Leaps & Bownes: Emma Bownes’ 25 years in the biz

As programmer for The O2 – the world’s busiest arena for more than a decade – Emma Bownes is arguably the most popular arena booker internationally, thanks to her enthusiasm, hard graft, and an ability to solve multiple problems all while flashing that infectious smile. Now, as she celebrates 25 years in the business, IQ quizzes Emma on her path to the top, as well as the philosophies that have shaped her success.

Born in Peterborough, England, Emma was raised on the outskirts of the city, as her parents moved around with their jobs. “Mum was originally an accident and emergency nurse, before opening a retirement home,” she says. “Dad worked in change management for Thomas Cook, meaning that he was in New York from time to time.” But her parents’ occasional absence for work reasons introduced her to the wonders of live entertainment.

While younger brother Tom has since followed her into live music (as a promoter at Live Nation), there was no family history in the business. However, Emma knew from an early age exactly what she wanted to do. “When you ask people what they want to do for a living, they say, ‘I want to be a footballer,’ or ‘I want to be a ballet dancer.’ Nobody ever says, ‘I want to be a band programmer.’ But my parents’ families were both from Sheffield, and I’d be taken by my grandparents to working men’s clubs when I was a kid.

“There were a few working men’s clubs we used to go but the format was always similar: there’d be bingo, there’d be a turn, and there’d sometimes also be a fish man,” she laughs. “But the turn was what caught my imagination. I remember an act called Betty Bonk, who sang about stabbing her husband and being in prison. My sister looked at my nan and told her she wanted to be a singer. And I looked at granddad and asked who decided who played on stage. He told me it was the committee, so I said to him, ‘I want to be on the committee.’ I was only eight years old, but ever since then, it’s all I’ve ever wanted to do.”

Having identified her dream job, ten years later Emma enrolled at the University of Hull and instantly ingratiated herself with the campus entertainment committee. “Shortly after I arrived in Hull and became part of the entertainment committee, the entertainment manager left, so I applied and got the job.”

Indeed, Emma’s activities also saw her booking events off-campus. “I co-promoted a drum & bass night called Future Methods. We had everybody – Hype, Grooverider, Goldie, Ed Rush & Optical – it was brilliant: it taught me how to do on-the-ground promoting.”

“I did the maths at the end of the gig, I realised I’d lost money. But it was amazing because who gets to have a bit of a go until they get it right?”

As she embarked on a career that’s been punctuated by moments where she simply presented herself to new employers and won them over, her time in Hull is among those she looks back upon most fondly.

“I don’t even know if those kinds of jobs exist anymore, but I just loved it,” she says. “When you’re the ents manager, you just do it all. You sit there with a calendar when you start in June, you book all the freshers’ gigs and all the club nights and all the things that freshers might go out and get drunk to, like a Halloween party or Jason Donovan or Chesney Hawkes.”

It also provided a steep learning curve. “I remember promoting this gig with a band called Rialto, and I paid them about £800. It went on sale to the students on a Monday, for the show on the Friday, and tickets were literally £2 or £3. It sold out, but when I did the maths at the end of the gig, I realised I’d lost money. But it was amazing because who gets to have a bit of a go until they get it right? And that went for everything I did – booking the band, designing the posters, sticking the posters up, sitting in the box office and selling the tickets. I’d be there for the load-in, I’d be there at load-out, and I’d pay the band. It was just the best fun.”

A New Mission

Emma fell in love with the city of Hull and extended her time there as much as she could. “I was there for eight years in total,” she recalls. “But I realised that if I didn’t move away, I’d wake up one day aged 40 without having done anything different.”

Together with her then flatmate, who had reached a similar conclusion, they moved to London to pursue loftier ambitions. “Luckily, I was on this ents managers’ email chat group where we’d swap information: ‘I booked Atomic Kitten, and it did this many tickets’ – that kind of thing. Someone posted that there was a vacancy at Mission Control, so I applied and got the job.”

“What I discovered was if you call someone and sound cheerful, rather than stressed, it’s a lot easier to have a conversation”

Placed in charge of the agency’s university bookings, it was an ideal stepping stone and also introduced her to the likes of Gary Howard, whose clients these days account for a healthy chunk of bookings at The O2.

“Mission Control had a roster of mostly garage, which I really liked – Artful Dodger, Solid Crew, DJ Luck & MC Neat – and they also did a lot of pop acts like Jason Donovan and Atomic Kitten. So I basically booked their roster for universities.”

