

Susanna Moro & Ben Delger

Contributors

Eugenia Durante, Giles Fitzgerald, Olaf Furniss, Jouni Markkanen, Richard Moffat, Tony Nagamaiah, Richard Smirke, Manfred Tari, Dartsya Tarkovska, Adam Woods

Editorial Contact

Gordon Masson, gordon@iq-mag.net Tel: +44 (0)20 3743 0303

Advertising Contact

Terry McNally, terry@iq-mag.net Tel: +44 (0)20 3743 0304

To subscribe to IQ Magazine: michael@iq-mag.net An annual subscription to IQ is £75 (print) or £60 (electronic).

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News

In Brief...

MAY

A number of artists agree to play for free or extend their set to make up for other acts cancelling in the wake of a substantial cash theft from Belgium’s Eurorock Festival. Event organiser Rudi Donckers is reportedly hospitalised with heart problems on discovering the onsite robbery.

Ashley Page is named Manager of the Year at the MMF New Zealand Music Awards in Auckland.

Philippe Cornu leaves Swiss promoter Appalooza to launch another equinethemed company, Wild Pony, with colleague Pascal Rötheli. The new company will reportedly be responsible for the programming of the Gurten Festival, among other business.

Blues legend B.B. King dies peacefully in his sleep at his home in Las Vegas, aged 89.

Architects Populous win the contract to design the new 12,000-capacity Bristol Arena in the UK. The firm’s venue portfolio already includes The O2 arena and the Olympic Stadium in London, as well as the FirstDirect Arena in Leeds.

Live Nation, in collaboration with IMG and Dick Clark Productions, announces plans to produce the Live Nation Music Awards, which will pay tribute to the best live musical performances of the year. Turner Broadcasting has been lined up to air the ceremony live on 1 October.

Singer Sam Smith cancels a number of high profile shows after a haemorrhage on his vocal chords requires surgery. He hopes to resume performing live in July.

Spanish venues, bars, restaurants and shops take part in a Day Without Music by refusing to play music as a protest against rising taxes, such as 21% VAT on concert tickets.

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B.B.King

Live Nation chief Michael Rapino receives an honorary doctorate from Lakehead University in Thunder Bay, Canada.

EDM specialist SFX Entertainment’s reports that revenues rose 56.6% to $52.2million (€47m) in the first three months of 2015, despite start-up costs for Rock in Rio USA of $4-5m (€3.6-4.5m).

Eight choral singers are injured after the stage they are performing on collapses in China. Around 80 singers were rehearsing on stage in the city of Bijie in Guizhou province.

Sydney-based Soapbox Artists, which grew out of the Australian wing of Ministry of Sound, announces its merger with the Melbourne-based 360 Agency.

The combined EDM agencies will be a significant player in the dance market, representing a large roster of DJ and producer talent.

Slovakia’s government rules that private radio stations will have to broadcast at least 20% Slovak music starting

next year, and at least 25% from 2017.

The nation’s public Slovak Radio is ordered to play at least 30% local music on air in 2016, rising to 35% in 2017, with a commitment to at least one-fifth of the songs aired being from the past five years.

Live Nation acquires a controlling stake in American festival Bonnaroo.

Under the terms of the deal, current promoters Superfly and AC Entertainment will continue to programme and run the event.

JUNE

AEG agrees an extended deal with America’s International Speedway Corporation (ISC), allowing the company’s AEG Live division to look at organising concerts at racetracks around the country. ISC owns 13 raceways, including such iconic arenas as Daytona and Watkins Glen.

IQ Magazine July 2015

News

Dave Grohl plays on

Hamburg’s O2 World is set for another name change after agreeing a multiyear deal with British bank Barclays.

The venue will become the Barclaycard Arena in July.

PRS For Music extends the consultation period for its controversial review into the live performance tariff in the UK. The deadline for responses has now been set for 30 September.

Azoff MSG Entertainment acquires a stake in On Board Experiential Marketing (OBE). Financial details are not disclosed, but OBE will be allowed access to Azoff’s A-list clients.

Despite some teething problems on its first day, Download Festival organisers laud the introduction of the event’s full cashless RFID network.

Police use of facial recognition video technology at the festival, however, proves controversial.

Van Morrison becomes Sir Van after receiving a knighthood in the Queen’s Birthday Honours list. Others honoured in the annual list include Universal Music Group International chief, Max Hole, who gets a CBE; while PPL director of performer affairs, Keith Harris, who also represents Stevie Wonder and is chair of Music Tank, is awarded an OBE for services to the music industry.

Overseas music fans visiting the UK for live music events contribute £3.1bn

(€2.8bn) to the country’s economy, claims a report by industry body UK Music (see page 12).

Against the backdrop of a planned share buy-back, EDM festival specialist SFX sells stock to Wolverine Flagship Fund Trading Ltd and Virtual Point Holdings LLC in a cash deal worth $10m (€8m).

Apple Music reverses its (non) payment policy a day after the singer Taylor Swift reveals she is refusing to allow the company to stream her album 1989 because Apple is offering no royalties throughout a three-month free trial period for subscribers.

At least five festivals remove Ten Walls, AKA Lithuanian musician Marijus Adomaitis, from their line-ups in response to comments he posts on Facebook that compare gay people to paedophiles and refer to the LGBTI community as a “different breed”. Creamfields, PITCH, Pukkelpop, Urban Art Forms Festival and Sónar immediately remove him from their billings, while Coda Music Agency drops Adomaitis from its roster.

Spotify raises more than half a billion dollars in its latest funding round.

Just hours after confirming that it has secured $526m (€474m) in new investment, Spotify says it has reached 20million paying subscribers.

The Arches in Glasgow, Scotland, shuts down having placed itself in

administration. The closure follows new licensing restrictions placed on the venue after a number of drug and alcohol related incidents.

The Foo Fighters cancel a number of shows after frontman Dave Grohl breaks his leg during a concert in Sweden. Despite a nasty fracture, however, Grohl makes headlines around the world by returning to complete the Gothenburg show, receiving medical attention on stage.

A cultural row over live music escalates in Iran after a leading cleric criticises remarks made by President Hassan Rouhani that cancelling approved concerts is a “violation of people’s rights”.

Sadegh Larijani counters, “The judiciary has responsibilities regarding forbidden conduct. Revoking of permissions is dependent on the law.”

33 people are injured after lightning strikes the Rock Am Ring festival in Germany.

Concert-tracking website Songkick merges with CrowdSurge to create the world’s largest artist-to-fan ticketing platform (see page 10).

Taylor Swift knows how to handle Apple

To subscribe to IQ Magazine: michael@iq-mag.net An annual subscription to IQ is £75 (print) or £60 (electronic).

Have you got a viewpoint on any of these articles? Then get involved in the discussion on our Twitter account @iq_mag

IQ Magazine July 2015

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News

IFF Announces Inaugural Programme The International Festival Forum (IFF) has confirmed legendary agent and festival promoter John Giddings as the subject of the IFF Keynote at the first edition of the global music festival industry event.

As an agent, Giddings’ roster is a who’s who of the popular music world (including Madonna, U2, Sting and Lady Gaga), while as a promoter he is responsible for resurrecting the UK’s Isle of Wight Festival.

Other topics include The Therapy Session: Difficult Engagements, which sees Glastonbury lawyer Ben Challis air the top five grievances between festival bookers and booking agents in a bid to build better understanding between the two camps.

In Great Expectations: Loyalty vs Profit, session chair Stefan Thanscheidt (FKP Scorpio) examines the growing trend of agents and festivals booking with each other directly and cutting out middle agents and local promoters. Meanwhile, Festivals are Dead: Long Live the Festival!, chaired by Dany Hassenstein (Paléo Festival), will compare the formulae for success in a post-headliner festival world.

IFF workshops include Data & Audience Insight, presented by Dan Brown (AXS) and Karim Fanous (Music Ally); and Better Brand Partnerships, hosted by Jeremy Paterson (IF Media Consultancy) featuring experts from the brand agency world.

IFF co-organiser Ruud Berends says, “With some of the festival and booking agency world’s leading lights in attendance, the IFF aims to deliver both knowledge and insight into this vibrant industry.” The full programme is online at iff.rocks.

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Movers and Shakers Agents Clementine Bunel and Cecile Communal have joined ATC Live. The duo successfully built independent agency 2 For The Road Events over the past five years and bring their entire roster of artists with them including Benjamin Clementine, Songhoy Blues, Stromae, Mulatu Astatqé and Frànçois & the Atlas Mountains.

AEG Europe’s Brian Kabatznick has been elected president of the European Arenas Association, bringing his experience from all areas of the entertainment industry, from venue management to event promotion and from marketing to ticketing. At the EAA’s spring meeting in Prague, John Langford from The SSE Hydro, joined the board as a new member, alongside Karin Mårtensson from Malmö Arena and Francesca Battistoni from Forumnet Group, who was re-elected. The board now also includes Peter van der Veer from the Ahoy Arena as treasurer and Nuria Goytre as executive director.

Specialist transport provider, KB Event, has added Helen Himmons to the company’s senior management team. Working directly for managing director, Stuart McPherson, Himmons’ role will see her join the executive board, working on the strategic and day-to-day management of the business, and on delivery of key tours, events and projects. Her last six years have been spent working for the Duke and Duchess of Rutland, responsible for the commercial activities at Belvoir Castle, and overseeing public events, concerts and corporate activities on the estate.

Lighting crew chief John Slevin is now reporting for work at HSL’s Blackburn HQ, as technical support manager (projects). The lighting and visual production rental company has also announced the appointment of Mick Seddon as group financial director and strategist.

David O’Connor has been appointed as president CEO of The Madison Square Garden Company. A former partner at CAA, O’Connor replaces Tad Smith and has been charged with growing the company’s sports, media and entertainment businesses across its venue portfolio.

Stephan Kurzawski has been placed in charge of the entertainment, media & creation division of Messe Frankfurt, replacing Kai Hattendorf, who is leaving to take up the post of managing director of the Global Association of the Exhibition Industry this autumn.

The Agency Group has added Ben Ward to its UK rock department in London, while Chris Richards, founder of boutique agency and management firm Autonomous Music, joins the company as an agent in their Los Angeles office. Ward previously worked at music management operation One Fifteen and has also worked as a tour manager. Through Portland, Oregon-based Autonomous, Richards has helped build the careers of a number of electronic artists.

Take That were honoured by the UK’s Genting Arena, having achieved seven sellout showsin the venue in May and June.

The band was presented with commemorative tickets by arena general manager, Guy

Dunstan. Pictured left to right are Dunstan; Mark Owen; senior event manager, Sarah Scriven; Gary Barlow; senior event manager, Tony Hayes; Howard Donald; and senior account manager, Alex Ginever.

IQ Magazine July 2015

News

Rights Societies Under Scrutiny

Artist managers are beginning to ask serious questions regarding the practices of performance rights societies after it emerged that Dutch body BUMA/Stemra has been giving kickback payments to dominant promoters in the territory for years.

An investigation by the London-based Music Managers’ Forum (MMF) found BUMA undercharges certain promoters and venues – an accusation that resulted in a legal hearing in Amsterdam last month. BUMA says the issue involves its volume discount regulation whereby event organisers can be given a discount when they make large annual payments. The revelation has prompted MMF to warn members to carefully examine financial statements when they are settling tour accounts, not just in the Netherlands but elsewhere around the world.

BUMA’s published tariff has been 7% of box office receipts since 1999 but MMF chief executive Jon Webster says promoters and venues have received annual kickbacks of up to 25%. “This has resulted in 7% being deducted for gig offers and settlements, but as little as

IQ Magazine July 2015

5.25% being passed through to songwriters and publishers, with the promoters/ venues pocketing the difference,” says Webster. “The people who lose out are the performing artists who are suffering the deduction, and the writers and publishers who are not receiving the full amount being deducted on their behalf.”

The MMF asked PRS For Music in the UK to help resolve the issue, but found that PRS apparently accepts the lower figure, meaning performing artists, writers and publishers may have missed out on millions of Euros. Such complacency has sent alarm bells ringing to the extent that artist representatives are being urged to pay close attention to the practices of similar societies internationally.

“The major piece of advice is not to accept a 7% performance royalty fee deduction on either offer or settlement from a promoter or venue in The Netherlands for a show in 2015 without having verification from PRS, or the society that the writer is a member of, as to what rebate that promoter/venue does or does not receive,” adds Webster.

Universal concerns about the lack of new headline acts to take the place of the music industry’s ageing A-listers have been graphically underlined by research carried out

by IQ Magazine. Analysing the age of frontmen (and women) who headlined the UK’s nine biggest festivals over the past 20 years, the average age has crept northward almost year-on-year.

In the mid 90s, the average age was 32, while this year the average age was 50. Taking IQ’s data a step

further, Spotify director of economics, Will Page, and financial publication, The Economist, included some younger demographic dance music events in their calculations. But despite the help of the youthful DJs topping those bills, as the Economist’s graph (above) shows, the average headliner age still increased to 42 over the last two decades. The research will no doubt be the subject of further debate at the International Festival Forum this September.

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News

Obituaries It’s with heavy hearts that ILMC reports the death of four friends, since IQ’s last issue. Stage Entertainment’s project manager Sjoerd Unger died following a long battle with illness, whilst a heart attack claimed Live Nation venue chief David Vickers.

Then in June, U2 tour manager Dennis Sheehan died from a heart attack, and Jose ‘Luis’ Cobas Garcia, the legendary head barman at Bertie’s Bar in the Royal Garden Hotel, passed away after a lengthy illness.

More tributes can be found in the archive section of ILMC.com.

Sjoerd Unger (1970-2015)

Dennis Sheehan (1946-2015)

David Vickers (1954 -2015)

Jose ‘Luis’ Cobas Garcia (1951-2015)

DEAG’s MyTicket Expands into UK Market UK promoters have yet another ticketing service to consider after DEAG launched its MyTicket platform in London, recently.

In partnership with its subsidiary, Kilimanjaro Live, MyTicket.co.uk launched on 30 June becoming a purchase hub for all events in the UK with ties to the DEAG group.

MyTicket.de has been running in Germany for six months and in the first quarter of DEAG’s current business year processed 5% of the group’s tickets sold online. The UK operation will sell tickets for both Kilimanjaro and Raymond Gubbay Ltd (another subsidiary of the German live entertainment conglomerate). Kilimanjaro stages around 350 events a year, including Ed Sheeran’s record-breaking three soldout nights at Wembley Stadium; and arena tours by Peter Gabriel, Wet Wet Wet, Nitro Circus and Andrea Bocelli.

Raymond Gubbay, meanwhile,

is recognised as one of the UK’s leading promoters of classical events, staging in excess of 500 performances annually, with its Christmas season at the Royal Albert Hall among its best known.

