GLOBAL MOTION

As an extraordinarily busy summer of live events, arena and stadium touring gets underway, the time-critical world of touring logistics has never been under more pressure, yet two decades on from its formation, Global Motion is celebrating a feat of independence, as TPi discovers.

Following his departure from another agent, Global Motion Director, Adam Hatton, started trading immediately thanks to great relationships and his expert, intricate knowledge of the global touring industry. Hatton’s background in freight came from outside of touring, having originally worked in the aircraft on ground (AOG) industry.

“Every minute an aircraft is on ground, it is essentially costing an airline money so, as you might imagine, it’s a pressured job. It’s an industry where you are always late in the client’s eyes, so the live and touring world is much more pleasant in comparison!”

Af ter 20 years, it’s impressive that Global Motion has remained entirely and proudly independently run, with Hatton firmly at the helm alongside a notable roster of clients including Coldplay, Ed Sheeran, Sam Smith, Chemical Brothers and Fontaines D.C.

According to Hatton, the reason for the company’s sustained success is keeping in mind that “this is a people-led industry.”

He elaborated: “There are a few companies that could do what we do but the PMs and TMs working for these bands have such specific needs, that they want to work with those who understand those requirements and speak the same language. Everyone who works with us knows we’ll give 100% to any job and do whatever we can to get it done.”

Part of this ethos means Hatton’s phone is never off. “Even on flights these days you can still keep in contact with clients,” he confirmed.

Of course, Global Motion is far from a one-man operation, with the company now employing a network of hard-working staff – including a senior team comprising John Corr, Grant Hollingsworth and Sara Gleadhall –alongside a network of trusted global partners.

Like many businesses, Global Motion had to utilise the UK government’s furlough scheme in 2020, but since the live entertainment industry’s healthy progression, the company has grown.

“We provide storage for some acts, which gave us some income during 2020 and 2021, but the nuts and bolts of the business dried up overnight,” said Hatton. “We knew we would be the last industry back, which was a depressing realisation, but we managed to survive and come out the other side, and there has been an exciting bounce back with several stadium shows happening simultaneously.”

The recovery has come with some significant challenges for those working in the freight forwarding world. “We give the worstcase scenario when we are budgeting a show now, as sea freight is still not operating under normal schedules and airfreight costs in some territories remain very high.”

Hatton went on to explain two recent challenges Global Motion has faced in the past year. During Coldplay’s South American tour, the shipping line twice re-routed vessels. Hatton recalled: “We were able to persuade the shipping line to reinstate the proposed missed ports of call. And due to an unreliable sea freight service without multiple changes between Freemantle and Houston, during Ed Sheeran’s tour, the decision was made to charter a vessel that ensured control over the arrival date and gave us an opportunity to consolidate additional shipments,” he said.

Despite some unavoidable negatives, Hatton remains positive that the market will settle down when it comes to such travel issues. “Our side of the industry has always had to keep an eye on geopolitical situations, from 9/11 to the war in Iraq, which had some knockon effects, but nothing compared to COVID-19. That said, I think that things will become more predictable in the near future.”

With the return of touring, the team at Global Motion have been keen to recruit more people. Global Motion’s Sara Gleadhall, shared her perspective: “When we are bringing new people into this side of the industry, there is a great deal of education that needs to be done. This job simply isn’t for everyone,” she commented.

“People must understand how critical the work of freight companies is for a tour to function. It’s a hidden side of the industry. We’ve been on a mission to find the right people for the job – some of whom might already be working in freight but are looking for career progression. When we bring on a young person, our main goal is to give them as many opportunities as possible.”

Bot h Gleadhall and Hatton explained how new recruits are given real world exposure to the tours the company works with. “The aim is to have a great depth of staff who can help provide a service around the world, with staff overlapping on each leg so we can rotate project managers and always have multiple people on the ground. Having more people on the project means we can work smarter, supporting various departments on the tour.”

Hatton gave an example from the latest Coldplay tour when he was overseeing a load in of multiple sea freight containers and had a junior project manager overseeing the drivers, keeping all lines of communication open.

There are already several younger members of the team learning the ropes who continue to hone their craft with the likes of Coldplay and Ed Sheeran’s sizeable tours, yet Global Motion also supports acts of all sizes and at various points in their careers.

Ou tside of music, the wider entertainment industry benefits from Global’s vast worldwide territory knowledge. “We continue our work with Riot Games,” closed Hatton, who cited the scale of logistics that go into the ever-growing world of E-sports as quite impressive. “The last show we worked on for them had 53 53ft trucks – a mind-bending amount of video!” he recalled.

Even after 20 years, there are still surprises when it comes to moving things from A to B. www.globalmotion.com