Despite landing on her feet in London, Emma admits to finding it tough. “It was a culture shock,” she states. “I didn’t find it easy to start with, but there were some nice people at Mission Control who just tried to show me how it all worked. They taught me how to find acts, how to sign acts, and how to book gigs.”

Nevertheless, after a year, working for the agency was losing its appeal.

“I just wanted to go back to working in a venue,” explains Emma. “I didn’t mind the selling aspect. In fact, randomly, one of my student summer jobs was selling windows – cold-calling people. Because I’m a naturally cheerful person, what I discovered was if you call someone and sound cheerful, rather than stressed, it’s a lot easier to have a conversation… that job taught me things that I’ve used ever since.”

Pacific Career Path

Having made up her mind that venues were her happy place, Emma found herself at Ocean in Hackney. “It opened in June 2001, I started in June 2002, and it shut on 4 December 2004. The only reason I know that is because I, like many people who worked there, absolutely loved the place.

“Being on the board of the Music Venue Trust, I meet people all the time who are in love with their small venues. At Ocean, we all put absolutely everything we could into it: we were there every hour, for the most random of shows.”

“I think they forgot they’d hired me because when I turned up, the theatre dog literally had a bigger desk than me”

Leaning on her experience, Emma concentrated on booking garage and reggae acts, “like Heartless Crew and Sean Paul.” She adds, “We had lots of shows that were promoted by first-time promoters who needed a lot of hand holding because a lot of things could, and invariably would, go wrong.

“Ocean was such a lovely venue, but the problem was people thought that it was hard to get to. That sounds ridiculous now, but promoters used to tell us, ‘No, we want to play in central London.’ If Ocean had opened a few years later, it would probably still be going strong because Hackney’s obviously gentrified and cool now.”

Ever the pragmatist, when Ocean’s shutters came down permanently, Emma wrote to the neighbouring Hackney Empire theatre. “It was run by a guy called Roland Muldoon, and in my letter, I asked if he could please consider me for anything that came up.”

It worked, “But I think they forgot they’d hired me because when I turned up, the theatre dog literally had a bigger desk than me, and after a while, I could see that they didn’t need me, so I started looking for something else.”

Next port of call was the Mean Fiddler Group where she worked as a promoter for the Jazz Café, The Garage, and Borderline. “I did that for a while, and then became the in-house booker at the Kentish Town Forum,” she tells IQ.

Hello, Wembley

In 2007, Mean Fiddler was acquired by MAMA Group, and Emma’s contacts alerted her to unsettling news. “The guy I was going to report to offered my job to two other people before he even met me. Those people both phoned me to ask if I was leaving.”

“I thought I’d blown it because I’d mainly been used to booking small venues, and I wasn’t confident I’d be any good at arena level”

Once again, her proactive writing skills came to the fore. “I sent [Live Nation UK President] Paul Latham an email to point out what I’d achieved at the Forum – it had lost money every year until I’d taken over booking. I made my case and asked if there was anything at Live Nation I could help with. Within a couple of days, Paul called and said, ‘I need you to go to speak to Wembley Arena.’ It turned out their booking manager, Katie Musham, had just moved to The O2.”

Her Wembley interview did not go as smoothly as she hoped, though.

“I was promoting a gig at the Borderline the night before with a band called the 1990s, and it was sold out, so I wanted to be there,” says Emma. “As usual, I sort of ended up doing everything, including running the door, where I had a hand stamp for everyone who came in.

“Anyway, the interview was at 10am with [GM] Peter Tudor, but for some reason I turned up an hour early – they must’ve thought I was really keen – and I thought I’d blown it because I’d mainly been used to booking small venues, and I wasn’t confident I’d be any good at arena level.

“By the end of the meeting, I really wanted the job, even though I felt I’d messed up because I hadn’t prepared enough for the interview. And then, as I was leaving, I saw these hand stamps all down my arm. They must have thought I was batshit crazy.”

Nonetheless, the job was Emma’s, and when Tudor left for pastures new a few months later, new general manager John Drury, whose background was in venue booking, took the reins.

“I’ve been at The O2 14 years now – my longest job by a long shot – and the team has grown quite a lot since I arrived here”

“John was great – he really helped me develop as a programmer,” reveals Emma. “He’d copy me in on emails with promoters he had a relationship with, and then he’d hand on that relationship to me; he’d do the deal in the first year, but then I’d take over to allow him to do all his GM duties.