DEAG states that its UK affiliates sell about 1.2 million tickets per year. The launch of MyTicket.co.uk will now merge those companies’ sales activities, ahead of plans to open the platform to thirdparty providers next year.

Hinting at even greater ambitions for the ticketing division, DEAG founder Peter Schwenkow adds, “With MyTicket we are considerably expanding our value chain and are equally successful in the United Kingdom as in the G/S/A countries. With the attractive content within DEAG group, we can rely on excellent conditions for an ongoing rapid growth for our ticketing platform.”

Songkick to Challenge Ticketing Giants?

Songkick is aiming to improve the efficiency of ticket sales globally, after announcing a merger with CrowdSurge to create a significant new artist ticketing platform.

The merged company will operate under the Songkick banner, combining the concert discovery abilities of Songkick with CrowdSurge, which allows artists to sell tickets directly to their fans.

Songkick claims 10 million monthly users and the merged entity, with $16mil-

lion (€14m) in new funds, is looking to build its ticketing business in the UK and USA initially, with plans to expand internationally in the pipeline.

Songkick co-founder Ian Hogarth, who now shares the co-CEO title with CrowdSurge principal Matt Jones, observes that while up to 50% of all concert tickets remain unsold, prices have increased by over 400% during the past 30 years. “Despite the growth in music consumption and discovery spurred by services like YouTube, Spotify, Pan-

dora and iTunes, our industry hasn’t seen this translate into better attendance rates,” he says. “While the world around us hurtles ahead, the live industry shuffles forward.

We need a more open, more innovative and a more artistand fan-centric approach.”

According to Hogarth, combining forces will help Songkick expand its ticketing business in America, where many venues have exclusivity deals with ticketing providers. “In the US, we partner directly with artists, whereas

in the UK we partner with promoters,” he tells IQ. “Our challenge is to have enough tickets and enough consumers to show the industry that we can make a difference.”

But he is optimistic Songkick can achieve its goals.

“The music fans who work at Songkick and CrowdSurge do so because we all believe when a superhuman talent performs to a packed house, magic happens. We now have the app that most fans use globally and the app that most artists are signed-up to.”

Have you got a viewpoint on any of these articles? Then get involved in the discussion on our Twitter account @iq_mag

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IQ Magazine July 2015

News

2 For The Road Founders Join ATC Two of London’s hottest artist agencies have merged, with Clementine Bunel and Cecile Communal, founders of 2 For The Road Events, have joining ATC Live.

During the last five years, Bunel and Communal built an enviable roster, representing the likes of Benjamin Clementine, Songhoy Blues, Stromae, Mulatu Astatqé and Frànçois & the Atlas Mountains. Sharing the same artistfocused and creative approach as ATC Live, their artists join an impressive line-up of acts that includes Passenger, The Lumineers, Half Moon Run, Shura, Soak, Curtis Harding and The Districts.

Bunel says, “We are very excited about our move to ATC Live. We have found like-minded people with a creative vision about building artist careers, pushing boundaries and providing a bespoke approach to their development.”

ATC partner Alex Bruford comments, “We are thrilled to welcome Clementine and Cecile to ATC Live. They have done a remarkable job of building 2 For The Road from scratch and this union will ensure all the artists involved continue to receive the unique level of service that has been a founding principle of both [agencies].”

Waves Announces Conference Programme Details The development of the annual Waves conference and festival continues apace with host cities Bratislava and Vienna again cranking up the panel and event programmes for this year’s 1-4 October gathering.

The Viennese half of the event, using the University of Music and Performing Arts in the Austrian capital, has confirmed world renowned producer Simon Britton (Eminem, Run DMC, Missy Elliott, Sting, Michael Jackson) as a keynote speaker. Intriguingly he will be in discussion with local drum & bass producers Camo & Krooked as they discuss their various career paths, future plans and the impact that collaborations can have.

Meanwhile, the Slovakian capital city of Bratislava will provide a platform for

IQ Magazine July 2015

various countries to promote their musical talent, including events featuring artists and music industry professionals from the Baltic states of Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia. Expert speakers, including Britton, will also be on hand to provide advice and discuss topics such as how to get music used in TV, films, adverts and games, as well as guidance on securing the services of an agent.

In addition to evening performances by dozens of bands and artists in iconic venues across the neighbouring capital cities, the Waves daytime schedule will also include a number of music business research sessions relating to issues such as finance, by examining the likes of opera streaming as a new revenue source, and the potential of crowdfunding in the music industry.

French Economic Crisis Takes its Toll With Europe holding its breath to find out the future for Greece, the economic crisis is having some serious repercussions in even some of the continent’s major financial powerhouse states, with record unemployment numbers and cuts to government subsidies in France being blamed for the cancellation of hundreds of events throughout the country, where in June, the unemployment rate reached a record high of 10.4%.

According to the Cartocrise-Culture-Francaise (CCF – an online interactive map containing up-to-date information on the cancellation or failure of festivals, venues and cultural projects across all sectors of the creative industries in France), 48 events had already disappeared by January this year, a number that had skyrocketed to 215 by the end of June.

Government funding for music festivals and concert venues has been a certainty in France for over two decades but such subsidies have now dried up hitting hard those events who have until now relied on public funding.

In addition, the CCF illustrates that more than 40 music festivals have been cancelled, including such high profile events as Crazy Week à Nice, where acts like 30 Seconds to Mars, Mika and Simple Minds have previously played; and the world music festival Résonances in Roquefort, which has fallen victim to France’s recession

despite 20 years of success and annual audiences of up to 20,000. Just two years ago (according to a joint study by Sacem, CNV and IRMA) the total number of music festivals in France, per annum was 1,972.

A spokesman for venue association Fedelima (which represents the interests of 140 concert clubs) has described the situation as “fragile”.

Many of Fedelima’s members are small concert clubs and promoters who rely on financial backing via cultural funds from local or regional bodies.

The situation for them has become much more difficult since the cuts were imposed.

The MJC – L’Escale, located in Aubagne, for example, has had to significantly reduce its number of bookings since the local council slashed financial backing for the club.

Elsewhere, Figures Libres (an association that also promotes the festival Rockomotives), had to shelve plans to launch a concert club in Vendôme after grants it had been promised were withdrawn following the election of a new city government in March.

Underlining the severity of the budget cuts in France, cultural organisation Fondation La Borie-en-Limousin went out of business earlier this year, citing economic reasons.

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Comment

BUSY BODIES News fr om live music associations ar ound the world

The development of Africa’s live event production sector was given a shot in the arm recently when the South African Roadies Association (SARA) hosted the continent’s first ever Live Event Technical & Production Conference (LETPC) in Johannesburg.

The main purpose of the gathering, intended as an annual event, was to assemble relevant stakeholders, professionals and practitioners in the events, technical, production and education sectors, along with international market leaders, to discuss the need for a critical upgrade of skills development, sector training and skills intervention.

Currently, the sector’s skill qualification remains at entry level and urgently needs to increase in order to match international standards.

Crucially, South Africa’s department of arts and culture was the main event sponsor, and the keynote address was delivered by Minister of Arts and Culture, Nathi Mthethwa.

Praising the tireless efforts of SARA president, Freddie Nyathela, Minister Mthethwa stated, “We know that this sector, especially roadies,

have been part of the struggle and contributed immensely to the founding of democracy and freedom in this country.

We are proud that after nearly a decade of journeying, interacting, learning, seeing and being inspired by people from all over the world, SARA has finally brought this conference home.”

Among the international professionals that participated in LETPC 2015 were John Botham from Semperior LTD (UK), Adrian Brooks from Backstage Academy (UK), Randell Greenlee from the German Event Technology Association, Frank Andrewartha from Quest Engineering (Australia) and Andy Lenthall from the Production Services Association (UK).

Mthethwa added, “Recent research has revealed that the contribution of the cultural and creative sector to the national economy is estimated at over ZAR90.5billion (€6.6bn). It is about time that this sector streamlined its activities and programmes to ensure that the roadies are not only well qualified, but directly benefit from the revenue.”

Swiss Black Market Fight The Swiss Music Promoters Association is increasing efforts to combat secondary ticketing, including Viagogo, which is now headquartered in Geneva.

SMPA board member Dany Hassenstein, from Switzerland’s biggest festival,

Paléo, tells IQ that there are also Swiss secondary ticketing outfits that are causing concern, while, outside venues, people selling tickets can cause security problems.

“The problem is that there is no clear law to prevent the resale of tickets,” says Hassenstein.

Wish You Were Here The publication of a document that claims tourists attending festivals and concerts in the United Kingdom spent more than £3billion (€4.2bn) last year is being hailed as a significant weapon in the armoury of the live music business in its lobbying activities with politicians and legislators.

Trade organisation UK Music commissioned Oxford Economics to carry out the research, entitled Wish You Were Here 2015, which found that music tourism numbers in the UK increased by 34% between 2011 and 2014, with 9.5 million people travelling to music events in 2014 alone. These music tourists, attending live concerts and festivals in the UK, helped generate £3.1bn (€4.3bn) in direct and indirect spend, according to the research.

The report states that overseas tourists travelling to the UK for music events have risen by 39% across the past four years, culminating in 546,000 visitors last year, each with an average spend of £751 (€1,050) going directly to UK businesses. This increase in music tourism provides a huge boost to employment throughout the country, with 38,238 full-time jobs in 2014 sustained by music tourism throughout the UK. This in itself marks a 57% increase from the 2012 figure of 24,521.

The report provides detailed evidence of the direct impact that music events and this new influx of fans have in every region of the UK, providing promoters around the country with statistical and economic evidence to use in their endeavours to secure event licences.

Underlining the importance of such research to the live entertainment sector, Paul Latham, chief operating officer for Live Nation UK & Ireland, notes, “The political world searches desperately for something the music industry does on a daily basis: to engage tens of millions of young people in emotion and outlook.” He adds, “Music tourism is an activity that policy makers have only recently recognised. It is incredibly important to show Whitehall some statistics and give them the figures for the actual value live music has in every part of the UK.”

Paul Latham, Live Nation

South African Roadies Host Production Conference

“There is a consumer protection law that states the face value of a product should be disclosed, but this is very difficult to prove when it comes to ticket resales.”

Hassenstein says the SMPA has looked at other initiatives, such as copying German moves to ban resales in ticket terms and conditions,

“But there is no punishment in Swiss law for someone breaching T&Cs,” he says.

“We are in intense contact with representatives of parliament to try to introduce new legislation, but it would be good to hear from other promoter associations to learn how they have dealt with the black market,” he adds.

Does your association have any news or issues to share? Email gordon@iq-mag.net to be considered for the next edition of IQ...

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IQ Magazine July 2015

The latest trades and handshakes from the agency world

K.I.D Agents: Mel Young/Steve Strange, X-ray Touring Kids in Despair are synthpop brother and sister Kara and Bobby from Toronto, Canada. Their eponymous debut EP, recorded in their mother’s basement, was released earlier this year, and following a successful visit to The Great Escape showcase conference, the duo’s star has been rapidly rising.

In the UK, K.I.D started to build their fanbase through a

THE PRETTIOTS Agent: Will Church, ATC Live New York City-based trio, Lulu Prat, Kay Kasparhauser and Rachel Trachtenburg, aka The Prettiots, became the envy of many of their industry peers as they managed to emerge from SXSW with more than just blurry memories of the city of Austin. A clutch of record companies were impressed by their sassy set, but Geoff Travis, founder of Rough Trade Records, won the race to sign them, having attended all

tour that included included dates in London, Manchester, Bristol and Nottingham. Meanwhile, they have confirmed a number of festival appearances in their native Canada, including Bluesfest and Edgefest. kidsindespair.com/

three of their SXSW shows.

In June, Rough Trade released single Boys (I Dated in High School) on 7” vinyl.

A second single is slated for September and the debut album is scheduled for release in February 2016. theprettiots.com

LATEST SIGNINGS Blind Idiot God Rob Berends, Paperclip Agency.

Bonkaz Obi Asika/Myles Jessop, Echo Location Talent.

Breathe Carolina Mel Young/Steve Strange, X-ray Touring.

CC Smugglers Sarah Casey, The Leighton-Pope Organisation.

Conor Maynard Obi Asika, Echo Location Talent.

Crew Love Hannah Shogbola /Charlotte Dunckley, Echo Location Talent.

Joe Ogden, X-ray Touring.

Daunt Steve Nickolls, The Agency Group.

Desert Sound Colony Dimension Obi Asika, Echo Location Talent.

The-Dream Mel Young/Steve Strange, X-ray Touring.

Sarah Casey, The Leighton-Pope Organisation.

The Dunwells Ego Ella May Steve Nickolls, The Agency Group.

Joe Ogden, X-ray Touring.

EZTV FAM Hannah Shogbola, Echo Location Talent.

Greg Lowe/Steve Nickolls, The Agency Group.

Fe Isaiah Dreads Obi Asika/Myles Jessop, Echo Location Talent.

Jasper James Charlotte Dunckley, Echo Location Talent.

SOPHIE AUSTER Agent: Christophe Quemin, Get Your Acts Together New York-based Sophie Auster released her self-titled debut under the French label Naïve, aged just 18. While still at college, she toured and played festivals across Europe and South America during school vacations. In 2007, Auster appeared on the cover of Spanish Rolling Stone. She has also appeared in Vogue, Elle, Les InRocks, Spin, Glamour, Velvet, Paper and W Magazine. In

TODD DORIGO

Agent: Sarah Casey, The Leighton-Pope Organisation Todd Dorigo’s performances at Glastonbury Festival in 2013 and 2014 were followed late last year by a month-long residency at The Troubadour in London, and support slots with Soak.

Recently Dorigo has been recording with producer Cameron Blackwood, who recently topped the UK album charts with George Ezra.

This year, Dorigo has been

2012, Red Weather, was released as an EP. Her recent showcase at Le Poisson Rouge in New York City earned rave reviews and the buzz around her in music circles is now increasing in volume.

New album Dogs and Men, produced by Jared Samuel, was released in June 2015. sophieaustermusic.com

supporting Carl Barât & The Jackals on their European tour, while his upcoming gigs include Secret Garden Party and Blackthorn Festival in July. soundcloud.com/todd-dorigo

JD Reid Obi Asika, Echo Location Talent.

Jill Barber Hilde Spille, Paperclip Agency.

Joseph J Jones Joe Ogden, X-ray Touring.

Steve Nickolls, The Agency Group.

KhruangBin Kito & Reija Lee Hannah Shogbola, Echo Location Talent.

Klangstof Joris van Welsen, Radar Agency.

Christophe Quemin, Get Your Acts Together.

