While parts of the festival business took a hammering, and touring mid-tier and club-level shows proved tricky, contributors to IQ‘s end-of-year issue have cited numerous highlights from the past 12 months.

Detailing the evolution at DEAG, CEO Detlef Kornett points to different areas of expansion. “We’ve seen significant development in spoken word – in particular, literary and personality events,” he says. “Spoken word and literary events got ‘entertainment-ified’; they became a production with lights, sounds, and video, and they have become very attractive for consumers. We ran more than 300 events in Germany, more than 500 events in the UK, we doubled our business in Australia, and we even did our first tours in the US. So, for us, that has become a major development that I was hoping for but did not foresee – it was a bet that we took.”

At Live Nation, John Reid says, “2024 was a landmark year for live music across EMEA. [For instance], Tons of Rock in Oslo had a great year and also became Norway’s largest festival, which was a real highlight for the team. And of course, Adele’s Munich residency was a standout moment for us, breaking records across ten nights with 730,000 tickets sold, the world’s largest temporary stadium and LED wall, and an innovative 75,000-square-metre Adele World that drew over 500,000 visitors.”

That Munich residency won admirers everywhere.

“I was fascinated with what Adele’s team and Marek Lieberberg and his team pulled off,” admits Move Concerts founder Phil Rodriguez. “The whole concept of a temporary venue and residency was ambitious, but the execution was flawless. I have no doubt this will be a model that may be duplicated in different ways and/or scale in the future.”

From a ticketing perspective, Ticketmaster UK’s Andrew Parsons notes, “Residencies are reaching new heights and proving their staying power. From Adele’s groundbreaking run in Munich, the Eagles’ standout week at Co-op Live, Bruno Mars’ residency in Brazil, and Coldplay set for ten nights at Wembley Stadium next year, this trend opens doors for acts to stay on the road longer.”

“I thought we would be in trouble. But whoever said entertainment booms in leaner times was right”

Highlighting “two successful shows with Andrea Bocelli at Pula’s Roman Arena” that Charmenko’s head of promoting, Sara Gigante, organised, company founder Nick Hobbs reveals that the indie is also getting in on the stadia action. “Next year, we’re part of, most likely, four stadium-level shows, which I can’t reveal as they’re still TBC,” he says. “Generally, we seem to have plenty of work and are already deep into ’26. To what degree the work will be profitable remains to be seen; our margins were squeezed severely this year, and I’m trying to figure out what we can do about it.”

In the UK, industry veteran John Giddings, promoter of the Isle of Wight Festival, admits to being pleasantly surprised by the demand for tickets. “When I was reading about the cost-of-living crisis last year, I thought we would be in trouble. But whoever said entertainment booms in leaner times was right. After Covid (and Brexit), people are living for today.”

Reviewing 2024, Age Versluis at Dutch promoter Friendly Fire comments, “We’ve seen some artists that have been growing organically to hit their biggest shows ever here. Personally, I always look forward most to seeing what new things rise. If I see the lineups for the showcase festivals for next year taking shape, it’s going to be a year with some beautiful new music and live shows.”

Over in Miami, Move Concerts’ 2024 included tours with Paul McCartney, Eric Clapton, Keane, and Karol G.

“But the biggest thrill was to see the sales we had with Iron Maiden,” says Rodriguez. “We had stadium dates selling out in 30 minutes – they are bigger than ever! We’ve worked together for decades, and they are huge in our markets, but the speed and volume of sales for this tour were totally unexpected.”

That experience is being mirrored in Germany, where DEAG’s Kornett reveals, “Next year, in the UK, we’ve got the Stereophonics in Cardiff for two sell-out stadium shows. And in Germany, we have a fantastic Iron Maiden stadium tour. I haven’t seen Iron Maiden sales at this level in the last ten years.”

Catch up on part one and part two of IQ‘s 2024 Wrapped! feature.

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“A bit random, but still fabulous,” was how Adele previewed her month-long, ten-date Munich residency when announcing the August shows on Instagram at the beginning of the year.

‘Fabulous’ was right on the nail, as 730,000 fans will tell you. The star’s first shows in Europe since 2016 – and her last for “an incredibly long time,” if her final-night announcement holds true – were a thing to behold: a remarkably high-end production in a matt black amphitheatre, every last detail carefully geared to reflect Adele’s personal brand, her tastes, her particular connection with her fans.