“That really stuck with me, and it’s something I’ve also tried to do in my time at AEG – I’ll introduce people in the programming team to promoters before handing them over. It can be quite tough because there are people you’ve dealt with for 20 years who you really like and don’t necessarily want to stop speaking to. But ultimately, it benefits everyone, and I learned that from John Drury.

“The other thing about John is his passion and enthusiasm for the job. I was at Wembley when The O2 opened, and clients like Disney and WWE and loads of touring acts were leaving us for The O2, so we had a difficult time. But in 2009, we started to focus on acts that were maybe playing a couple of Brixtons, and we could offer them that next step to a 10,000-ticket gig. We had some great shows – Kasabian, Arctic Monkeys, Green Day, Fleetwood Mac. It was a fight to get them, but whenever something confirmed I’d stick my head around John’s office door, and he was always just so pleased. He was brilliant to work with.”

Greenwich Mean Time

In 2010, Emma brought her Wembley days to a temporary end when she accepted a new role as programming manager at The O2. However, three years later, she was promoted to arena programming director, placing both The O2 and Wembley Arena under her remit.

“I’ve been at The O2 14 years now – my longest job by a long shot – and the team has grown quite a lot since I arrived here,” she observes.

Indeed, for the past five years, Emma has been AEG’s vice president venue booking for The O2 and Europe, adding oversight for the likes of Hamburg’s Barclays Arena, the Uber Arena in Berlin, and the neighbouring Uber Eats Music Hall.

“The venues in Germany have their own bookers, so I don’t get involved in the detail that I do at The O2, where I’m involved a lot more on the diary,” she explains. “Where I can help is when we’re asked for avails at The O2, I can push tours to consider adding Hamburg or Berlin to the routing.”

“I’m not sure how we got through Covid… We’d be rescheduling the same shows three, four, five times”

Highlighting the complexity of the programming process, Emma reveals that in a year when The O2 hosted 180 events, someone tracked 4,000 ‘pencilled’ dates during the process of producing a final diary for that year.

And, of course, those figures multiplied during the Covid years. Looking back on those troubled times, Emma says, “I left the venue like most people, thinking we were going to be closed for six weeks – and even that was tough to contemplate, as I had to home school two kids as well.

“There were essentially five bookers working on the diary at that time: me, Christian [D’Acuña], Marc [Saunders], Anna [Parry], and also Jo [Peplow Revell] who oversaw the corporate and special events. The fact we were no longer in the same room massively complicated things. In normal times, our jobs are a continual information swap in the office [with all of us] on the phone with promoters fighting over the same dates.

“I’m not sure how we got through Covid. Obviously, we had that initial wave where we needed to reschedule everything in the first three months, so we’d all be on the phone with each other to sort that out. But then it just kept going and going, and we’d be rescheduling the same shows three, four, five times.”

With The O2 operating as a makeshift Covid training centre, the venue remained a hub for Londoners, albeit for all the wrong reasons, while the programming team battled to find suitable new dates for hundreds of postponed shows.

“In the midst of the pandemic, we realised there would inevitably be a period of time when the venue would reopen, and we’d face a potential big gap in the diary,” says Emma. “So we came up with the idea of creating a series of events so that when the doors were allowed to reopen, we’d have something ready to go.”

“The best show I’ve ever booked is Monty Python. It was the most exciting show reveal I’ve ever worked on”

As a result, Emma and her team programmed a series of “Welcome Back Shows”, including three nights with Wizkid, Burna Boy, Mo Gilligan’s Black British Takeover and an NHS fundraiser with Gorillaz, to kick-start London’s live music scene when the UK’s first lockdown ended in August 2021.

As emotional as those first shows back at the venue were, it’s actually some of the non-music shows that she cites as career highlights.

Four Yorkshiremen

“The best show I’ve ever booked is Monty Python,” she states. “It was the most exciting show reveal I’ve ever worked on, because when I first went to see [producer] Phil McIntyre, he wouldn’t tell me what the event was. He started asking me loads of ticketing questions while telling me that lots of different promoters were bidding on the show, and he was worried details would leak, so it was better if he didn’t tell me who the act was.

“Because I couldn’t help with his ticketing questions, I went back the next day with Paul Newman from AXS, who was able to answer everything. But Phil still wouldn’t tell us details. There was a photo of John Cleese over his shoulder, so I suggested we hold the dates under a fake name – John Cleese. And he told us under no account should we use that name.