Mick Harvey Mel Young/Steve Strange, X-ray Touring.

Monarks Monophonics Christophe Quemin, Get Your Acts Together.

Norma Jean Shaun Faulkner, X-ray Touring.

Obi Asika/Hannah Shogbola, Echo Location Talent.

NVOY Protoje Jeremy Holgersen (North America)/Jeremy Norkin (Latin America)/Ross Warnock (UK, Japan and Australia), The Agency Group.

Siobhan Bell Hannah Shogbola, Echo Location Talent.

Ben Kouijzer, The Agency Group.

Stanton Warriors We Are Harlot Mel Young/Steve Strange, X-ray Touring.

Mel Young/Steve Strange, X-ray Touring.

We Came As Romans Work It Hannah Shogbola, Echo Location Talent.

Young Buffalo Colin Keenan, ATC Live.

Zak Abel Obi Asika/Hannah Shogbola, Echo Location Talent.

Has your agency signed the year’s hottest new act? Email gordon@iq-mag.net to be considered for the next issue…

IQ Magazine July 2015

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Comment

The Changing Nature of Festival Booking Richard Moffat, booker for the Falls Festival in Australia, amongst others, delivers some insightful comments about the changing nature of festival booking, and connecting with the young festival audience. All with the help of a handy chart.

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n my last ten years of festival booking the frustrating question I get asked most often is ‘who’s the headliner?’

The sincere (but never believed) answer I give is that I didn’t try and book one.

This question has always bugged me. Festivals provide dozens of hours of entertainment over multiple days, so why must we reduce all this to a single hour, a single moment, a single act?

I realised many years ago that we were losing the culture-defining acts, so tried to start building different kinds of shows…and not the fancy food/poetry/lifestyle blah de blah de blah kind either. I simply want to sell tickets to people who have varied musical taste and can find their own headliner amongst a diverse bill.

The first and essential step to this new model is the alphabetical listing of artists. Everyone sees every poster differently. In the world of A-Z, everyone finds their own headliner and chooses their own adventure.

The second step is acknowledging everyone has diverse taste (look on anyone’s phone or at their record collection and you will always find a motley group of random selections that rarely look or feel like a collection of anything!). Mix it up and don’t present your show in a scheduled hierarchy.

The third step is to add video to your website and actively promote Spotify playlists in order to educate your audience on what you are giving them. All festival marketing should now be focused on this type of promotion – educating ticket buyers is everything. Ads cannot find ticket buyers anymore. Ads merely tell people your show is not selling and are best avoided.

The fourth and bravest step is simply to stop forcing people who prefer seeing their favourite acts in a theatre or venue setting to have to see them in a paddock. Exclusivity deals are death, but a slow one. Festivals should be hosting acts that like playing them, and they should be selling tickets only to people who like going to them, yet this is the opposite of what many bookers do.

Everyone is searching for the special never-before-seen moment, yet all those moments are becoming less special by nature.

The festival problem is not ‘where are the headliners?’, it is that people keep self-fulfilling the idea that we ever needed them in the first place. Let’s move on!

So if you see me out and about…find a new question to ask me, eh?

I created this chart as a simplistic way to explain (undermine) the ‘who is the headliner?’ myth of festival success. Since I wrote this, a bunch more Australian festivals have gone out of business, all chasing the arms race of headliner bidding wars – none of their shows survived it.

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MODERN MUSIC LISTENING CULTURE • Music fans have greater awareness and access to music, simply due to the fact that it is now FREE and available online to all.

• People listen to more diverse music via YouTube and Spotify etc than ever before.

• People move through music quickly.

• People like a lot of different acts a little bit.

• People never love anything as deeply or as long as they used to.

• Headliners are in diminishing supply. Very few newer acts get to headliner-level due to lack of album sales.

• Festival ticket prices have risen way beyond the comfort zone of what people can afford.

WHO FESTIVALS ARE BOOKING

• Festivals are booking the same headliners as they always have and building shows in exactly the same way, but have been spending way more money doing so.

• Festivals are booking the same headliners even though the main audience for those acts often has no interest in going to festivals. They would rather see a full set in a conveniently located indoor venue amongst other fans of the same act.

• Headliner acts’ audiences are drawn mostly from the period when they first became popular – usually 10-20 years ago.

• Headliners no longer get the same media attention and keep preaching only to the converted.

• Headliners’ new albums do not sell and rarely get significant airplay.

• Most audiences at a festival were not alive when these acts first became popular. They have no emotional attachment to them at all.

• Festivals are still building a hierarchy on the myth that there is a closing act that ALL their audience knows, likes and want to see. Those acts do not exist anymore. All headliners are now essentially niche-type acts.

• Ticket prices can only go down if artist fees go down.

• Headliners are getting paid MORE than ever, simply because there are LESS of them. Festivals have MORE demand than ever for headliners.

• The fees have grown exponentially due to the bidding and competition between dying festivals.

• To convince the agents of acts to play a festival in place of a headline venue show, festivals are paying more than the equivalent of what the artist can earn at their own shows.

• The band fees keep going up.

• The bands have less value BUT keep getting paid more.

IQ Magazine July 2015

Comment

A Country Worth Touring Tony Nagamaiah is the general manager of Malaysia Major Events (MME), and took part in the Emerging Markets panel at this year’s ILMC. Here he explains some of the factors the live music industry in Malaysia has to take into account whilst working to establish the country as a viable international touring destination.

T

he Malaysian year began with the country’s currency, the Ringgit, weakening, followed by the imposition of the Goods and Services Tax (GST). But despite this, the live music industry is still managing to thrive, with more artists than ever performing live in Malaysia, instead of in neighbouring countries or in some cases, neighbouring continents, as they used to do. It has not been an easy journey, but the country and its live business is definitely on the up.

With Malaysian live music fans craving a broad range of styles and artists, local organisers are left to struggle with the burden of trying to lock down international artists, a challenge that is exacerbated by the currency exchange and artist exclusivity.

Exclusivity is very important in order to capture the entire regional fan base of an artist – but it can cost a fortune.

On the plus side, these events are encouraging an influx of foreign attendees and there has been a significant boost in festival/event tourism.

Malaysian Major Events (MME) is a division of the Malaysia Convention & Exhibition Bureau (MyCEB), an agency under the Ministry of Tourism and Culture, Malaysia (MoTAC). As a conduit between the public and private sectors MME identify and support viable international events to be staged in Malaysia to further strengthen the country’s global appeal as a destination of choice for spectacular events. We also attempt to reconcile drawbacks and to make sure the live music market in Malaysia is continuously emerging.

However, since last year, the interest in EDM has dissipated. But we are pretty sure the scene can be revived.

We are constantly attending working groups with various stakeholders in order to change this view and create awareness of the genre. Every live music show hosted in Malaysia is aimed at attracting Asian festival-goers to a spectacular live music show, at an affordable rate.

The Central Agency for the Application for Filming and Performance by Foreign Artistes (PUSPAL) publishes codes of practice in the region, but these are not as stringent as the media would have you believe. Issues do arise in cases where religion, politics and public security are of concern, but it is a shame that regulations related to performance by foreign artists in Malaysia are influenced by the fear of religious extremism. Contrary to the hype, in 2014 alone a total of 188 concerts were approved by PUSPAL, which has got to be something!

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“The Central Agency for the Application for Filming and Performance by Foreign Artistes publishes codes of practice in the region, but these are not as stringent as the media would have you believe. Issues do arise in cases where religion, politics and public security are of concern, but it is a shame that regulations related to performance by foreign artists in Malaysia are influenced by the fear of religious extremism.”

MME also plays a huge role in assisting and advising international promoters who plan to include Malaysia as part of a tour schedule. Compelled by regional competition during the current crisis, we are trying to be realistic in establishing the right atmosphere for the live music market in Malaysia. Now more than ever, governmental and corporate support is incredibly important to ensure that Malaysia reaches the headlines as a vibrant live music destination, for all the right reasons!

As new ventures in entertainment technology, with more venues and refurbishment of existing venues, are made, digital and social media marketing has been a great engagement tool in promoting Malaysia and the live music events that take place here. These important elements help sustain the industry and improve the viability of concerts and festivals. In a diverse country like Malaysia, it is all about reaching equilibrium; when everyone is happy, everything runs smoothly.

IQ Magazine July 2015

Comment

Challenges, Competition and Constrictors Jouni Markkanen, CEO and head promoter at Grey Beard Concerts & Management, fills us in on Finland’s Tuska Open Air Metal Festival and the abundance of Finnish metal events in general.

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´d say the Tuska Open Air Metal Festival audience has been pretty damn loyal since 1998. In 2014, 13% of them attended the event for the 10th time, and 33% for the 5th or 6th time; 58% of the audience was over 30 years young and approximately half of that number were in their 40s.

The most challenging part of my career as a promoter in the future will be to find new and young audiences for a specialised metal festival like Tuska. Just to put my efforts into perspective this is my 17th year behind the wheel. This week a journalist asked me if I understood how fans of younger American style metalcore bands relate to the band they follow. That question definitely struck a chord, as I don’t always understand the dynamics – but that’s when I refer to the agent of the artist who knows which strings to pull to make the show happen.

Meanwhile, another promoter based round the corner from our Helsinki office, made a deal with a monstrously expanding European promoter who could, if they wished, wipe their ass with our company and festival, and organise a massive festival in Finland on the same weekend. With all guns blazing, the traditional Provinssirock festival announces ever-bigger acts

without any fear of spending or losing a few million in order to achieve the dominant position in the market. This push is without doubt a wake-up call for a somewhat sleepy Finnish market – and is most warmly welcome!

While writing this we’re experiencing a metal-fuelled period in Finland. Household names like Nightwish, Childen of Bodom, Sonata Arctica and Insomnium performed in Joensuu, the home-town of Nightwish, on 6 June in front of more than 13,500 people. A second concert will be held at Tampere Ratina Stadium on 31 July, with an expected 22,000+ tickets expected to be sold. Also, legendary metal and hard rock acts like Accept, Extreme, Def Leppard, Amorphis, and Stratovarius will perform at the second edition of South Park festival at Tampere Eteläpuisto. And preceding this, my team and Live Nation Finland will join forces with the legendary Judas Priest to promote their latest Redeemer of Souls tour at Helsinki Ice Hall.

Well that’s all for now as I’ve just got time to call Mr Lordi and ask if he could lend one of his boa constrictors to Alice Cooper!

Gig Gadgetry from the Frontline...

Filippo Blengini’s interactive 365 gigapixel photo of Mont Blanc hints at the possibilities for using such tech elsewhere

Gigapixel photography

Muddy app

Event organisers looking for something different to engage their audiences can now use gigapixel cameras to generate photographs that allow people to zoom in with incredible accuracy and definition to pick out their own faces in festival and event crowds.

An international team led by Italian photographer Filippo Blengini took multiple photos to create a 365-gigapixel panorama of Mont Blanc (see main picture above). The inset is of a building site for a new cable car system on Mont Blanc and demonstrates the gigapixel cameras’ ability to capture exceptional detail.

It’s taken a while, but someone has finally developed a live music version of Shazam to help identify those unknown tracks and artists you stumble across in that obscure music festival tent, or even busking in the street. The Muddy music app was created by Ian Henderson and Rob Beresford, two Dublin-based music lovers who set themselves the task of helping performers to connect with new fans.

Henderson explains, “We’ve all had that experience where you’re at a festival or a gig and you see a DJ or band playing and you don’t know who they are, but you want to find out more. But the other side we have is for artists and promoters to be discovered.” As a result, Muddy allows artists to set up their own profile, and add their gigs so they can be discovered by the app’s users.

Muddy uses geolocation technology that enables bands to upload where they are playing and when, linking to their Spotify and Facebook pages. Users can tap the Muddy app on their phone and see which act is playing near them in real time.

Muddy also allows bands and promoters to market gigs and sell their remaining tickets by offering discounts via the app.

Stripe payments Causing waves in the payments sector, Stripe allows both private individuals and businesses to process payments via the Internet. Co-founded by Irish brothers John and Patrick Collison, the company attracted an investment of $190million (€167m) from a number of leading venture capitalists. Stripe’s market valuation has been estimated at $3.5billion (€3.1bn).

The company now has operations in the USA, Canada, UK, Ireland, Australia, Belgium, Denmark, Germany, Finland, France, Italy, Mexico, Norway, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, the Netherlands and Luxembourg. Typically it charges the same 2.9% flat rate as PayPal plus 30 cents per transaction for any business

with less than $1m in transactions per year.

However, unlike rival systems, Stripe specifically focuses on providing the technical and banking infrastructure, including fraud prevention, required to operate online payment systems. Its simplicity coupled with excellent customer support has proved popular, with a number of high profile companies adopting Stripe as their default payment processor. Those outfits include the likes of Fitbit, Kickstarter, reddit, Twitter, Squarespace and The Guardian. And just to highlight the company’s increasing potential, PayPal co-founders Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, and Max Levchin have reportedly become investors.

Do you have a new product or technology to contribute to this page? Email gordon@iq-mag.net to be considered for the next issue…

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IQ Magazine July 2015

BRANDS TAKE CENTRE STAGE THE EVOLUTION OF LIVE SPONSORSHIP

Sponsorship With brands stepping up their live music activity, Giles Fitzgerald unpacks the new rules of mutually beneficial deal making in the evolving sponsorship market.

Sponsorship itself is not, by any means, a new idea in the live sector. Just ask the Rolling Stones, who pocketed several million in a veritable coup of a deal with the Jovan perfume brand way back in 1981, offsetting vast amounts of touring costs in the process. What is new, however, is the type of role brands now want to play in live music.

The old-school model, whereby deal-making largely consisted of a “make the logo bigger” conversation, lacklustre banner sponsorship and a chunky pay cheque, saw brands tentatively aligning themselves with the live music scene.

They played a vital financial role, but at arm’s-length – in many ways more akin to the hotdog seller outside the venue than an integrated part of the live experience.

This has changed irrevocably over the last few years as a steady influx of brands brought their music-marketing A game – usually reserved to tie-in with wider ‘above the line’ marketing (billboard ads and commercials) – to the fields, venues and artist tours that dominate the musical calendar. Sponsorship from the sidelines is no longer an option, with brands increasingly positioning themselves at the epicentre of the action.

Brand expenditure in live music in North America, for example, has risen steadily over the last few years, increasing by almost a third since 2010 to encompass an estimated $1.43billion (€1.31bn) in 2014. Extrapolate that figure out globally across the myriad of festivals, tours and venues large and small, and it’s easy to see why promoters are eager to capitalise on this rekindled interest in sponsorship.