As for ‘random,’ that’s certainly there, too – a one-off European concert series by a London-born superstar in the capital of Bavaria; a pop-up stadium on a patch of ground typically reserved for massive exhibitions; and, for pre-event and after-hours fun, Adele World: an area the size of a small festival, with a recreation of lost Kilburn (London) venue The Good Ship, a fairground, and live performances including a Spice Girls tribute group.

But from a plan only green-lit in January came a universally praised, record-toppling, one-of-a-kind summer stadium residency. Having concluded on 31 August, the shows can lay claim to the highest attendance of any concert residency outside Las Vegas, as well as the world’s biggest temporary arena and the largest continuous LED wall, at 220m long and 4,159.7m2 in area.

Water under the bridge
Adele’s agent, WME’s Lucy Dickins, speaking as the run approached its close, is keen to give credit to the production team that realised the vision, with around a month on-site to build it all, amid European weather that drowned out rehearsals. “Adele’s team are A-class,” says Dickins, with emphasis. “They are so unbelievable. I’ve never seen one person flapping. We’ve gone through storms. We’ve had lightning. Adele had half a rehearsal before this show. That’s all she had: half a rehearsal. She went from playing to 4,500 people in Vegas to a stage like that and went boom. Just took it on. And not once have I seen Paul, Matt, none of them, ever losing their cool.”

Paul is production manager Paul English, and Matt is Matt Askem, Adele’s creative director since 2016 – both veterans of her Weekends With Adele Las Vegas show, which has run at the Colosseum at Caesars Palace since November 2022 and will conclude in a couple of months’ time.

“It’s not rocket science, and it’s not military, but jeez, we are pretty close”

“It’s been a journey, and it’s been a challenge”
“The blood, sweat, and tears that have gone into this, I can’t tell you,” says English, likewise speaking as the Munich shows approached their final weekend. “It’s been a journey, and it’s been a challenge. But it’s been fantastic to put together the team that I have here. They are an amazing team, and they have pulled off an amazing feat.”

The German residency reunited the core team behind the Vegas one: English, Askem, show director Kim Gavin, technical designer Malcolm Birkett, sound engineer Dave Bracey, lighting designer Cory FitzGerald of Silent House, Ric Lipson and Ray Winkler of stage architects Stufish – as well as video suppliers Solotech, Clair Global for audio, lighting and rigging providers Neg Earth, and others.

“I remember Paul saying, ‘Let’s put the team back together,’” says Gavin. “We really work together very well, and that is what has made this what it is.”

As English reels off the suppliers and collaborators who made the Munich shows happen, he throws out dizzying figures: 3km of trussing, 1.3km of LED stage lighting, 60 trucks of black steel for the staging, 350 crew for the load-in, 200 on show days.

“It’s not rocket science, and it’s not military, but jeez, we are pretty close,” says English. “The logistics of putting this together are really something.”

“It’s been very intense because something like this has never been done before,” adds Marek Lieberberg, CEO of Live Nation GSA and the promoter of the shows. “There is no precedent. We could not simply use a blueprint of another project – we had to start from scratch.”

Built on the exhibition ground at Munich Messe, the arena alone is a remarkable thing. You’ll surely have seen it by now – a stadium’s worth of seated grandstands and standing areas in the shape of half an octagon, all facing that vast, flowing screen.

“The fact that we were not touring the show meant that the scale of the staging could be much bigger than you would normally have”

Hello from the other side
“We knew it was going to be enormous because 80,000 people is approximately Wembley Stadium, but we basically flipped the two huge audience bleachers in a stadium onto one side,” says production designer Florian Wieder. “It was an ideal scenario, not only for her but also for the viewers and the visitors. And that scenario seems to have helped get the whole concept over the line.”

The venue was dismantled soon after the concluding show, but for a month, it offered a picture of a stadium show freed from its normal limitations. The screen’s 220m width dramatically broadened the vista presented to the audience, while the B-stage, through which Adele rose at the start of the concert, jutted much further out into the middle of the crowd than a standard stadium show would allow.