“So, Paul and I were convinced it was Monty Python, but we swore each other to secrecy and ended up holding the dates under the fake name ‘Russell Brand and Friends.’”

Roll forward to the Monty Python launch at a London theatre. “It was one of the most exciting days of my career, because I watched all of the Monty Python guys come on stage, and everyone in the place was going nuts. And then they announced their reunion and said they were going to pull the name of the venue out of a bag – I felt physically sick, but it was just so exciting. And then the shows themselves were incredible.

“The venues in Germany are actually having their busiest year ever. Between the two Berlin venues, they’ll do well over 300 shows

More Laughs

Comedy was central to another achievement for Emma and her team when, in March 2023, they brought the Just For Laughs festival to The O2.

“A friend of mine who I used to work with at Mean Fiddler, Nick Adair, who sadly passed away, was a massive comedy guy, and he used to talk about organising a comedy festival,” says Emma. “Then one year at ILMC, Steve Homer introduced me to Scott Mantell who represents a lot of comedy acts. It was one of those conversations at the bar, where everybody’s really enthusiastic. But during Covid, Scott introduced me to Just For Laughs in Canada. I pitched the idea to them, and then Steve Homer became involved, and it ended up being a three-way co-pro between us, Just For Laughs, and AEG Presents.”

Emma’s blueprint was to take the already successful Country to Country (C2C) concept and adapt something similar for comedy. “I wanted it to have a sort of Edinburgh Festival vibe where fans could walk from one venue to another in 30 seconds. What worked really well was having a load of programming in the Spiegel tent outside the venue that sold out. And we also had 11 sold-out shows in Indigo over the weekend.”

Hopeful that The O2 can host a comedy festival again, Emma notes that the concept is one that could also be replicated in the likes of Hamburg or Berlin – again emulating the success of C2C, which this year visited Berlin, Rotterdam, London, Glasgow, and Belfast.

Not that feeding AEG’s European venues is a necessity. “The venues in Germany are actually having their busiest year ever,” she reports. “Between the two Berlin venues, they’ll do well over 300 shows. We’re lucky to have a group of people who are sharing information that benefits other venues in the group. For example, Christian [D’Acuña], whose focus is on The O2 and the AEG Presents venues, recently persuaded an agent to book a date in Hamburg.”

Indeed, she lauds senior programming director D’Acuña as the most influential colleague she’s ever had. “I don’t really have a mentor, but the most important working relationship I’ve had has been with Christian. I’ve worked with him since May 2012, and I just can’t speak highly enough of him. When he started, he was programming admin assistant and, coming from Apple, he’d never done it before. But by October 2012, I was off on maternity leave, the venue was really busy, and at one point Christian was left on his own and just had to get on with it. Ever since then, any time I have a decision to make, I always check in with him as he’s like the other half of the brain.”

“We’re in this incredible position where we get to come and work in a music venue every day and see all these incredible acts”

With dates at The O2 held as far out as 2031, Emma and her London-based team are as busy as ever, but she still finds time to be on the board of Music Venue Trust, which fits in with her general ethos about venues being more than just places that host shows.

“We’re in this incredible position where we get to come and work in a music venue every day and see all these incredible acts. But venues can be so much more than that,” she says.

“Two years ago, we began to fund schools to help them participate in Young Voices, which has now played The O2 80 times.

“But the sad truth is that not all schools can afford it, so a couple of years ago we sponsored a local school. Then last year, we sponsored two schools. And this year, it’s going to be eight schools. And now other venues have started doing it and so have companies like PRG.

“It’s a really big deal for me: you can’t just be a music venue – there’s so much more you can do, and knowing we’re making a difference to so many children and their families is just great

Balancing Act

With quarter of a century under her belt and now leading the programming team at the world’s busiest arena, as well as its sister European buildings, Emma Bownes is at the top of the game. But she believes there’s still room for improvement.

“I don’t know about personal ambitions, but I’d like to be better at just trying to balance it all,” she concludes. “It probably also sounds cheesy but trying to balance being a good parent and doing this as well as I can is tricky. You always feel like you’re in the wrong place.

“But I do feel lucky, because this company that I work for, AEG, are totally fine with me being at my children’s sports day on Wednesday afternoon, in the knowledge that I’ll be at Olivia Rodrigo on Thursday night. And the night after that. It’s the best job in the world, and I wouldn’t swap it for anything.”

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