If the stats don’t speak for themselves the sheer volume of activity does, with a plethora of big brands making their mark on the live sector this year. The exponential rise in interest in the EDM scene, for instance, has seen the likes of MasterCard, Smirnoff and T-Mobile announce highly committed festival, venue and tour partnerships in 2015. Elsewhere, luxury automotive brand Mercedes recently partnered up with the inaugural US edition of the Rock in Rio Festival in Las Vegas, while mobile handset firm HTC is busy sponsoring numerous UK festivals (including Lovebox and Wilderness) and nine live venues as part of a robust partnership with Mama & Company.

Tour sponsorship is equally active this year with cloud computing firm Salesforce inking a two-year deal with U2 on their Innocence + Experience tour, Quicken Loans teaming up with Lady Antebellum along the route of their Wheels Up tour, while the likes of Hotlink, Naver and Asiana Airlines sponsor K-Pop powerhouse Big Bang’s 2015 world tour. Not to mention the occasional bizarre pairing, such as Cottonelle toilet paper sponsoring the first leg of the New Kids on the Block Main Event tour.

This steep rise in activity obviously poses a potential risk of saturation, and the ever-present fear of a consumer backlash, however it appears that fans are actually welcoming brands with open arms if they can add genuine value to their live experience.

In fact, music fans are 44% more likely to register a positive sentiment towards a brand that sponsors a live music venue, according to a recent GroupM study – some 15% higher than at a sporting event. That said, it’s not just about intangible emotional value here, around 40% are also more likely to consider purchasing a partner product post the final encore and the last tube home – thereby proving that live music has a genuine

IQ Magazine July 2015

economic impact on a brand’s all-important bottom line.

Naturally, everyone wants a slice of the action, but it can be a fraught battleground.

So, just what are the new rules of engagement when it comes to entering into a sustainable relationship with a brand in the live music sector? We spoke to a number of experts across the festival, tour and venue sponsorship business to find out what sparks the perfect match.

1. FLEX YOUR CREATIVE MUSCLE

Apathy is the enemy of all involved in live sponsorship, and steadfastly following the well-trodden path is of no benefit to either party. Showcasing the statistical audience value of your event certainly has merit, but playing the numbers game hardly captures the imagination. “When you go to see a potential sponsor, take great activation ideas with you”, says Diana Simon, head of marketing and sponsorship at Sónar festival, who advocates not leaving the creative thinking just to the brands and their agencies. “A ‘regular’ sponsorship deck just isn’t useful – ideas are the key to bring the sponsors in.”

This is a crucial point – brands are ultimately looking for innovation and differentiation, something they can PR and stand out from their competitors with, and it pays to play into this mind-set. “Understand the strengths and unique facets of your property,” says Scott McNearney, sponsors chief at SXSW – an event that to many is the epitome of brand and band convergence – “be ready to present prospective sponsoring brands with unique engagement concepts tailored to their brand and the brand’s specific objectives that will fit well into your venue/event.”

2. LOOK FOR A VALUE EXCHANGE

The key thing to remember when dealing with a potential sponsor is that the impetus has moved on dramatically from a ‘cash for access’ mind-set, with both parties now leveraging considerable assets that the other can benefit from. The days of a brand writing a cheque and walking away are gone; it’s now very much a two-way relationship – a value exchange.

“Be clear on what both parties are trying to achieve out of the partnership at the outset and look for ways to add value.

As with all things it’s about trust, and within a relatively complex world such as live music, it’s key to be a partner to brands and help them navigate through”, says James Kent, partnership director, marketing partnerships, at Live Nation.

“The best relationships between artist and brand are when both sides acknowledge what’s in it for each other and deliver accordingly,” says Tim Clark, director of IE:music, who manages an artist roster that includes Robbie Williams and Passenger. He cites Robbie’s Take the Crown tour in 2013, sponsored by Samsung, as a prime example of two parties “engaging to define in detail what the aims of the partnership should be”, which ultimately led to a successful value exchange for both brand and artist. “Problems arise when the artist and brand are mismatched, ie when they don’t share the same audience; when not enough time is spent on agreeing what each party wants from the other; when either party fails to honour their obligations; and when management doesn’t explain to the artist the extent of their responsibilities.”

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Sponsorship 4. STAY FOCUSED ON THE EXPERIENCE

Promoters should equally be mindful of not attempting to run before they can walk when it comes to sponsorship.

Financial security clearly needs to be front of mind, however, the integration of brand partners shouldn’t usurp the more fundamental requirement of building a viable property.

“Festivals should start with getting the festival itself right.

Worry first about the content of the festival, the bands, the artists, and the experience, and the sponsorships will follow later,” suggests Matt Frampton, VP of sales at Pitchfork Festival, “There are a lot of successful festivals in the US these days, but there are also a lot that have failed, and the failures seem to have all taken a business-first approach versus a music-first approach.”

“Brand money is attractive, but it is a bonus. It should not fund the production of the show in any way. If the show does not work without sponsorship – don’t put it on!” says Gary Pitt, managing partner at Get in Bed, responsible for heading up brand partnerships at leading festivals such as Bestival.

He also offers up a word of caution, warning against the temptation to rest on the laurels of any prior sponsorship success. “For annual events promoters must respect that they will have good years and bad years with sponsorship – some years there will be more brands in their marketplace than others, so revenues will fluctuate. Just because an event attracted £X of sponsorship in year one it doesn’t mean this is the starting budget for the same show in year two.”

Middle row (l to r): Gary Pitt (Get In Bed), James Kent (Live Nation), Matt Frampton (Pitchfork Festival) Bottom row (l to r): Paul Samuels (AEG), Scott McNearney (SXSW), Shane Murray (Ibiza Rocks Group) Right: Tim Clark (IE:music)

3. REACH BEYOND THE LIVE EVENT

In a world where social, mobile and digital play an everincreasing role in the ‘always on’ lives of music fans, taking brand partnerships beyond the confines of the live event is no longer a nice option to have; it’s an essential component of the sponsor/partner package.

“The best festival sponsorships leverage their onsite participation to reach a longer tail of a much larger audience through content and social media,” suggests Alex Machurov, senior director, new business development and brand partnerships, Superfly – part of the team that powers key US festivals such as Bonnaroo and Outside Lands. “For example, Ford has been a long-time sponsor of Bonnaroo. Recently, we integrated the brand into our onsite RFID wristband programme, enabling our fans to seamlessly interact with multiple camera-equipped kiosks throughout the site.

These RFID wristbands were linked to attendees’ Facebook accounts and allowed fans to instantly share their photos on Facebook with Ford’s brand assistance. So, whereas Bonnaroo typically attracts 100,000 attendees each year, if the average Millennial has over 600 Facebook friends then Ford was potentially receiving over 60 million impressions from this RFID integration alone.”

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5.THINK LONG TERM

In the land grab for brand revenue, short-termism is, somewhat unsurprisingly, rife. However, the real value lies in looking beyond the immediate financial horizon. “Be in it for the long run,” says Debbie Ward, head of brand partnerships, Mama & Company, who warns of the danger of seeking a quick fix. “The most effective live partnerships take time to build, such as Levi’s Ones To Watch and Fred Perry Subculture. The first ran for circa 10 years and was one of the most authentic brand partnerships to date, while Fred Perry Subculture is in year seven and recognised as an Comcast’s Xfinity sponsored Taylor Swift’s ‘1989’ tour

Contributors (top row, left to right): Alex Machurov (Superfly), Diana Simon (Sónar Festival), Debbie Ward (Mama & Company)

IQ Magazine July 2015

authentic and credible music platform.”

This is firmly echoed by Paul Samuels, executive vicepresident, AEG Europe Global Partnerships – the mastermind behind the world’s most successful brand/venue partnership, The O2. “Don’t just take a scatter gun approach to speaking to brands. Make sure the offering is clear and beneficial to both parties and look for long-term deals – constantly changing brands isn’t a good look.” He also points to the need for the live sector to educate brands as to the level of commitment required to see real results, “music sponsorship is not a magic bullet that will bring instant cool. You have to work at it, nurture the partnership and make sure the fit is right.”

6. DON’T FORGET THE FANS

The ever-present Taylor Swift is no stranger to brand partnerships. Verizon sponsored her 2009 Fearless tour – back in the days before the country artist discovered hair straighteners and the value of a commercial popcrossover – with Diet Coke, Elizabeth Arden and Keds all stepping up subsequently to sponsor her more recent RED tour. The introduction of Comcast Xfinity as the partner for her 1989 world tour highlights the steady influx of technology companies into the live sponsor portfolio, as extended content and social media opportunities become increasingly ubiquitous, largely driven by a heightened fan demand to access every facet of the artist.

Actively designed to give Taylor fans “an experience they can’t get anywhere else” the partnerships serves up a major on-demand tie-in, with a plethora of additional content, including behind-the-scenes video footage from tour rehearsals and a curated collection of broadcast footage featuring the singer. The key takeout here is in enabling the partner to fully leverage their digital assets around the artist and venue, actively engaging fans both pre- and post-event.

MASTERCARD & SFX

FESTIVAL

They are not just the end consumer. They are the glue that holds a successful brand campaign together. Without their buy in, all your hard-fought plans will come to nought. “The consumer perception of sponsor involvement has changed.

Brands who actually commit to the music space, who deliver creative thinking and genuine investment – whether that is via promoters or talent or, increasingly, via their own platforms – are now seen as genuine contributors and are doing so with integrity,” says Shane Murray, brand director at Ibiza Rocks Group. “If the festival and sponsor can partner to deliver something of real value, then the audience will appreciate and recognise that. On the flip side, the basic customer expectation of a partnership has risen – if it’s the wrong fit, if it’s poorly executed, you will know about it and it will be loudly disseminated across social media. Get it wrong and both sides get hurt.”

TAYLOR SWIFT & COMCAST

TOUR

CASE STUDIES

VENUE: SAMSUNG LIVE AT THE CHAPEL

MasterCard’s partnership with SFX gives it exposure at events such as Stereosonic

IQ Magazine July 2015

VENUE

MasterCard continues to make progressive inroads within entertainment, leading the way in music for the financial services sector with a history of high profile artist, tour and festival partnerships. However, it was the brand’s decisive move into the highly-charged world of electronic dance music, with a genre-defining partnership with EDM festival powerhouse SFX, that is most worthy of note.

The multi-year global deal – part of a bold reimaging of the brand’s long-standing ‘priceless’ campaign – sees MasterCard aligning with sought after EDM festivals such as Mysteryland, Tomorrowland and Stereosonic in 2015, delivering innovative technological solutions and its own unique spin on the VIP fan experience.

What is interesting here is how the brand acts as a facilitator to both the practical and emotional aspect of the festival experience, embracing a relatively new scene wholeheartedly and working in tandem with the event owners to create a robust offering for passionate fans.

The mobile brand resurrected the popular Live at the Chapel music series at the start of 2015, an event that has showcased intimate live performances from some of the world’s biggest artists (including Lady Gaga, Foo Fighters and Coldplay) in a 19th century church location in New South Wales, Australia. The platform, which Samsung utilised to launch its Milk streaming music service, offers both an up-close-and-personal live experience for some 200 fans and broader TV broadcast opportunities.

The music series has had a number of sponsors over the years, initially partnering with Vodafone before changing hands to automotive brand Kia and in turn Russian Standard Vodka, prior to embarking on a three-year hiatus.

For Samsung, leveraging the property’s iconic music heritage with Australian fans actively served to bolster the brand’s perceived credibility in music. For the property, it effectively sold in its cultural relevance and the advantageous position it would bring to the brand in terms of kudos, ensuring the event secured a new lease of life.

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Switzerland

LIKE

Despite the fear of impending doom, even the controversial lifting of a currency cap has done little to dent Switzerland’s live music business. Adam Woods talks to some of the professionals who make sure the Swiss industry continues to prosper.

CLOCKWORK IT’S PROBABLY NATURAL that a market that has had it so good for so long should be prone to a few nagging anxieties. In enviably healthy Switzerland, where the long summer throngs with large, largely prosperous festivals – more per capita than any other country in the world, it is said – the live industry appears to share a certain unease: surely something has to go wrong soon?

In fact, something did, midway through January, when the Swiss Central Bank abandoned its currency cap against the Euro, sending the Swiss franc soaring and creating a variety of results, depending on whether you happened to be sitting on a pile of Euros, or not, at that moment.

“We had a solid stock of Euros before they took a plunge so I can’t say we were very happy about the decision,” says Dany Hassenstein at the country’s largest festival, Paléo.

“The Swiss National Bank’s decision took us by surprise, but we are back to where we were a few years ago, with more volatile exchange rates.”

Even for those who weren’t immediately and irritatingly exposed, the removal of the currency cap had two key impacts – a good one and a bad one. “The artist fees in Euros became 15-20% lower – thanks for that,” says Johannes Vogel of jazz, world and soul promoter AllBlues. “But since then it’s been getting even more difficult to get any sponsorship.”

It wasn’t the worst thing ever to happen to an economy, but in the placid surroundings of Switzerland, it was a dramatic way to start the year.

No one, however, seriously expects such concerns to derail the year’s entertainments.

2014 was the best year on record for the Swiss live business. Members of the Swiss Music Promoters Association

(SMPA) drew nearly five million visitors (an increase of 1.7%) to 1,600 musical events of various kinds, generating CHF320million (€305m), an increase of CHF10m (€9.5m), with 3.2m tickets sold. SMPA members account for roughly 80% of tickets sold in the country, so the numbers in full may be around a fifth higher.

And while most promoters admit to reservations about the volume of events and the distorting power of the festival season, business goes on. For festival organisers, the perennial nagging misgivings – about a finite talent pool, regrettable ticket prices, the danger of market saturation – are set aside each year as the entire market races to one-up itself somehow.

For all other promoters, there is the question of how to maximise the year from early September to late May, and whether to gamble in the summer on headline shows that will run straight up against the world’s busiest festival season.

Needless to say, in a market full of huge packages of talent, headline shows become a harder sell.

“In Switzerland, the festival scene is apparently stronger than ever, due to the fact that it is good value for fans who have the opportunity to see a lot of new bands for the price of a bit more than a single show,” says Opus One’s Vincent Sager. “According to SMPA figures, 2014 was better than any other year before in terms of the number of events promoted.

But the quantity of events is growing faster than the overall demand for tickets. We feel concerned about the risk of a bubble effect, which would badly affect our industry.”

There are those anxieties. Nonetheless, it would be a stretch to suggest that Switzerland, on the back of a record year, is a live market with anything much more serious than a few first-world problems.