“The fact that we were not touring the show meant that the scale of the staging could be much bigger than you would normally have,” says Malcolm Birkett. “60m wide is a big stadium set, and we are 220m wide. Thrusts are normally 30m or 40m long; we had an 80m-long thrust and then a 200m passerelle.”

Gavin sums up the show’s aesthetic as “beautiful, well-staged, classic, stylish. Whoever looks at it, the first thing that strikes them is the scale of it, but the scale is also very appealing, which is something you don’t always get,” he says.

Those terms, of course, also describe Adele’s Las Vegas concerts, but it’s still a big step from a 4,500-capacity residency to an outdoor one of 73,000 a night.

“You could actually fit Caesars Palace in the standing area here, which is inside the passerelle,” says Ian Woodall at Solotech, which supplied the famous screen. “It’s pretty amazing really.”

“She’ll say, ‘Let’s do it, let’s really raise the roof'”

Clearly, the screen – and the Munich residency as a whole – gave Adele the one thing she doesn’t have in Las Vegas: a vast canvas built for big feelings and big audiences.

“One thing that Adele loves is scale,” says Gavin. “She is really gung-ho. She’ll say, ‘Let’s do it, let’s really raise the roof.’ You show her a lot of pyro or flames or whatever, and she goes, ‘Is that it?’ If she does one thing in a show, she needs to do it really, really well.”

But in practice, scale was only one part of the brief – the other being the sense of close-up engagement the show’s star also insisted upon.

Make you feel my love
“Adele wanted to create an environment and a space that felt intimate,” says Askem. “Which sounds crazy when you’re talking about 80,000 people in an audience, but it was part of what appealed about this.

“She didn’t want to perform in a standard stadium where you’ve got tiers and tiers of people, and you can’t have a rapport with them. Her idea was that she wanted to embrace the audience, and she wanted the B-stage to be in the middle of the space, and the audience to be wrapped around the stage like an amphitheatre – that was the lead brief from her. And I think we’ve managed to achieve that,” he adds.

So how did we get here, with an extremely choosy, non-touring pop star building her own stadium in Munich? Dickins remembers a series of proposals, beginning several years ago, from Austrian promoter Klaus Leutgeb’s Leutgeb Entertainment Group.

“They offered me some shows for her to come and play in Germany, in an open-air stadium where they had done shows with Helene Fischer and Robbie Williams,” she says. “And I said, ‘I’m not really sure I’m going to get Adele to come. Why would she come and play Germany on an open-air site? We get offers all the time, and she’s not an artist that goes on a world tour.’ It was just a bit random.”

“I knew questions would be asked, like, why Germany? Why Munich?”

An updated offer last year, with the suggestion of a purpose-built stadium, illustrated by a sketch from production designer Florian Wieder (who also subsequently masterminded Adele World), eventually piqued Dickins’ interest, and prompted her to take the concept to Adele’s manager, Dickins’ own brother Jonathan.

“I knew questions would be asked, like, why Germany? Why Munich?” says Dickins. “Well, she hasn’t played in Europe since 2016, and if you look at Munich, it’s slap-bang in the middle. But the main bit for me was the Oktoberfest is held here. So they have infrastructure to get a lot of people in and a lot of people out. I had all these ideas going around in my head, and I called Jonathan, and he was like, ‘Yeah, it’s interesting.’”

Jonathan soon became as centrally involved in the project as he was with Adele’s Vegas shows. With Askem liaising closely with Adele, the wheels started turning in earnest last autumn, and Stufish were drafted in to provide a stage design.

“We met with her, must have been around the 23rd of October,” says Winkler. “At that point, lots of sketches and lots of ideas were circulating, and it was a bit like Chinese whispers. But we had about half an hour with her, and I think within that half an hour, we nailed this concept of a big scroll that was sort of unfurling itself.

“The idea of ‘the embrace’ was something that I had pushed very hard, both metaphorically as well as practically, because the sheer scale of what she was about to enter into required her to feel like she was able to embrace her audience.”

As the project gained momentum, it became clear just how much investment would be required to realise it to Adele’s specifications, and Live Nation was brought on board, with the backing of CEO and president Michael Rapino and VP touring Omar Al-joulani.

“At these shows, we possibly experienced the greatest open-air sound ever”

Lieberberg says support from the very top of Live Nation was critical, given the magnitude and substantial investment that was needed. And he’s full of praise for the production team.

