Live Nation hails global acts amid ‘historic year’

Ticket sales for non English-speaking artists have nearly tripled pre-pandemic levels as the global artist pipeline continues to grow, Live Nation has revealed in its Q1 2025 earnings report.

Non-English speaking artists now account for twice as many of the top 50 tours, relative to 2019, according to the company. LN says the stadium pipeline is up 60% overall this year, with 95 million tickets sold for its concerts, and stadium ticket sales rocketing by more than 80%.

The promoter also reports “high demand” for major global festivals including EDC Vegas, Lollapalooza Chicago, Lowlands, Electric Picnic and Isle of Wight.

“2025 is shaping up to be a historic year for live music, with a strong start having us on track to deliver double-digit growth in operating income and AOI this year,” says Live Nation president and CEO Michael Rapino. “As more artists tour the world, fan demand is reaching new heights across ticket sales, show attendance, and on-site spending. Ticket sales are pacing well ahead of last year, with deferred revenue for both concerts and ticketing at record levels.

“To support even more fans seeing their favourite artists, we’re continuing to expand our global venue network, adding 20 major venues through 2026. As the global experience economy grows, the live music industry is leading the way, and we’re positioned to compound growth by double-digits over many years.”

“Next year there’ll be the World Cup that throws a lot of venue of avails off in stadiums, so you might have more arena dates”

Speaking to investors on the firm’s earnings call, Rapino said he was “thrilled” by the enhanced level of demand for stadium shows.

“People for years used to say, ‘Who’s going to be the next Rolling Stones?’ And as you can see by the lineup this year, these are young artists, new artists and established artists that are able to now sell stadiums around the world, so I think it’s just a testament to the demand and the consumer demand out there,” he said. We just sold out a bunch of Coldplay dates in markets like India and so we think globally, stadium demand is growing and will continue to grow.”

However, Rapino suggested the 2026 FIFA World Cup, which will be held across the US, Canada and Mexico next June and July, was likely to lead to more indoor activity next summer.

“Next year there’ll be the World Cup that throws a lot of venue of avails off in stadiums, so you might have more arena dates than stadiums,” he said. “The Olympics last year in Europe threw off stadiums in Europe.

“Our biggest challenge right now is finding avails in stadiums for next year and the year after on good Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights. That sometimes drives you into arenas if you can’t get your avails.”

“The real number we look at is what have we done from 1 April to 21 April. We put a lot of shows on sale in the month of April”

Live Nation’s first quarter revenue of US$3.4 billion dipped 11% on the record Q1 of 2024, although LN president/CFO Berchtold pointed out the figures were skewed by non-concert segments.

“Other categories: sports, arts, family were down 9%,” he said. “When we were doing our planning and talking a few months back on expectations for the quarter, at that point, we didn’t have any reason to anticipate this lower level of activity in the other parts of the business.

“Everything that we’ve seen points to… no demand issues, it’s just less supply year-on-year.”

AOI of $341.1 million for the quarter was down 6% year-on-year, while concert revenue dipped 14% to $2.48bn. Ticketing was down 4% to $694.7m, but sponsorship revenue increased 2% to $216.1m. Q1 deferred revenue was at record levels for both concerts and Ticketmaster.

Concert-related deferred revenue of $5.4bn was up 24% compared to last year and Ticketmaster deferred revenue of $270m represented an increase of 13% on Q1 2024.

Berchtold said the company expected two-thirds of its concert fan growth to come in the second half of this year.

“The real number we look at is what have we done from 1 April to 21 April, the most relevant on sale period,” added Rapino. “We put a lot of shows on sale in the month of April: Chris Brown sold a million tickets [that] month; Mumford & Sons, Suicide Blonde, Lady Gaga sold out, up 18% year-over-year… We haven’t seen consumer pullback in any genre, club, theatre, stadium, amphitheatre.”

“We continue to have an early March 2026 date for the timing of the court case”

The US Department of Justice’s (DOJ) antitrust lawsuit against Live Nation-Ticketmaster was briefly addressed, with Berchtold saying the matter was “still mid-process” on the regulatory front.

“We continue to have an early March 2026 date for the timing of the court case,” he continued. “This is a period where you’re spending these months’ discovery depositions, working through. I don’t think we have anything material, no surprises, nothing unusual that we just kind of continue along and it’s part of the process at the moment and we’re still hoping that when the timing is right we’ll have an opportunity to get into some real discussions with them, but that hasn’t happened yet.”

Meanwhile, Rapino described Live Nation’s recent acquisition of one of Japan’s leading promoters, Hayashi International Promotions (HIP) as a “huge strategic deal”.

“It’s been a target for a long time,” he said. “It’s an incredibly important market – one of the largest music markets in the world. It also happens to be one of the toughest markets to operate from the outside. You’ve got to find local established partners to really scale your business.

“It’s a huge strategic deal for us to have one of the founding Japanese promoters as our partner now, and it’ll be continued building upon that in terms of our venue, our festival and bringing more shows there. So it’s an important step and it’ll be another large AOI contributor to our overall business over time.”

“Our fundamental first goal is not to maximise gross and increase ticket prices, it’s to sell out every seat”

Rapino also elaborated on the evolution of the company’s pricing blueprint, describing it as “a little bit of a Robin Hood strategy” in terms of charging more for tickets for the front of the house.

“We’re still in early innings of being really smart at pricing,” he said. “How do you price a show on a Tuesday versus a Friday in LA versus Milan? What’s the middle seat worth versus the back row? How do I maximise and sell it out? A perfect show sells out as the doors close – for the first show you want to have that idea that you priced it right and maximise the market.

“It’s somewhere between a science and an art right now, and we provide a lot of data for our artist team to think through what is the best model for them. But there is still lots of opportunity for the industry to continue to price it better to sell-through as well as maximise some of the high scarce commodity tickets. Our fundamental first goal is… not to maximise gross and increase ticket prices, it’s to sell out every seat. The more people in that building, parking and having a beer is better for us.”

He added: “As an industry, when we say 98% of our shows don’t sellout, the tickets that don’t sell are always the back to middle, never the front. So our job isn’t to figure out how to sell the front better – that’s already been done. Our real job is to figure out how do we sell the rest of the house.”

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