Kraftklub performed at Open Air St Gallen Festival 2015 on 28 June © Daniel Gassner

IQ Magazine July 2015

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The crowds last year at Switzerland’s biggest festival, Paléo © Pierre Descombes

Switzerland

“I hate to say it, but we have been waiting for the crisis to hit us for years and it doesn’t seem to want to happen, which is definitely good news,” says Marc Lambelet of Mainland Music. “We export quite a lot, so I expect [the currency cap removal] will have an impact on people’s wallets, but there is no structural crisis in the economy and unemployment remains remarkably low.”

PROMOTERS ALMOST TWO-THIRDS of the Swiss population speaks German as their first language, so it is no real surprise that the market has been a target for German entertainment groups over the years.

Good News, owned by DEAG and Swiss media conglomerate Ringier since 2000, came under wholly German ownership in 2013, as Ringier sold its 48% stake to the majority shareholder.

In recent years, André Béchir, former Good News boss and a founding father of the Swiss business, has reemerged with his own abc Production, which in June 2013 sold an 80% share to Eventim and now punches hard on the biggest shows.

Good News remains a force – with Mainland, it was due to stage a Foo Fighters show at the AFG Arena in St Gallen

in June (before lead singer Dave Grohl broke his leg during a performance in Sweden and had to cancel the show), and Die Toten Hosen, The Script and Bryan Ferry are all coming up – though its exclusive deal with Zürich’s iconic 14,000-capacity Hallenstadion lapsed in 2013, allowing a glimpse of the big time for rival promoters.

Other key players include successful veterans such as Act Entertainment, Freddy Burger Management, Opus One and AllBlues, as well as a newer breed exemplified by operators such as Lausanne’s Takk, Zürich’s Gadget and Mainland, which has offices in both cities.

Even in the face of stiff competition, business is not bad, says Opus One’s Vincent Sager, “even if we have to fight more to sell tickets. Basically we have more shows and concerts on sale, but the demand for tickets remains more or less the same. We are doing pretty well on comedy, visual shows and hot names, for which demand remains very high. Exhibition projects are also doing well.”

But high demand also means high supply, and on this basis Switzerland has standard challenges: too many shows, with prices a little too high, pushed up by big guarantees from eager promoters. And as every market knows, selling a ticket for a show by a passing megastar is a lot easier than developing tomorrow’s talent.

“Market conditions have not changed besides the fact that we have more promoters than ever,” says Vogel. “To us it means not doing more and more, but staying there where we were. Ticket demand for the well-known acts is still strong in Switzerland; for new and mid-level acts it’s going to be tougher. Ticket prices are high, but are not increasing that much as elsewhere, I guess.”

Where the smaller acts are concerned, the festivals once again play a distorting role in the market. “Fans are ready to pay a lot for legendary bands such as AC/DC, and the Rolling Stones,” notes Sager. “But they think twice before buying tickets for acts they can expect to see at festivals.”

Stefan Wyss at promoter and booking agency Gadget says the strongest touring bands are those that played the clubs early in their careers and made the effort to keep coming back. “Imagine Dragons will sell out the Hallenstadion, even though the second album is not as successful as the first one, and I think this is due to the fact that they started to play

Contributors (top row, left to right): Christof Huber (Open Air St Gallen), François Moreillon (Swiss Live Talents), Dany Hassenstein (Paléo Festival), Marc Lambelet (Mainland Music), Mathieu Jaton (Montreux Jazz Festival), Sebastien Vuignier (Takk) Bottom row (left to right): Stefan Wyss (Gadget), Thomas Dürr (Act Entertainment), Johannes Vogel (AllBlues), Vincent Sager (Opus One)

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IQ Magazine July 2015

Switzerland

Queens of the Stone Age played at the Heiternplatz in Zofingen last August

FESTIVALS

Switzerland early,” says Wyss.

Also with strong roots in rising international talent is Takk, which this year will feed Royal Blood, Paolo Nutini, Sam Smith, Foals, Tame Impala and Jungle into Switzerland’s festivals, as well as slightly older bands such as Portishead, Damien Rice and Interpol.

“Business is still doing very good,” says Takk’s Sebastien Vuignier. “We are in our seventh year and we have promoted or booked more than 1,000 shows. One of the highlights of this first part of 2015 was The Parov Stelar Band’s headline show at Berne’s Festhalle. Sold out! We sold 7,500 tickets, which is a great achievement.”

SWITZERLAND’S FESTIVALS are the centrepiece of its live industry and its summertime. Between May and September, there are roughly 300 of them, including Paléo, Rock Oz’Arènes and Montreux Jazz in the west of the country; Frauenfeld, St Gallen, Open Air Basel and Zürich Openair in the north; Gampel and Moon & Stars in the south, and, in the centre, Gurtenfestival on a mountainside in Bern and Greenfield down the road in Interlaken.

Few dispute that such a busy schedule is a potentially risky, challenging thing that forces everyone in the sector to work harder than they might sometimes like.

Thomas Dürr, founder of Act Entertainment, whose broad portfolio stretches into comedy and family entertainment as well as hard rock via the Greenfield Festival, notes that in the peak three weeks of the festival season this year, “there are 400,000 tickets around on the rock & roll market”, including festivals and major artist shows. “The business is getting harder and harder as more and more promoters make their profit from the festival market,” he says.

And given the market’s already high prices and its super abundance of festival attractions, tensions are inevitable between the hungry festival operators and the acts, on a number of fronts.

The decision of shoo-in festival headliners like Foo Fighters and Muse to play their own big shows in Switzerland this summer frustrated some of those with a big-name festival bill to fill. “For me, there is no sense in [a big headline act] coming

in the week after the biggest rock festival for their own single show in a stadium,” says Dürr. “For me, it takes a lot of money out of the market and it makes no sense for the fans.”

Nonetheless, Open Air St Gallen’s Christof Huber, also a promoter working with Gadget, shares the same grievance.

“At the moment, we are still in a fine position, but I think expectations from audiences will slowly go away if we can’t deliver some of the top acts,” he says.

The problem is compounded, Huber suggests, by the overavailability of many other acts that he believes would do well to leave the circuit alone for a year or two. “You can easily present a bill nowadays and have the audience say, ‘well, we saw all this before,’” he says. “I really get the feeling that bands get so many offers each year from festivals who are desperate to have them, so they do the show for the shortterm money, even if they don’t have a record out. Some of these acts are available every year, and they will play twice in Switzerland. But it’s bad for the career of the band, and it’s bad for selling tickets.”

In Openair St Gallen headliner, The Chemical Brothers, Huber feels he has cracked both problems for this year – a major act that knows how to make itself scarce, but is happy to play the festival game.

Elsewhere, Paléo will stretch over seven days this year as it celebrates its 40th anniversary with a bill too big to easily summarise, but with headliners including Robert Plant, Sting, Robbie Williams, David Guetta and Kings of Leon.

“It’s definitely a big year for us, and the audience seems to have high expectations, as aside from the quick sell-out,

London Grammar at last year’s Montreux Jazz Festival © Marc Ducrest

Switzerland

we had twice as many connections on our ticketing server the day we went on sale as last year,” says Hassenstein. He doesn’t see any serious clouds on the horizon for Swiss festivals, though he notes the importance of keeping quality high. “Key quality issues are the variety of artistic content – not only music – and also the food and beverage offer and

Switzerland

VENUES IN A COUNTRY AS SMALL as Switzerland, there is no need for numerous arenas, but it is certainly useful when the bestlocated and most popular of them is available to all promoters, as Zürich’s Hallenstadion has been since 2013.

One of only a handful of equivalent venues, alongside the smaller Arena de Genève and St. Jakobshalle in Basel, the Hallenstadion was a major tool for Good News for years, and its deregulation has been a boon to various ambitious promoters, including Mainland, a relatively recent amalgamation of well-established club promoters, which has latterly gained experience of arenas.

“I like club shows and 2,000-cap shows, those are really exciting, but arena shows and stadiums are something else,” says Lambelet. “It’s another side of the business that we did not really explore until now, because the opportunity was not there. We don’t want to become a ‘big shows only’ promoter, but it is interesting to do a few select ones, such as Foo Fighters, or 30 Seconds to Mars, Macklemore or Queens of the Stone Age, whom we’ve promoted in arenas recently. At the same time, we really want to carry on doing small shows, bringing baby acts to success and growing them over the years.”

The infrastructure is certainly there in Switzerland to do that, with a decent selection of clubs and theatres up to 2,000-capacity or so, including such key spots as Lausanne’s Les Docks and Zürich’s Komplex 457. But there is general agreement that Switzerland could use more very small clubs and, perhaps more pressingly, something of around 5,000cap, or so.

“All over Switzerland there are small clubs up to 1,000, maybe 1,500, but between those venues and the big arenas, there’s a lack,” says Gadget’s Wyss. “We don’t have enough venues in this country. In the centre of cities, it is not affordable anymore to run venues compared to [building] flats or businesses.”

IQ Magazine July 2015

LOCAL TALENT SWITZERLAND MAY BE a comfortable place to live for many, but for up-and-coming bands, it can be pitiless, according to Stefan Wyss. “There are a few Swiss bands doing very well, but for most of them it is a very hard business,” he says. “It is getting more difficult for a band to build over the years. If you don’t do business abroad, which most of them don’t, it’s a small market and it’s difficult to make a living out of it,” he adds, acknowledging the recent success of French-language rapper, Stress, and local pop-rock band, Pegasus.

It may be hard, but there are those who are trying to help.

Greenfield Festival this year included a conference for rock bands. “We want to show the younger bands how to come into this business and we want to give them some help,” says Dürr. “We are the only festival that is doing things like this in Switzerland, but no new headliners are coming up, and in ten years, a lot of today’s biggest artists will be 70 or 80, while the audience is still 16 to 24.”

Another industry veteran working on the same problem is François Moreillon, whose Swiss Live Talents contest is now in its second edition. “Absolutely, the potential of Swiss based live music acts has grown during the last decade,” says Moreillon, citing Pablo Nouvelle, The Chikitas, Kadebostany, Puts Marie, Fai Baba, Death by Chocolate, Hathors, We Love Machines and Rootwords as Swiss acts who have recently acquired international touring representation.

The Swiss Live Talents competition encompasses seven different genre categories, from which 35 acts will go through to a final in Bern on 14 November. According to Moreillon, 663 acts have registered to date for this year’s contest, with the judging panel drawing on festivals and live music conferences at home and abroad.

Gadget promoted a show by The Baseballs at the 1,300-capacity Volkshaus Basel in November 2014

the general infrastructure for the audience – space, sanitary, seats and safety.”

Even older than Paléo, in a very different vein, is the Montreux Jazz Festival, preparing for its third edition since the tragic death of founder Claude Nobs in January 2013.

Now running in three distinct venues – the 4,000-capacity Auditorium Stravinski, the 350-seat Montreux Jazz Club and the experimental, 2,000-cap Montreux Jazz Lab – Montreux has a British edge this year with The Kooks, Foals, Hot Chip, Portishead and The Chemical Brothers alongside the more classically Montreux-ish Lionel Richie, Herbie Hancock, George Benson, Melody Gardot et al.

“I think Claude would have been very happy with the programme this year, but also last year when we welcomed Pharrell Williams and Stevie Wonder,” says CEO Mathieu Jaton. “It’s really a Claude programme – a lot of different culture coming from all around the world, and a very clear positioning between the three venues.”

Next year is Montreux’s 50th, and Jaton says he would be happy if this year’s line-up had been in place for the big one. As it is, he expects numerous long-standing musical friends of the festival, ideally including famous name-checkers Deep Purple.

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Family Entertainment

WE ARE FAMILY

Developing strategies to sustain business through a prolonged economic recession has served the family entertainment industry well, with renewed consumer confidence rewarding companies that have taken the opportunity to break into new territories. Eugenia Durante reports.

L

ast year, our annual IQ report showed that the family entertainment sector was brimming with confidence.

This year’s research has confirmed that the trend continues, proving that the global recession is gradually becoming less of an issue. However, since the downturn changed consumer behaviour and needs, the industry’s professionals have had to develop new long- and short-term strategies to keep up with the market. This, of course, has proved to be challenging but also extremely exciting and rewarding, as it has triggered the need for producers of family entertainment to take their shows into new markets.

“Our shows have been doing great in the last year. The economy has started to improve globally, which has led to international expansion. Moreover, attendance and merchandise sales are up and remain strong,” explains Jeff Munn, chief operating officer of the Harlem Globetrotters, who are about to embark on their 90th season. “We have had tremendous success throughout all of Western Europe in the last year. We are also about to start a month-long tour of Australia and New Zealand; two markets that have seen huge growth in the last year for us. We also continue to make inroads in China, which we believe will be critical to our long-term success,” he adds.

According to Magnus Danielsson, vice-president of International Motor Sports at Feld Entertainment, 2014 also proved to be one of Feld’s best years ever. “Our Monster Jam show had 150,000 visitors in Australia. The Sydney Monster Jam show registered over 46,000 fans and was nominated as the best guest event for 2014. Moreover, in the UK our Disney On Ice show almost reached one million in attendance,” he reveals.

World Concert Artists’ Corrado Canonici explains that the exhibitions targeting families have been his company’s bestsellers: “We had a happy year, indeed. Living Dinosaurs, our animatronic life-size exhibition, is selling a non-stop average of 100,000 tickets per run. We also created a brand new event in collaboration with Barley Arts International called FestivalAsia, featuring performances, martial arts, food, and literally almost everything related to Asia. We did very well in London with over 10,000 visitors and this is just

the first edition; we are now aiming to export the model and welcome interested promoters from other countries.”

All the World’s a Stage

W

hile Western Europe, Scandinavia, the USA and Australia have been quite a safe haven even during the recession, companies are now presenting their shows in other countries, even the riskiest in terms of infrastructure and money. “Since our family entertainment department is doing really well, we are constantly expanding,” George Leitner Productions’ (GLP) Roland Theierl tells IQ. “In 2014, following a great success in Eastern Europe, we brought our top-seller Peter Pan on Ice to Canada and South America, as well as Asia. We do get a lot of enquiries from show producers to be represented by us, actually even more than we can manage!”

Even some countries that had experienced some highs and lows during the recession are now registering an increase in sales: in Italy, for example, the family entertainment sector (including travelling exhibitions) represented about 20% of the whole entertainment industry’s total revenue in 2014.

“The past year saw many standouts,” comments David Pitman, director of tour planning at Cirque du Soleil. “This included multiple visits to Minsk, a return to Hungary and a very successful tour of Italy. Our arena tour Quidam is now preparing for the final engagements on its European tour in Tallinn, Stockholm, Krakow, Gdansk and Tel Aviv. Varekai will begin its European tour in Q4, 2015.”

Going global of course involves new challenges in terms of money, market rotation and venue availability.