“We had so many brilliant minds joining forces,” he says. “At these shows, we possibly experienced the greatest open-air sound ever – it was like sitting in a studio with B&O boxes and a Thorens player, and you put on the vinyl. And then you have a world-record LED wall in the shape of a wave, like a film scroll. A tailor-made stadium, all in black, no advertising at all, just with Adele signage. It’s really a piece of art.”

A work of art
“In German, there’s a word for it: Gesamtkunstwerk. A total piece of art, a composition of many parts creating an artwork in itself. And people realise that when they enter into a new environment that is so different from any other arena or stadium. This stadium was made for the show, and the show was made for the stadium.” Anyone who saw the show will know the screen is key to the concept – a vast scroll that fills the eyes of everyone in the place, from the very front to the very back.

“In a space as big as the one we have, the cameras are important because everyone needs to feel close to her and be able to see her,” says Askem, speaking in the midst of the shows. “And so the screen, although it is the biggest screen I’ve ever worked with, the biggest temporary screen that’s ever been built, it’s not an ego trip,” says Askem. “It’s big so that you feel that sense of intimacy.”

The fact that the screen offers a continuous surface was one of its great assets, according to Askem. “That gives us a great canvas to play on,” he says. “With most shows, what you tend to see is that there is a screen for the content, the general imagery, and then there are separate screens for the live cameras, and incorporating the two things so they’re all happening on one surface is actually quite difficult. It’s not always a happy marriage, and I feel like we’ve managed to achieve that successfully in most of the songs.”

“The content, for me, is unbelievable”

The show’s blend of live footage and pre-shot segments was a tour de force, filling the arena with on-stage action but not afraid to depart from that script. Four songs didn’t have live cameras at all – a choice Askem says he didn’t initially imagine making but which Adele argued for.

“And I think we got away with it,” says Askem. “I did six different shoot days with her in in LA for the visuals that we have, shooting different scenarios. There was one in a studio with a lot of rain curtains, grated floors and things so she could perform in the rain. And then there are other songs that incorporate content from those shoots – Skyfall and Water Under The Bridge have it, Love In The Dark, Send My Love.”

From start to finish, the show revels in its back-drop, turning the scroll ends into lighthouses for Hold On, reflecting the crowd back at themselves for Someone Like You, showcasing the band across a dazzling array of TV screens on Rolling in the Deep.

“The content, for me, is unbelievable,” says Dickins. “The bit where the scroll becomes like a lighthouse, it’s just amazing. You know when you go to a show and as you get to the end, you get the bang, the big finish – this show keeps bringing them.”

But unusually for a big show, a critical part of the experience took place outside the arena itself, in the Adele World area that aimed – with great success – to conjure the spirit of the artist’s life, career, and taste in wine.

“If you really try and do something like this to communicate the culture of the artist, maybe you can do something different”

I drink wine
“I was there on a Saturday night, and we did karaoke,” says Dickins. “We went and saw the Spice Girls, we were on the Ferris wheel, on the carousel, getting drinks and food. I don’t know if it was a European thing, but the vibe in there was so lovely.

“They can be really anonymous, can’t they, big shows? However hard you try, they can all be a bit like each other. But if you really try and do something like this to communicate the culture of the artist, maybe you can do something different.”

While much has been made of the randomness of a huge outdoor space in Munich for a show like this, in practice, experts agree it is one of very few spaces that could have done the job. In addition to its location and transport connections, it also has power, water, fibre-optic connections, and waste pipes running underneath from its day job as a site for industrial trade fairs.

“For events such as this one, this space is perfect, maybe one of a kind,” says Lieberberg. “It’s vast and close to the city and it can be converted into anything you can imagine – anything that’s physically possible.”

“It had a lot going for it,” agrees Birkett, though he notes that the area isn’t without a few challenges. “The scale of it makes it seem flat, but it isn’t. Working out how to deal with the slope around the width of the stage was challenging.”

Indeed, figuring out how to operate in Germany at all could have presented difficulties.

“It’s a milestone in music history, for sure. And it seems too good to waste”

“Britain is Safety Island, and we are continually bamboozling everyone with health and safety, but here it’s another level,” says English. “I thank God for [Live Nation production head] Sebastian [Pichel], who made it easy for us to work in the German system.”

