The Concert Tour Industry
mousie4
Journal Sentinel) ...No wonder tickets are so darned expensive.
Claudia
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Show and tell
It takes a village to stage a concert
By GEMMA TARLACH
Journal Sentinel pop music critic
For the touring industry, the summer 2004 season is already old news.
Artists, agents, promoters and marketers started planning, plotting,
wheeling and dealing even before they rang in the new year.
Creating a single concert tour can be an obstacle course. When dozens of
different players try to fit together an entire season of tours, working
with competitors while guarding their own interests, it's a logistical
nightmare.
"It's an ongoing chess game," said Bob Babisch, Summerfest's interim
executive director and entertainment director.
We asked touring insiders to break down how a tour happens, why a show may
skip Milwaukee and who decides how much cash will go from fans' wallets to .
. . to . . . well, we asked them just where all that money goes, too.
Second- or third-tier market
Once an act and its management decide to hit the road, the obvious questions
are when to go out and how many dates to play. Then there are size matters.
Crucial to a tour's success is deciding what size venues to play as well as
what size market.
"A lot of times the artist will play the bigger markets first and then, if
the tour is successful, they'll come back and play the second- and
third-tier markets, which is where Milwaukee fits," said Alyssa Rach,
director of marketing for Clear Channel Entertainment's Milwaukee office.
The hard reality is that an artist's primary reason for hitting the road is
not to play at a time and place that's convenient for you - it's to beef up
his or her bottom line, which is why some big tours pass us over.
"Rule No. 1 is the world doesn't revolve around Milwaukee," said Gary
Bongiovanni, editor in chief of concert industry bible Pollstar.
Some major artists, such as Madonna, who announced 13 dates in the U.S. and
Canada earlier this week, will stick only to big cities to draw from the
largest audience pools possible.
Doing the date shuffle
Such tactics may be used to increase the chances of a sellout, to give the
tour a cache of exclusivity or because the logistics of moving around their
stage production would make turning a profit with additional dates
impossible.
The routing of a tour - where it plays and when - is usually decided by the
artist's management, with input from local promoters or, in the case of
large promotion companies such as Clear Channel, field offices that have the
on-the-ground knowledge needed to maximize a tour's success.
Promoters bidding on a show often shuffle dates between venues and nearby
cities, making an educated guess about which arrangement will bring in the
most ticket-buyers.
"Our office has a lot of decision-making (power) between whether a show
plays Madison or Milwaukee . . . We look at the media - does the market have
a radio station to support that artist? It's really about feeling out the
market," said Clear Channel's Rach.
That give-and-take may include collaborating with other promoters.
It's all about relationships
National promoters such as Clear Channel and House of Blues frequently
purchase an entire tour, booking the dates in venues they own but often
"selling off" a date here or there to another promoter, sometimes one with
access to a venue better-suited to the act.
Working relationships between promoters are often more collaborative than
you may suspect.
For example, Clear Channel, which owns Alpine Valley, and Summerfest's
parent, Milwaukee World Festival Inc., has an agreement that allows Clear
Channel to book the Marcus Amphitheater outside Summerfest's annual 11-day
run, even though Alpine Valley is technically competition for the Marcus
Amphitheater.
The arrangement increases the chance that the right artist can be matched
with the right venue in our area.
"Linkin Park fits OK at Alpine Valley, but do you put the Sting show there?
His fans are older and will want to sit down and are coming from downtown
anyway," said Rach, comparing Linkin Park's Aug. 27 metal blowout at Alpine
with Sting and Annie Lennox's more sedate evening of adult contemporary
stylings at the Marcus Amphitheater July 17. Both are Clear Channel shows.
Acts avoid competition
Cities and venues are chosen - or passed over - for a number of other
reasons as well. Some artists may want to play only indoors, often because
elaborate props or lighting could malfunction with, say, a stiff breeze off
Lake Michigan.
Other acts, especially jam bands and country artists, will lean toward large
amphitheaters in pastoral settings with a better "vibe" than city-based
sheds surrounded by asphalt.
And all acts are mindful of their competition.
"If you're Fleetwood Mac, you don't want to go into a market where The
Eagles played last week - you're trying to stay out of the way of other
acts," said Pollstar's Bongiovanni.
An artist's management company may start talking informally with promoters
about a summer tour the preceding fall, but the aggressive deal-making,
including nailing down dates and dollars, usually starts in January.
Summerfest's Babisch began sending out bids for acts to play the Marcus
Amphitheater back in November.
With only an 11-day season to book the venue, Babisch tries to grab the best
acts he can early in the game. He often sees deals being made even earlier.
"The bigger tours with the higher ticket prices want to get out there and
get the tickets on sale. The smart ones go out early . . . there are only so
many dollars in a market," he said.
The deal
As soon as the routing begins to take form, promoters, and more specifically
their talent buyers, try to land a show by offering the artist's management
the sweetest deal.
While each deal, or bid, is unique, they usually offer artists a guaranteed
amount of money plus an additional percentage based on the number of tickets
sold.
Some promoters, usually when they own the venue they're booking, can add
incentives such as a cut of the "ancillaries" - parking fees, concessions
and merchandising, for example - though not all promoters are willing to
part with those lucrative revenue streams.