The downturn aftermath still affects people’s perception of money, and companies operating all over the world now need to understand perfectly consumers’ behaviour in different countries in order to successfully sell their shows. “As a global business, one issue we always have to take into consideration when playing outside the US is the exchange rate from a very strong US dollar,” explains Feld’s Danielsson.

Artists utilise the aerial hoop during Cirque du Soleil’s ‘Quidam’ © Matt Beard

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Family Entertainment

Market Research is Key

A

comprehensive analysis of the market and its economics, trends and buying habits seems to be the key to global success. According to Munn, the winning strategy of the Harlem Globetrotters is based on a meticulous process of research and negotiation: “We look at a lot of things and nothing is done in a vacuum,” he says.

“We talk to our promoter, research competitive pricing for other international touring shows in the market, general economic market conditions, sales from previous plays, etc.”

Pitman concurs on the importance of investing in this sector, leaving nothing to chance: “Our ticketing department at our world headquarters in Montreal has been very successful in developing pricing that appeals to a greater number of patrons,” states Pitman. “Our ticket prices are established by benchmarking our prices in consideration of equivalent live entertainment events worldwide.”

The recession has affected not only the amount of money that people are willing to spend on a show but also the way they buy tickets and their expectations. Well-established shows with a strong brand usually go on sale well before the event, even one year in advance, but new shows present more issues in terms of presales. “2014’s only downside was that since the recession people have become more accustomed to buy later,” explains WCA’s Canonici. “Advance sales do not account so much as they did before the recession. Nevertheless, it was a great year.”

New products also need to meet several requirements in order to attract visitors and build their trust. MEI Worldwide has successfully begun a three-year tour of their newest show, Smurfs, venturing into Europe as well as the company’s existing markets, Hong Kong, Singapore and Dubai, which continue to be strong. “In the family market it is all about getting the right brand that kids connect with, which is typically from TV, film or books,” Nicholas Larkin, chief at MEI, comments. “The Smurfs are an iconic brand that has multi-generational appeal – the grandparents; mums and dads; and the children all know about them. With a family show if you have the right product it is relatively resilient.”

People have also grown more demanding and have different expectations: they don’t just want to watch a show, but attend an event and get involved. The Harlem Globetrotters, for example, have introduced more ways for fans to interact with their players at the shows, which proved to be a winning move. “Our Magic Pass Programme, where for an additional fee fans can interact with the players before the game, has proved to be tremendously popular around the world,” says Munn. “Today, people consume content on a very immediate and personal level, and this programme is a great way to give people what they want.” Steven Armstrong, vice-president of Feld’s Europe-North division, also points out the importance of engagement when presenting a family show: “People enjoy interacting with their favourite brands as much as they can, so it is important to Feld to get these brands to as many places as possible and give audiences a live experience, as a family unit, that can be remembered for a lifetime.”

Mixing temporary trends and timeless brands has enabled Feld to expand and offer their family shows in 73 countries around the world on six continents. “Disney is constantly producing quality content that is loved by so many people of various ages, cultures and backgrounds,” Armstrong explains. “Being able to tell these

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Harlem Globetrotters star Hacksaw Hall shows off his dunking technique

stories on the medium of ice has proven to be hugely successful.

Working closely with Disney to bring the brand live to audiences’ home towns mixed with the guarantee of quality, wholesome family entertainment has made Disney on Ice into one of the most successful touring productions in the world today.”

The success of Marvel Universe Live, Feld’s newest venture, also stresses that understanding what is going on in other entertainment sectors, such as the movie and publishing industry, is decisive. “We launched it in the US in 2014 and it is slated to come to Europe in autumn of 2016,” Armstrong says. “This show is a unique, action-packed arena spectacular that will have family audiences and Marvel fans excited with what they see. Marvel as a brand has been around for a long time, but has managed to gain recognition in the past few years with movie blockbusters such as Iron Man, Captain America and Guardians of the Galaxy.”

GLP’s Theierl comments, “Our Peter Pan on Ice was a best-seller in 2014. As we see a new Peter Pan Hollywood movie coming out in October, the upcoming season will be even stronger. We are even thinking about setting up a second cast to meet the demand.”

Contributors (top row, left to right): Corrado Canonici (World Concert Artists), David Pitman (Cirque du Soleil), Magnus Danielsson (Feld Entertainment) Bottom row (l to r): Steven Armstrong (Feld), Nick Larkin (MEI Worldwide), Roland Theierl (George Lietner Productions)

IQ Magazine July 2015

Family Entertainment

Coherent Strategies

W

hen it comes to family entertainment, not only does the merchandise need to be appealing and unique, but the marketing strategies also have to be thorough. “It is very important for the show to have its USP and a definable target group. The marketing materials like artwork and promotional trailers need to be state of the art,” Theierl observes.

In recent years, other forms of entertainment have taken their toll on the purses of consumers. However, as many businesses cover concerts by well-known artists as well and, generally, families are more willing to spend money to attend shows, this is not putting the market in jeopardy.

Moreover, concerts usually target a different demographic with different strategies and needs. This, however, has affected the venues’ availability, making it harder for companies to book dates for huge family shows – especially in Europe. “This was perhaps the main challenge Cirque du Soleil had to meet in 2014,” Pitman explains. “The increased touring activity from concerts and other family shows in recent years has presented increased competition for available dates. There are some markets in Europe that are under-served and that do not have an arena that is suitable to present our productions,” he adds.

Finding state-of-the-art venues able to host huge shows proved to be one of the main issues in 2014, not only in developing regions, but also in countries such as the UK. “They seem to become less instead of more,” Canonici complains. “They even closed London’s Earls Court now, which is an absolutely mental decision especially if one works – as we do – mainly on touring exhibitions.”

To tackle this problem, Feld has just announced an agreement between its Motor Sports division and Lagardère Unlimited Stadium Solutions. Starting in 2016, Feld’s Monster Jam productions will play five Lagardère stadiums

‘Disney On Ice’ remains a massively popular draw

in four countries: Commerzbank-Arena in Frankfurt, Germany; Brazil’s Arena Castelão in Fortaleza and Estádio Independência in Belo Horizonte; Groupama Arena in Budapest, Hungary; and the existing engagement at Friends Arena in Stockholm, Sweden.

“We are very excited to be working with Lagardère Unlimited Stadium Solutions to bring Monster Jam to even more fans around the world,” says Danielsson. “They have some of the most state-of-the-art stadiums a production could ask for. This is the next step in the ongoing international expansion of Monster Jam.” With this new agreement, Monster Jam, which is the largest touring monster truck property in the world, with over 350 shows and 4 million fans, will expand its international roster of countries to 24.

Patrik Meyer, head of Lagardère’s event division, comments: “Our new agreement with Feld Motor Sports will allow us to greatly expand the productions that come to our stadiums and attract a new range of families that might not otherwise come to another event.”

Such foresight to forge new partnerships and take risks to expand the horizons of touring productions could be the key to the continued resilience of family shows over the next few years. With IQ hearing multiple moans about venue availability, Feld’s willingness to think outside of the box could herald a new golden age for the family entertainment sector.

The heroic cast of ‘Marvel Universe Live’

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IQ Magazine July 2015

Kiss

Having completed the European leg of their 40th anniversary world tour, KISS travel to Australia, proving they are more popular than ever. Olaf Furniss talks to the band’s inner circle to find out just how they keep their stage show so relevant. y the time KISS had released their third album, Dressed B To Kill, in 1975, they had already carved out a formidable reputation for their live shows which invariably included

outlandish costumes, theatrical make-up and state-of-theart pyrotechnics, combined with a number of songs that had already become rock classics.

The band was founded in New York in 1973, when singer/ bassist Gene Simmons and singer/lead guitarist Paul Stanley responded to an ad in Rolling Stone placed by drummer Peter Criss. Soon after, lead guitarist Ace Frehley was recruited.

Four decades and 100 million album sales later, the reputation as one of the world’s greatest touring acts remains intact. And while Simmons and Stanley – now in their sixties – have interchanged drummers and lead guitarists over the years, there is little sign of the KISS juggernaut slowing down.

Last year saw the band play a nine-day residency at the Las Vegas Hard Rock Hotel & Casino, take to the seas for the fifth KISS Kruise, and play 42 North American dates with Def Leppard.

In the first half of 2015, they have played a handful of dates in Japan, headlined shows in Colombia, Ecuador, Chile, Argentina and Uruguay and completed a five date tour of Brazil, including a headline slot at Monsters of Rock in São Paulo. The band’s hugely successful 15-date European tour mixed festival slots and sold-out arena shows across 10 different countries.

And in October, the 40th anniversary tour travels to Australasia for seven more shows in the southern hemisphere.

Insiders attribute KISS’s longevity to a combination of factors, which include their choice of manager; the professionalism of band and crew; the strong bond with fans; the broad appeal of the bombastic live show; a willingness to innovate; and a strong work ethic.

IQ Magazine July 2015

“It all starts with the top,” explains Lance Wascom, owner and co-founder of Tour Supply Inc, which provides everything from glow-in-the-dark tape to clown noses for microphones.

“Their manager Doc McGhee is one of the top names in the business. He always assembles a first-class team starting with the production manager [Robert Long]. You always have the cream of the crop with their crew. It’s a very well-oiled machine. There is a good chemistry.”

McGhee began working with Stanley and Simmons in 1996, shortly after they were reunited with Frehley and Criss, who had both left at the beginning of the previous decade.

And he is widely credited with getting the band to return to performing with make-up, 12 years after they made headlines for removing it.

“I believe that Gene and Paul knew they wanted to do it, they felt that it was the right time,” recalls McGhee. “I said ‘put the make-up on’ and they didn’t say anything.”

Ossy Hoppe has promoted KISS in Germany since 1988 and is in no doubt about the importance of the band/ manager relationship, which he describes as a “match made in heaven.”

“Gene and Paul are very smart guys, and so is Doc,” he says. “They understand each other very well and they respect each other a lot. Doc is the best manger for KISS.” Hoppe, like many in the KISS camp, has a relationship with the band spanning decades and it is clear that there is a tight-knit community keeping the band on the road.

“KISS have got it wired,” says Lon Porter, CEO of Smart Art, which for the past 25 years has put together the band and crew tour itineraries. “They are an easy outfit to work with because they have such a professional team behind them… professionals at the top of their game.”

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Kiss

hile the loyalty between band and crew is frequently W cited, so is the connection between KISS and their fans.

In fact, many of those in the team started out as devotees of

the rock gods.

“In 1975, I bought their first record on 8-track cartridge,” recalls Bob Brigham, president of PRG Nocturne, which has been responsible for the band’s video production since 1996.

“I was a drummer and had a huge stereo system and would play along to the songs. I wasn’t a very good drummer but loved playing along with KISS.” Protravel International’s Kathryn Mercer, who is responsible for crew travel and accommodation, joined the team five years ago and in KISS terms is a relative newbie.

However, her history as a fan goes back to the mid-70s. “The first concert I ever went to was KISS on the [1976] Alive tour. It was at the Sportatorium in Miami,” says Mercer, who admits that it brought a smile to her face to find herself part of the band’s tour team many years later.

For Hoppe, KISS’s popularity among other musicians proved to be a boon when in 1996 German punk band Die Ärzte got in touch and asked to support their idols. “At that time, Die Ärzte could sell-out the arenas themselves, but it was their childhood dream to support KISS,” he says. “For me

as a promoter it was fucking brilliant because it diminished the risk to practically zero.”

KISS have long been tuned into the power of their fans and were quick to co-opt the KISS Army, which was founded in 1975 by Indianapolis schoolboys Bill Starkey and Jay Evans. Frustrated by the local radio station’s refusal to play their favourite band, the two teenagers got together with some friends and began to lobby to get their music aired. Soon after, then manager Bill Aucoin commissioned advertising agency Howard Marks Inc to design a logo for the fledgling fanclub, which in 2008 saw US Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, join its ranks following a chance meeting with the band in a Stockholm hotel.

On a commercial level, KISS have never been shy when it comes to meeting the fans’ voracious appetite for merchandise, which includes everything from coffins to action figures, chewing gum, dart boards and a series of Marvel comics. According to David Leaf’s KISS: Behind The Mask [The Official Authorized Biography] gross retail sales of merch had generated $111million (€99m) in 1978 alone and the band had licensed between 150-200 products.

Moreover, the KISS Army generated several thousand dollars a day in membership fees.

An annual subscription now costs $50 (€45) and in addition to a t-shirt, badge and discounts, includes access to tickets and VIP packages before they go on sale to the general public.

The latter have become an integral part of the KISS tour, with the top-of-the-range VIP Meet & Greet including admission to the sound check and an exclusive acoustic performance.

On a wider level, social media also keeps fans up to date. The KISS Facebook page boasts 12m likes while the band has 920,000 followers on Twitter. However, according to McGhee, Wi-Fi limitations in venues make it difficult to incorporate social media interactivity into the live shows. “Unless you carry your own Wi-Fi system, it’s hard to use social media during the show because the bandwidth gets sucked up,” he says, adding that KISS nevertheless engage with fans using online tools. “We’ve done a lot of fan activation to find out what they want to hear and pick songs, we let them get involved in creating the KISS tours.” In 2009, this included routing a North American tour based on the per-capita demand from fans in different towns and cities.

KISS with manager Doc McGhee, agent Rod MacSween (ITB) and German promoter Ossy Hoppe (Wizard Promotions)

Contributors (left to right): Rod MacSween (ITB), Pino Sagliocco (Live Nation Spain), Doc McGhee (McGhee Entertainment), Robert Porkert (Live Nation Czech Republic), Lon Porter (Smart Art), Will Johns (Stagetruck), Ossy Hoppe (Wizard Promotions)

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IQ Magazine July 2015

Kiss

The band’s booking agent outside North America, ITB’s Rod MacSween, is particularly well-placed to observe developments in the stage show, having worked with KISS since their 1982 Destroyer tour. “They always have something different, a new trick or new production sophistication,” he says. “It’s never the same with KISS, you will always have a surprise down the line.”

According to McGhee, the most recent dates were no exception when it came to putting on a winning combination of video, lights and pyrotechnics. “Besides a few more songs, there are lasers we haven’t used before and different types of flames. It’s a more sophisticated show and a lot more intense,” he says. “We usually show mostly KISS [on the video screens]. This one we’ve got a lot of different types of footage including graphics and animation.”

hen KISS tour Australia in the autumn, they will take W the spider, a giant lighting rig which lowers the four musicians onto the stage. According to the band’s official

W

hile there is undoubtedly a significant commercial drive to a lot of these ventures, Robert Porkert, managing director of Live Nation in the Czech Republic, believes KISS’s relationship with their fans is integral to their staying power.

“I don’t know of any other band that spend so much time with their fans,” he says. “One of the keys to their success is how they work with their fans. They really care, they know what people want to see and they do it.”