Birkett, meanwhile, reserves his greatest pride for the parts of the build the audience never saw. “It is almost as much of a work of art behind the screen as it was in front,” he says. “And then the un- der-stage world: the network of tunnels, the areas under the passerelle and under the B-stage, where we had to dig an enormous hole for the lifts. It is what is going underneath that is the tricky bit.”

Tabloid stories have suggested that the stadium itself would now somehow go on tour – missing the essential point that you don’t build something this huge in order to move it around the place.

“It’s not tourable,” says Birkett. “But it certainly had a unique sort of feeling about it. The wide-open nature of it felt very different to regular shows – more akin to a national event or an opening ceremony than a music show.”

Nonetheless, in a live world hungry for new concepts, it is hard to imagine this Munich residency failing to inspire further residencies of a similar type. Most of those involved suspect as much, though all agree this isn’t an easy template to follow.

“Before this started, I said: ‘Never before and never again,’” says Lieberberg. “Now, I would say, ‘Never before but maybe again.’ I mean, we need to analyse the Munich residency thoroughly. All the shows have been spectacular and overwhelming, from Adele’s unique performances to the audience response, as well as the reaction of the media worldwide. It’s a milestone in music history, for sure. And it seems too good to waste. But if we ever did something like this again, it has to cater to the specific vision of the artist, like this one has.”

“I don’t know any artist that would have pulled that off the way she did”

Skyfall
Dickins has ideas of her own but with the same caveat. “Not everyone is of Adele’s scale,” she says. “I mean, I still have yet to see anyone greater than her live. She’s the most unbelievable professional I’ve ever, ever had the pleasure of working with. She’s super-smart, she always knows exactly what she’s doing.”

In the event, after the rehearsal downpours, only one show was blighted by rain – and Dickins thinks it may have been the best of the lot.

“We had one show where it rained, and when you saw her play that show – putting a pair of sneakers on on-stage, the way she talked to the crowd – I don’t know any artist that would have pulled that off the way she did. She’s unbelievable. She’s a once-in-a-lifetime talent for me.”

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Leading WME agent Kirk Sommer has given his verdict on the touring business in 2024 – and predicted his top trends for next year.

As senior partner and global co-head of music at the Beverly Hills-headquartered agency, Sommer – who is currently fundraising for music charity MusiCares – works with a host of superstar acts including Adele, The Killers, Billie Eilish, Arctic Monkeys and Hozier.

And with certain artists rising faster than ever on the live scene in the age of social media, he tells IQ how the sector is adapting its game.

“I have never felt more empowered as an agent,” Sommer tells IQ. “The largest metric for success is the box office. The rate at which some artists are making rapid ascensions at scale has required more focus on making the right strategic developmental decisions while being sure not to miss the moment.”

Sommer, who tips “the continued growth of globalisation, pricing and sustainability” to be the biggest issues for the industry next year, lists The Killers’ “incredible” six-night run at The O2 in London in July and their hometown Hot Fuss Las Vegas residency at The Colosseum at Caesars Palace among his highlights of the past 12 months. The band will play three more “encore” gigs in Vegas next month.

In addition, Sommer oversaw the two-year Weekends with Adele Vegas residency at the same venue on 23 November, as well as Hozier’s record-breaking four-night stint at Forest Hills Stadium in Queens, New York, in June, which marked the first time in the venue’s 101-year history that a single artist had sold out a run of that length.

Elsewhere, Billie Eilish’s Hit Me Hard and Soft: The Tour launched in North America in September.

Sommer is donating a meeting with himself for two people in order to raise funds for music charity MusiCares

“Adele completing her 100-show residency that I had worked on for four years was very special,” reflects Sommer. “Hozier’s historic, record breaking, four-night run at Forest Hills Stadiums was excellent. And the Billie Eilish arena show in the round is the best I have seen.”

Sommer also has high hopes for a number of emerging headliners on the WME roster.

“I am looking forward to the continued growth of Benson Boone, Teddy Swims and Lola Young,” he says. “I have some important and significant tours I’ll be announcing shortly. I’m tremendously proud of the hard work and teamwork my department demonstrated daily and could not be more excited for our collective future.”

Meanwhile, Sommer is donating a meeting with himself for two people in order to raise funds for MusiCares.