"It doesn't happen here at Summerfest. We keep ticket prices low and we pay
artists well, but Summerfest survives on sponsorships and ancillaries,"
Babisch said.
The deal - who gets what - is what determines ticket price. The promoter
factors expenses such as renting and staffing the venue, advertising the
show and hiring security, as well as the artist's fees, and then passes that
cost to the consumer.
Paying the price
Particularly hot tours may have several promoters bidding on them, upping
the ante - and raising the ticket price.
It's up to the promoter's talent buyer to know when to walk away from a show
if terms can't be met.
"If the artist is demanding a certain amount of money, promoters do the
math, figure out what you'll have to charge for tickets and decide if it's
suicidal to, say, charge $150 a ticket for Styx," Bongiovanni explained.
While we're talking price, one of the biggest consumer complaints is the
hefty fees tacked on by Ticketmaster and other ticket purchasing services.
David Goldberg, senior vice president for business development and strategy
at Ticketmaster, defended his firm's public image of inflating the cost of a
ticket to the consumer through add-ons.
Goldberg declined to provide any specific examples, but he cited a number of
costs Ticketmaster incurs in providing its service to concert-goers, such as
staffing phone rooms and box offices, installing and maintaining software
and paying fees to credit card companies on each purchase made.
The only way of recouping those costs, said Goldberg, is to pass them on to
ticket-buyers.
"Our phone rooms for example receive 40 million calls a year, and less than
20 percent of those calls result in sales," said Goldberg.
"The rest are people calling to find out what time the show is, or to get
directions to the venue. We derive no revenue from those calls," he added.
Elements of selling
Once the artist and promoter have settled on a deal, it's the promoter's
turn, using its marketing arm, to get the show on sale to the public as
quickly as possible.
As ticket prices rise, the push to get your show "up," in the industry
parlance, comes earlier each year.
"My busy season is putting shows up on sale. Last year it started in March.
This year it started in February. People want to be the first ones up - the
early bird gets the worm," said Rach.
The artist's management tells promoters when it wants tickets to go on
sale - factors involved in that decision include whether they need to allow
time for the increasingly popular fan club-only presales, and whether
management wants to put all dates "up" at once or have a rolling on-sale.
Once they're given an on-sale date and time by management, it's up to
promoters to confirm availability with the ticket-selling agent they're
using, such as Ticketmaster - and to negotiate with other area promoters if
there's a conflict.
In addition to making sure their show is the only one in the Milwaukee
market going up at, say, 10 a.m. Saturday, promoters also try to make sure
that other shows going on sale around the same time won't overlap audiences.
If you're promoting the area stop for Ozzfest, for example, you don't want
to go on sale two hours after Metallica's gig at the Bradley Center does and
risk that show stealing your heavy metal thunder.
Right brand of water
Marketing directors also must buy radio time and space in print media for
ads, get the ads created and OK'd by the artist's management and line up
promotional deals such as free ticket giveaways - all within days of a show
getting confirmed.
"I basically have a week and a half - if it goes on sale on a Saturday, then
I have from the Wednesday the week before," said Clear Channel's Rach.
Once the show is on sale, promoters watch anxiously to see how it sells and
determine whether they need to do more advertising or, in a worst case
scenario, if they need to offer some kind of discount, such as
buy-one-get-two for a show that's a particularly slow seller.
The immediate run-up to the show brings its own set of headaches, which can
include anything from making sure the stage fits the venue to finding the
specific brand of bottled water that a fussy artist may demand.
By the time the house lights go down and the artist starts to work the
crowd, touring industry insiders have been working on the show for months.
Said Rach: "People think it's all fun and games. They see us at the shows
walking around with the passes, all access, and don't realize how much work
goes into it."
Linda
should have a lot of the basic structure in place, and it's just a matter of
organizational skills in changing to accommodate individual acts. They
don't have to start each show from scratch. They should be set up for staff,
advertising, etc.
These promoters are after the big dollar acts. They could sell out shows
anywhere, but they go to where they can make the most the fastest. Not
surprising to hear the Clear Channel rep tying in the concert bookings to
radio play.
I was hoping to get more of a real accounting of where the actual ticket
dollars go. But I'm not surprised that it didn't happen.
I just don't go to these kind of shows. They want $50 minimum for each
ticket, another $10 for tickemaster, $20 for parking, $5 for a coke, and
they'll sell you a tour T-shirt for $40. I know they all go into different
pockets, but I think it's a case of the fat cats getting fatter, and I think
those inflated prices are greedy in many cases. But...I guess if people are
dumb enough to pay those prices the practice will continue. Some of these
shows sell out in minutes and then you find people scalping or the brokers
jacking the prices up. I love a good concert, but I don't know how people
can pay that much. But to be honest the best shows I've seen have not been
high ticket ones. In fact many free shows are the best.
I couldn't pay $100 for a ticket. It would be bad for my health. Mongo
would kill me.
Linda
mousie4
> Not surprising to hear the Clear Channel rep tying in the concert bookings
to
> radio play.
I'm convinced that Clear Channel will soon own the world and everything in
it if something isn't done about this monopoly.
> I couldn't pay $100 for a ticket. It would be bad for my health. Mongo
> would kill me.
I think the last time we paid anywhere near that was for U2... It was
totally worth it...(and a large portion of the ticket price went to a good
cause). I agree though, the free concerts are often the best.
Claudia