It is also clear that KISS are one of the rare breed of acts able to garner new followers with each generation. “What is amazing is the first time my son went to see KISS he was six-years-old and there were 70-year-olds there to see them as well,” says Martin Kelley, account manager with Christie Lites who supply the tour’s lighting.

“When there is a meet-and-greet my friends call me saying ‘can my son and grandson come?’” says Hoppe, adding that KISS are one of the few acts who have equal appeal across Germany, where tastes tend to differ across the different regions.

website – kissonline.com – the whole set-up weighs 43,000 kg, with 220 automated lights, 100 LEDs, 900 pieces of pyrotechnics, 20 flame machines and 300kg of dry ice.

“The biggest challenge with this particular production is the pyro. Out of all the bands I have worked with, they push the boundaries with pyro,” says Christie Lites’ Kelley. “We had to find a fixture that could handle the heat and pyro dust.

Your crew needs to take care of that throughout the tour and make sure everything is clean.”

In putting the visuals together, production manager Robert Long works closely with the band, fellow designer Sooner Routhier and lighting directors Sean “Motley” Hackett and Michael Cooper.

“Sometimes they [KISS] need to be convinced it looks good and that they have a strong team behind them,” says Long, adding that, typically, preparations begin about five or six months before the tour. “Ultimately, they usually agree, as we know and understand KISS and always try our best to keep their show relevant.”

hile certain songs and aspects of a KISS concert remain W consistent, those close to the band agree that they strive to ensure that the production is at the highest level.

“KISS are never complacent and they always want to push the envelope,” says Brigham, who, by means of example, mentions the band hanging LED screens – designed to be positioned vertically – over the audience. “For them it is all about the fans and giving them the best show possible. Just when you thought the show can’t get any bigger, go see the next tour and find it has.”

Pino Sagliocco, president of Live Nation Spain, who has promoted the band for the past 20 years, agrees. “Logistically they are challenging because of the great production,” he says. “But the band and their management care about their audience base and support the promoter in any way possible to make sure the shows are successful.”

KISS with the staff of Live Nation Czech Republic

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Kiss

ISS have always been willing to embrace new technologies K and opportunities, but for Brigham, the biggest challenge – and subsequently an “absolute highlight” – came in 1998

when the band announced they would be incorporating 3D video into their Psycho Circus tour.

“Gene and Doc were in the press talking about how the next tour would be the first tour in the world to have live 3D video,” he recalls. “There were no tests to see if we could pull it off.

KISS had the balls to say, ‘we are doing this.’ So do we debut the Psycho Circus tour in a small ‘B’ market to work out the kinks? No! Live on Fox TV on Friday 31 October 1998.”

When Brigham arrived in California to begin rehearsals for the Psycho Circus tour, his plans to reside in a local hotel were overruled by McGhee. “He said ‘no you’re not, you’re moving into my house. If I go down, you go down!”, recalls Brigham with amusement, adding that the manager, and Simmons and Stanley were “patient and extremely supportive” when it came to developing the 3D show.

A desire to give their audience the best live experience is frequently cited as a factor underpinning the KISS approach, which might be explained by the frontmen’s own enthusiasm for their work. “We’re in KISS, but we’re also fans of KISS,” Stanley explained in a USA Today interview last year. “We started this to be the band we never saw.”

Promoter Porkert corroborates this, as he recalls finding a biography of Gene Simmons written in Czech, which he asked the god of thunder to sign. “He said, ‘I want to keep this for my KISS museum and ran off with the book,” he says. “I found another three copies and sent them to him in Stockholm where they were playing next. He signed them and sent them back.”

“Gene? Jesus, I don’t know how much crap he has,” jokes McGhee. “He buys whole collections – he’s the biggest KISS fan.”

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The band’s work ethic is frequently mentioned by promoters and crew alike, and the unreliability of Criss and Frehley is cited by Stanley as a reason for tensions, both first time round and when they rejoined the band in the 90s. Their replacements, Eric Singer [drums] and Tommy Thayer [lead guitar], are fully signed up to the pre-show meet-and-greet schedules, and other promotional activity.

“What impresses me when I turn up to a show is how the band still put on their make-up, do a meet-and-greet and then play for 90 minutes,” says Kelley. “I’m not sure at [the age of] 65 I could do that.”

The band’s few concessions to lightening the load involve basing themselves in hubs from where they travel to concerts and splitting tours into shorter segments of around three weeks of dates. “Everybody has families so we are not doing six months,” explains McGhee.

“It’s a sensible itinerary, nothing silly,” says Will Johns, operations manager at UK-based Stagetruck, which provided 13 trucks for the recent European leg of the tour. “They know what show they have to put up and how long they have to do it. It comes from experience.”

But despite the principal performers’ pensioner status, there is no sign of KISS slowing down any time soon.

October begins with an Australian tour and ends with the band embarking on their fifth KISS Kruise. According to McGhee, the last voyage saw people from 33 different countries pay $3,000 (€2,677) a head to enlist in the KISS Navy, and the next sailing is already sold out.

In 2016, the KISS Kruise might add a European leg, along with plans to tour Scandinavia and Russia, as well as the band’s first-ever shows in South Africa, Israel and Dubai. Moreover, a Kissology Volume 4 is likely to be released via Universal.

“KISS have been on the road for 42 years,” muses Porkert.

“I hope they continue for another 25.”

Given the band’s achievements so far, he might be pleasantly surprised.

IQ Magazine July 2015

ROCK IN… ALL OVER THE WORLD

Rock in Rio celebrated its 30th anniversary this year by fulfilling ambitious plans to expand into the United States.

Richard Smirke talks to the event’s insiders to hear the remarkable story behind the development of the world’s biggest festival brand.

Frank Sinatra never played Rock in Rio but without him, one of the biggest and most famous live music events in the world is unlikely to have been born.

“Sinatra was instrumental in making my dream come true,” says Rock in Rio founder and chairman Roberto Medina, who first met the singer in 1977 when he convinced him to film a Brazilian TV commercial for a local whiskey brand. At the time, Medina was an ambitious 30-yearold advertising executive, as president of Rio-based communications agency Artplan Empreendimentos e Participaoes S.A., while Sinatra was in mourning following the recent death of his mother. Ol’ Blue Eyes agreed to do the advert on the condition that he would only film one take.

Unhappy with the initial result, Medina talked him into doing another.

It would not be the last time that the flamboyant music industry titan would have to utilise all his cunning, marketing guile and persuasive charm to succeed against almost impossible odds. The moment also marked the start of a close friendship with Sinatra, which culminated in Medina promoting the singer’s first and only Brazilian concert at Rio de Janeiro’s Maracanã stadium. 170,000 people attended the event, which took place in January 1980 and shattered international box office records for a solo artist. Buoyed by its success, Medina began to dream of bigger things.

“The festival was born out of a feeling of wanting to promote my country and my hometown, Rio de Janeiro,” explains Medina. “Brazil was coming out of a dictatorship and it was necessary to instill hope in the minds of the people, especially the youth. I wanted to unite the Brazilian people and I knew how powerful music can be to unite people.

So, I dreamt of an event that gathered people of all races and beliefs and that enjoyed different types of music.” To pull off such an ambitious plan would not be easy, however. With the notable exception of Sinatra’s Rio concert, the biggest gigs to have been held in Brazil up to that point had been for around 30,000 people. Medina’s target for the inaugural Rock in Rio was for more than 1 million people spread over ten days, with tickets priced at R$12 (€3) per day. His plans for the festival site itself were equally grandiose. Not content with merely staging the world’s biggest ever music event, he intended to construct a gigantic, 300,000-capacity Cidade do Rock (city of rock) in which to hold it.

“It was an extremely ambitious plan for the time,” says Phil Rodriguez, CEO of Move Concerts (formerly known as Evenpro), the biggest independent concert promoter in Latin America. Rodriguez has booked talent for Rock in Rio’s main stages since its very first edition and was introduced to Roberto and his brother Rubin in 1984 when a mutual friend suggested that the two should meet. “I flew to Rio, went to Roberto’s house and he had the whole plan more-or-less laid out.

I knew then that it was going to raise the tide for everybody,” recalls Rodriguez, who says that at the time few international acts travelled to South America. “It was something of a dark continent; the big unknown and that lack of knowledge created hesitation and fear amongst agents and managers,” he explains. Limited traffic also meant that the touring and production infrastructure at the level required simply didn’t exist.

“We didn’t have sound, lighting or stages. We didn’t have anything.

The whole process of starting a festival with the quality we were dreaming of was very difficult,” according to Medina. Nevertheless, he persevered, securing vital multimillion-dollar sponsorship deals with McDonalds, Pepsi and Brazilian beer company Brahma. Medina also negotiated a series of groundbreaking licensing and merchandise deals, selling exclusive Latin American television rights to Brazil’s Globo Television,

Rock in Rio USA 2015 © Raul Aragão/I Hate Flash

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Rock in Rio Iron Maiden leave the Rock in Rio 2001 stage. Photo by Ross Halfin

“ Rock in Rio’s debut in Las Vegas was spectacular. Roberto and his team are always trying to make their product the best it can be and are tireless in their efforts to do so. He always has new and innovative ideas to improve Rock in Rio and we will work collectively to bring them to fruition.

I have no doubt that Roberto and his team will learn from this first year and along with their partners continue to build Rock in Rio USA into one of the preeminent festivals in North America and we will do everything we can to help them succeed in future years.”

Chris Baldizan - MGM Resorts International

transportation rights to Varig Airlines and even cigarette rights to British American Tobacco, ensuring they would be the only cigarettes sold onsite. With construction underway on the Cidade do Rock, located in the neighbourhood of Jacarepagua, several miles outside the centre of Rio de Janeiro, the promoter’s plans were starting to become a reality, with one notable exception: less than six months before opening, he still had no artists confirmed to play the event.

“I went to the US to meet with artist managers to book them for Rock in Rio, and in 70 meetings, I got 70 no’s,” recalls Medina. “I knew they needed to believe that I what I was showing them was going to become real. So, I asked Sinatra to gather press for a press conference where I could present them with the concept of Rock in Rio. And he did – there was a press conference at the Beverly Hilton in Los Angeles, and the press announced that the biggest music festival was going to be held in Rio de Janeiro in January 1985. The next day all managers came back to me accepting to play at Rock in Rio.”

Proving its festival credentials, mud greeted fans at the first Rock in Rio in 1985

1991 saw the event move to the legendary Maracanã Stadium

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YEAR 1 With the world’s media watching, the first Rock in Rio took place 11-20 January, 1985. Queen, James Taylor, George Benson, Yes, Rod Stewart and AC/DC were the inaugural headliners, supported by a strong line-up of international and local talent including Iron Maiden, Ozzy Osborne, The GoGos, The B-52s, Al Jarreau, Lulu Santos and Eduardo Dussek.

“There were over 300,000 there on that first night we did with Queen and the audience was just amazing,” recalls Iron Maiden’s long-time manager Rod Smallwood. “It was the first ever show that we’d been put in a helicopter to go to a gig because the traffic around the site was so busy you couldn’t get in or out [by road].”

To help alleviate some of the pressure on Rio’s congested roads, organisers put on 1,500 buses to transport fans to and from the venue, while Medina came up with a neat solution to ensure that a continuous supply of beer flowed throughout the festival’s duration. Rather than risk Brahma’s trucks becoming jammed in traffic, his team bought a number of tankers, which they filled with beer and fed into the venue via pipelines hidden under the artificial grass. As well as overcoming a potentially tricky obstacle, the delivery method brought an unexpected bonus – it kept the beer refreshingly cooled.

In total, 1.38 million people attended the first Rock in Rio with an estimated global audience of over 200 million watching on TV. “It was televised all across South America, so fans in Chile, Argentina and all around the continent who had never seen us [Iron Maiden] were suddenly able to. The footage was pretty stunning. A lot of those kids had ever seen anything like it before and certainly, from a Maiden perspective, it broke us wide open across all of South America,” says Smallwood, who was so impressed with his debut visit to Rio that he stayed on for all ten days, while the band returned to North America to continue touring.

TV coverage of the event did more than just break Iron Maiden. It showed to the world that the newly democratic country of Brazil could not only hold a major music event, but do it bigger and better than anywhere else. “The fact that such an ambitious project was pulled off, with all the limitations that the market had at that time made it an overnight game-changer,” testifies Rodriguez. “For the first time, you had a core of people from the music industry – agents, artists and managers – that came down to Brazil and saw that it could be done.”

“What they achieved was revolutionary because they really put the festival business on the map in a big way,” agrees Rob Markus, partner at William Morris Endeavor. “At that time, there weren’t really many festivals anywhere in the world,

IQ Magazine July 2015

“ We have a very good relationship with the team from Rock in Rio. They have built something really special over the years and were leaders in terms of establishing the festival market in Brazil. They created a really strong brand and I think they have been very clever not doing it on an annual basis. It builds up more expectation by having it every other year. In terms of their aesthetic, staging, how they handle artists, programming, they have invested a lot in creating a fantastic production. They really care about hitting all target markets.

What they do with the Sunset Stage where they partner a well-known international act with a Brazilian artist, in particular, is really exciting. We’ve had Kimbra, Gogol Bordello, Mike Patton play it and they have all come back saying: ‘What an amazing experience!’.”

Rob Markus – partner, William Morris Endeavor Entertainment The Go-Gos at the inaugural Rock in Rio in 1985

Rock in Rio

to the festival opening, Rio de Janerio’s mayor ordered construction to stop. With negotiations at an impasse, Roberto reluctantly agreed to sign documents that would allow the authorities to tear down the venue immediately following the festival. “Nobody believed that they would destroy it, but they did. The day after it ended, there they were with bulldozers destroying the Cidade do Rock,” remembers Roberta Medina, Roberto’s daughter and current day executive vice-president of Rock in Rio. It would be several decades later before the family discovered the real reason why the venue was demolished.

“The governor at the time was afraid that Roberto wanted to be a politician as he was a very popular personality because of Rock in Rio,” explains Roberta. As a result, it would be six long years before the festival would make its eagerly awaited return.

THE COMEBACK

with the possible exception of Europe, and acts didn’t really know what was going on down in South America.”

Success came at a huge price, however. Setting up and staging Rock in Rio had cost Medina’s Artplan Promotions $50million (€45m) in its first year, a vast amount of which went on building the Cidade do Rock, which in addition to a 300,000-capacity arena, boasted a small but well-equipped hospital, its own heliport, hundreds of fast-food outlets and two dedicated shopping centres, selling everything from band merchandise to stereos. In a breakaway from music festivals of the period, the complex even contained huge bathrooms with hundreds of plumbed toilets.