The auction, which is open until 3.02pm EST (9.02pm CET) on Wednesday 4 December, is running via the CharityBuzz platform, with the winning bidder to be given the opportunity to speak with Sommer for 45 minutes and explore the dynamics of the live music industry. The current highest bid stands at US$44,500 (€42,500).

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Lana Del Rey has unveiled her first ever UK and Ireland stadium shows, as 2025’s wave of huge tour announcements continues.

The New York-born singer will stop at Cardiff’s Principality Stadium (23 June), Glasgow Hampden Park (26 June), Liverpool’s Anfield Stadium (28 June), Aviva Stadium in Dublin (30 June) and London Wembley Stadium (3 July), produced by Live Nation.

It follows Del Rey’s series of 2024 headline performances in 2024, including slots at Coachella, Reading & Leeds and Rock en Seine, as well as her first stadium concert at Fenway Park, Boston, in the US. She also headlined BST Hyde Park in London in 2023.

Other acts to have confirmed stadium gigs in the UK for next year so far include Oasis, Dua Lipa, Robbie Williams, Coldplay, Linkin Park, Imagine Dragons, Billy Joel, Bruce Springsteen and The E Street Band, Stereophonics, Catfish and the Bottlemen, Stray Kids, Sam Fender and Iron Maiden.

Adele wrapped up her Weekends with Adele Las Vegas residency on Saturday

Meanwhile, Adele wrapped up her Weekends with Adele Las Vegas residency at The Colosseum at Caesars Palace on Saturday (23 November). The 100-show run launched in November 2022.

Having said earlier this year that she would take a “big break” from music following the conclusion of her latest run of concerts, the star told the 4,000-cap audience she did not know when she would return to the live stage.

“It’s been wonderful and I will miss it terribly and I will miss you terribly,” she said. “I don’t know when I next want to perform again.”

Aside from her Vegas commitments, WME-represented Adele played only limited live dates in support of her most recent album, 2021’s 30. She performed two nights at the 65,000-cap BST Hyde Park in London, UK in July 2022 and 10 nights at a bespoke 73,000-capacity pop-up stadium in Munich, Germany – the largest temporary arena ever built – in August 2024.

Read the full feature on the record-breaking German run here.

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Concerts by Adele and Coldplay have been credited for prompting a record-breaking tourism spike in Munich, Germany.

Adele played 10 nights between 2-31 August at a bespoke 73,000-capacity pop-up stadium in Munich – the largest temporary arena ever built – while Coldplay brought their Music of the Spheres World Tour to the 70,000-cap Olympic Stadium for three dates on 15 & 17-18 August.

Hotels and other accommodation establishments in the Bavarian capital reported 2.1 million overnight stays during the month – up almost 20% year-on-year and the highest total since records began in 1912, according to the city administration.

German news agency dpa-AFX further notes that August saw a huge influx of overseas visitors from the UK, the Netherlands and Scandinavia, with the number of stays from those countries each shooting up by tens of thousands.

The Adele run, which marked the first time the singer had played mainland Europe since 2016, also gave a spending boost of more than €540 million to the Munich economy, according to the head of Munich’s economic department Clemens Baumgärtner.

A-list tours are becoming increasingly hot commodities in efforts to boost tourism

While the city did not contribute financially to the Adele shows, A-list tours are becoming increasingly hot commodities in efforts to boost tourism.

Earlier this year, it emerged the Western Australian government paid A$8 million to subsidise two Coldplay concerts in Perth, while Singapore courted controversy after striking an exclusivity deal with Taylor Swift to make the island nation her only Eras tour stop in south-east Asia.

Meanwhile, UK music tourism increased by 33% in 2023 thanks to concerts from the likes of Beyoncé, The Weeknd, Harry Styles and Blur and festivals including Glastonbury. Around 19.2 million music tourists (national and international) attended live music events across the UK last year, up from 14.4 million in 2022, according to research from UK Music.

Music tourism spending surged to £8 billion (€9.6bn), a 21% increase from £6.6bn in 2022.

IQ‘s feature on Adele’s German residency can be read here, while our Coldplay tour report can be accessed here.

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The team behind Adele’s historic German run have told IQ the acclaimed show represents “a milestone in music history” and debated whether it will inspire further residencies.