The Cidade do Rock was originally intended to be the permanent home of Rock in Rio, but several months prior

With the Cidade do Rock in ruins, the second edition of Rock in Rio took place over nine consecutive nights in January 1991 at the city’s 200,000 capacity Maracanã Stadium. Headliners included Prince, Guns N’ Roses, George Michael, INXS, New Kids on the Block and A-ha, with Jimmy Cliff, Run DMC, Carlos Santana, Happy Mondays, Sepultura and Moraes Moreira also on the multi-genre, cross-nationality bill that has become a lasting trademark of Rock in Rio. Total attendance over the nine nights was 700,000, with A-Ha performing to an audience of 198,000 fans – then a world record. Despite being deemed a success by fans and the world’s media, profits remained modest due to high production costs coupled with a weak Brazilian economy.

“Throughout the years, the economy has been a big challenge so it was always important to have sponsorship to make the event work. Until the third [edition] 80% of the cost had to be paid by sponsors because ticket sales wouldn’t pay the bills,” says Roberta. Her father reflects, “The two first editions were very hard to execute, as the political scenario was still very unstable. [But] our sponsorship model has enabled us to invest in the quality of the venue, location, infrastructure and safety without only relying on ticket sales.”

Contributors top row (left to right): Chris Baldizam (MGM Resorts International), Luis Justo (Rock in Rio), Roberto Medina (Rock in Rio), Alvaro Ramos (Ritmos e Blues), Paulo Fellin (Rock in Rio), Phil Rodriguez (Move Concerts), Neil Warnock (The Agency Group) Bottom row (l to r): Rob Markus (William Morris Endeavor Entertainment), Roberta Medina (Rock in Rio), Rod Smallwood (Phantom Music), Stephanie Zimmer (Mercedes Benz)

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Rock in Rio

Roberto Medina welcomes people to the Great Britain and Ireland rock street in Las Vegas

“The way that we build our festival is what sets Rock in Rio apart. Rock in Rio is more than a music festival because Roberto Medina (our founder) is an advertising expert; so our festivals not only offer an excellent lineup of international talent, but they also provide a platform for advertisers to connect with their target markets. Building relationships with well-known and respected international brands is what has allowed us to create amazing festivals for thirty years. What Rock in Rio offers to our audiences and artists is a unique experience, a spectacular venue, top-notch guest services, and theme park rides and entertainment. This is what makes our festival special.

Becoming one of the largest music festivals in the world was no easy feat, but staying at the top is even harder.”

Paulo Fellin – talent senior vice-president - Rock in Rio

Brazil’s Globo television network and Coca-Cola were among the principle backers for 1991’s event, but with the Brazilian economy unable to sustain a regular Rock in Rio it would be another ten years before the festival would once again light up South America.

When it did return in January 2001, it was at a brand new, purpose-built Cidade do Rock, located in Jacarepagua, on the same site as the first venue. Other new features introduced for the third edition included a secondary Sunset Stage and a bespoke dance arena, with the event’s daily capacity increased to 250,000. Iron Maiden were among the headliners that year and they were so impressed with the Brazilian audience that they released their set as a live album and concert video aptly titled Rock in Rio. “If you watch it you’ll see the sheer breadth of the absolutely massive crowd. It was, again, a quite remarkable event,” eulogises Smallwood.

The success of the revived and reinvigorated festival inspired Roberto Medina to expand the brand to new markets, beginning with Lisbon in 2004. Replicating their flagship Rio event, a multi-stage Cidade do Rock was constructed at Lisbon’s Bela Vista Park. The multi-night festival has taken place at the same site every two years since, with 2014’s event

300,000 people paid to see Queen at Rock in Rio’s 1985 debut

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attracting an audience of over 350,000 over five nights. 2008 additionally saw the arrival of a Madrid leg, which took place within a purpose-built arena in Arganda Del Rey, a short distance from Madrid’s city centre. The event has returned to the Spanish capital twice more, with the most recent run taking place in 2012.

“The Rock in Rio public is used to getting a premium quality experience – they like to feel comfort but at the same time they also like to be surprised and find something new at every edition. So you have to innovate but also be highly effective in the execution,” explains Alvaro Ramos, managing partner of Portugal-based promoters Ritmos e Blues, which co-produces the Lisbon event. The company’s expertise has also extended into other facets of Rock in Rio’s global operations by helping to recruit and train many of the senior team that now look after the property. “That makes us very proud,” says Ramos. “Knowing that we are deeply connected to all of this is the biggest reward.”

“Everywhere you go to see Rock in Rio, you will always have a different experience, but with the same directive: deep respect for the public,” says Nuno Sousa Pinto, senior VP production, Rock in Rio USA. To help launch the next stage in Rock in Rio’s global rollout the company partnered with EDM-focused concert promoter SFX Entertainment in 2013. The $62m (€55m) deal gave SFX a 50% stake in the company and positioned the franchise for arguably its most ambitious launch to date: Rock in Rio Las Vegas, which made its much-hyped debut in May this year and saw Taylor Swift, Bruno Mars, Metallica, No Doubt and Ed Sheeran perform to 172,000 fans over two consecutive rockand-pop-themed weekends. In line with every Rock in Rio event, the inspiration for the purpose-built Las Vegas City of Rock – which was located on the famous strip - stretched over 40 acres and featured not one, but three Rock Streets, each home to an abundance of spectacular attractions, performance stages, street artists and performers – came from Rio. “Once I saw the event with my own eyes, I knew Rock in Rio would be an amazing addition to the Las Vegas entertainment landscape and we realised the potential impact of an event of this magnitude would have on our company and ultimately the city of Las Vegas,” says Chris Baldizan, SVP entertainment, MGM Resorts International.

“Most of the people bought tickets [for the US event] because of the artists and they were not expecting the infrastructure and all the attractions that we offered, so once they got there they went absolutely crazy. It was beautiful to see,” says Roberta.

IQ Magazine July 2015

“We were very pleased with the inaugural [Las Vegas] event.

The Rock in Rio guests’ response to our onsite activation was overwhelming. Both weekends we were at capacity for our Iron Schöckl test-ride experience with our G-Class and our brand centre saw consistence traffic throughout the festival.

Our branded flash tattoo was a huge hit and the Evolution Stage had amazing performances. This emotional connection with consumers is what inspires Mercedes-Benz and Rock in Rio was a great opportunity to enhance the Mercedes-Benz music platform. We look forward to what the future holds for the next Rock in Rio USA.”

Rock in Rio

Prince performing at Rock in Rio in 1991

Stephanie Zimmer – Mercedes Benz USA Alongside MGM, partners for the inaugural US edition included Cirque du Soleil and Ron Burkle of The Yucaipa Companies. Mercedes-Benz USA was among the main sponsors for the event, which organisers intend to become a permanent fixture (taking place over alternating years) in the US festival calendar.

“Our dream is not only to be a global festival, but a global music brand,” says Luis Justo, Rock in Rio CEO since 2011.

“In Brazil, where the festival has already 30 years of brand construction we have more than 600 licensed products, we have a motion picture with the festival as background, we have a [Broadway-style] musical and many other projects that go beyond the festival. Our project is to replicate that in the USA and develop Rock in Rio as an important platform for brands that want to be in the music scene.”

“We obviously knew that the brand would only be truly global after being in the US,” states founder Roberto, who says that the event drew in $14m in sponsorship deals from brands like Mercedes-Benz and Bacardi. Responding to criticism that the Vegas event did not achieve its target audience numbers, Roberto says, “We look at this as a long term investment and we don’t invest in a market for just one edition.”

“Las Vegas unveiled Rock in Rio to the world and in the future more cities are going to appear in our lives,” says Sousa Pinto, who says plans are already underway for the second US edition in 2017. The Las Vegas leg also marked an important first for the company – the event was streamed live in China by FansTang, which has signed an exclusive deal to broadcast all future Rock in Rio events in the world’s most populous country for the next ten years. It’s a market in which Roberto keenly wants to establish the brand with a view to one day launching Rock in Rio China, while an event in Dubai could soon be on the horizon. Discussions are also underway regarding bringing the event to Argentina, following an indefinitely postponed 2013 launch of Rock in Rio Buenos Aires.

“ My involvement with Rock in Rio goes back to their second festival where I had Lisa Stansfield as special guest to George Michael. It was manic!! The audiences in South America are all mad music fans. Rock in Rio is larger than life and attracts the world’s biggest artists to play there, and the fans really appreciate this. Plus the fan experience is brilliant – it makes for happy fans and happy bands. A great memory for me was seeing the reception that Nickelback received from the fans in 2013. They had never played in South America and none of us knew what to expect, and they absolutely killed it. Brilliant!!”

Bruce Springsteen made a surprise guest appearance with the Rolling Stones at Rock in Rio Lisboa last year

In the meantime, there’s the small matter of Rock in Rio’s forthcoming 30th anniversary in its home city, which, in a fitting homage to the first ever event, opens with a headline performance from Queen featuring Adam Lambert.

Metallica, Rod Stewart, Elton John, System of a Down, Rihanna and Katy Perry will also perform at the seven-day festival, which has sold out its entire ticket run of a staggering 595,000 tickets per day.

“Rock in Rio has become multi-generational. If you go now you’ll see people that went to the first one in 85 with their children or nieces and nephews. It’s very special to the Brazilians and it’s become a real point of pride for them,” says Phil Rodriguez, who credits Roberto and his core team of executives with building a brand that’s become famous the world over. “Roberto planted the seed and now that seed has become a very strong tree. He is building the team that can pass the baton onto the next generation and lead Rock in Rio for the next 30 years.”

Neil Warnock – The Agency Group IQ Magazine July 2015

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Members’ Noticeboard

The staff of Kilimanjaro Live helped celebrate the marriage of boss Stuart Galbraith and fellow ILMC member Jessica Koravos (VP Europe and The Americas at The Really Useful Group) in London. The ceremony at St Paul’s Church in Covent Garden was followed by a reception aboard a boat on the river Thames.

Company founder and CEO, Luc Peumans and his Painti ng with Light staff sit proudly in their new state-of-the-art offices which were offi cially opened by the Mayor of Genk. The red evelopment of the Paardenstallen listed bui lding, once home to the Winterslag min e’s working ponies, is part of a larger regenerati on project for the former Belgian mining community.

Solo Agency founder John Giddings discusses the value of music tourism with UK Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, John Whittingdale, during the event to launch the UK Music report, Wish You Were Here (see page 12).

Enjoying the hospitality on the riverside terrace at the Houses of Parliament, legendary guitarist Brian May adds A Kind of Magic to the evening for Paul Reed from the Association of Indepe ndent Festivals, Coda Agency’s Rob Challice and ILMC’s Greg Parmle y.

Dougie Souness, recently Wet Wet Wet, along with manager centre in London, ahead py’s Thera c Musi visited Nordoff-Robbins charity’s 40th anniversary. the mark to Koko at show al speci a of me, Tommy, Neil and A highlight of the visit came when Grae d with 11-year-old Aroun All is Marti performed their hit Love panying them throughout. accom , autism has who ano, Rom client

John Botham, Semperior Ltd; South African Minister of Arts and Culture, Nathi Mthethwa; South African Roadies Association president Freddie Nyathela; and Adrian Brooks (Backstage Academy) celebrate the success of Africa’s first ever Live Event Technical & Production Conference in Johannesburg (see page 12).

If you, or any of your ILMC colleagues, have any notices or updates to include on the noticeboard, please contact the club secretary, Gordon Masson, via gordon@iq-mag.net

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IQ Magazine March 2015

Your Shout

“Who will be the top five headline acts in 2025?”

TOP SHOUT Due to the ongoing debate around keeping alive old dinosaurs or the need for a new Rolling Stones, I believe (and hope) that the future headliners as far as 2025 are totally unknown at present. So I have taken the liberty of guessing the details of the forthcoming headliners.

1. Established February 2019 in LA 2. Established June 2020 in Kansas 3. Established January 2021 in Oslo 4. Established March 2023 in North London 5. Established April 2024 in Liverpool I also hope that some of today’s younger artists will keep on going and take second on the bill, together with some cool heritage acts.

Claes Olsen, Øya Festival

1. Elvis - as always 2. Weather you can order 3. Cheap beer 4. Even cheaper drugs 5. Peace & love & some noisemakers for background music all night long.

Borek Jirik, Punx Not Dead

Hard to imagine, as time goes by so fast, but let’s try… Florence and the Machine, Tame Impala, Jack White, James Blake, and someone I don’t know.

This is as far as I got…

1. The Beatles Hologram (DJ set) - In a bid to counter the spiralling cost of the Fab Five’s virtual rider, their agent (also a hologram) agrees a reduced fee for a stripped back DJ set.

2. The Beatles Hologram – Following yet another performance of Hey Jude, this time at the coronation of King William V, Macca is persuaded to bring back The Beatles in holographic form.

Ringo (still alive) refuses to participate in light of his repulse of fan mail, which is now received via telepathic means.

3. ?

4. ?

5. Oasis - Still just a rumour though fuelled by what’s left of Twitter, by an increasingly irrelevant and somewhat frail Liam Gallagher.

Craig Bennett, ID&C

I thought about this and the thoughts grew bleaker, young acts I really like are few and far between and I’m not sure there’s anyone where I share the feeling that Ian Flooks had when we watched U2 play their first mainland gig together at The Marquee, or when, with Geoff Travis, I saw the Smiths play their first London

gig at the Rock Garden. What I see (hold on, I’m about to go all dystopian) is a hipster public who listen to music through streaming (which is worse than radio ever was), where all music becomes decoration, where the whole fan identification thing is in the process of withering away, where gigs are like a personal appearance with loads of video and lights but fuck all meaning, where there’s no discernible difference between a DJ set and a live band, and where people go to festivals as a lifestyle choice not out of good old-fashioned need. Conclusion: just like physical records, traditional festivals might be on the way out, and there won’t be any headline acts in 2025, they’ll just be a vapid constantly shifting bunch of 15-minutes-of-fame seekers.

Of course, even in this bleak vision there will be niche retro events where AC/DC fans get together in their zimmer frames to watch some miracle of longevity, but that’s not the future, that’s the past...

Nick Hobbs, Charmenko

I have no idea about the other four, as 2025 is too far ahead, but I hope one will be The Hand...the band I play with!

Emiliano Tortora, Grinding Halt

Artur Rojek, OFF Festival Katowice

Just coming back from Rock Am Ring, I have to say that I think we will see the same headliners in ten years that we’re looking at now – and for the next ten years: Metallica, Foo Fighters, and Toten Hosen, as well as AC/DC or Iron Maiden!

There has been no really big new band or artist in the last few years – sad, but true!

Christian Doll, C2 Concerts

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IQ Magazine July 2015

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