The singer broke numerous records with her 10-night stint at a giant pop-up stadium in Munich – the largest temporary arena ever built.

More than 730,000 tickets were sold for the exclusive European concerts, held between 2-31 August, which registered the highest attendance of any concert residency outside Las Vegas, according to promoter Live Nation.

Speaking in the latest issue of IQ, Adele’s agent Lucy Dickins and Live Nation GSA CEO Marek Lieberberg do not rule out the possibility of other acts staging similar productions down the line, but stress that it isn’t an easy template to follow.

“Not everyone is of Adele’s scale,” reflects Dickins, WME global head of contemporary music and touring. “I still have yet to see anyone greater than her live. She’s the most unbelievable professional I’ve ever, ever had the pleasure of working with. She’s super-smart, she always knows exactly what she’s doing.”

The “bespoke” outdoor venue boasted a 220m x 30m LED screen, supplied by Solotech, which has been certified by Guinness World Records as the Largest Continuous Outdoor LED Screen (temporary) ever built.

“Before this started, I said: ‘Never before and never again.’ Now, I would say, ‘Never before but maybe again”

Alongside the venue, the 75,000-square-metre Adele World – which included an authentic English pub, a fairground wheel, karaoke, Farmers Markets, merchandise and a typical Bavarian beer garden with live entertainment – attracted 500,000 visitors.

“It’s been very intense because something like this has never been done before. There is no precedent. We could not simply use a blueprint of another project – we had to start from scratch,” says Lieberberg, who co-promoted the residency with Klaus Leutgeb, CEO of Austria’s Leutgeb Entertainment Group.

“Before this started, I said: ‘Never before and never again.’ Now, I would say, ‘Never before but maybe again. We need to analyse the Munich residency thoroughly. All the shows have been spectacular and overwhelming, from Adele’s unique performances to the audience response, as well as the reaction of the media worldwide.

“It’s a milestone in music history, for sure. And it seems too good to waste. But if we ever did something like this again, it has to cater to the specific vision of the artist, like this one has.”

Leutgeb, who organised shows at Munich Messe with artists including Andreas Gabalier, Helene Fischer and Robbie Williams in 2022, had approached Dickins with a series of proposals in the past. However, an updated offer including the suggestion of a purpose-built stadium – illustrated by a sketch from production designer Florian Wieder – persuaded Dickins to take the concept to her brother Jonathan, Adele’s manager, last year.

“I knew questions would be asked, like, why Germany? Why Munich?”

“I knew questions would be asked, like, why Germany? Why Munich?” she says. “Well, she hasn’t played in Europe since 2016, and if you look at Munich, it’s slap-bang in the middle. But the main bit for me was the Oktoberfest is held here. So they have infrastructure to get a lot of people in and a lot of people out. I had all these ideas going around in my head, and I called Jonathan, and he was like, ‘Yeah, it’s interesting.’”

Lieberberg credits support from the very top of Live Nation with enabling the project to come to life – and reserves special praise for the production team.

“We had so many brilliant minds joining forces,” he says. “At these shows, we possibly experienced the greatest open-air sound ever – it was like sitting in a studio with B&O boxes and a Thorens player, and you put on the vinyl. And then you have a world-record LED wall in the shape of a wave, like a film scroll. A tailor-made stadium, all in black, no advertising at all, just with Adele signage. It’s really a piece of art.

“In German, there’s a word for it: Gesamtkunstwerk. A total piece of art, a composition of many parts creating an artwork in itself. And people realise that when they enter into a new environment that is so different from any other arena or stadium. This stadium was made for the show, and the show was made for the stadium.”

The full feature on Adele’s German residency can be read in issue 130 of IQ, which is out now.

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IQ 130, the latest issue of the international live music industry’s favourite magazine, is available to read online now.

In our bumper September edition, Adam Woods goes behind the scenes of Adele’s historic Munich residency while Gordon Masson talks to the team behind Rock in Rio as the iconic event turns 40.

Elsewhere, ROSTR and IQ analyse the lineups and bookings of 50 top European festivals and the Green Guardians 2024 list is revealed.

This issue also delves into the live music markets in Ireland and Singapore and notes some of the best innovations that debuted during the festival season.

To wrap up the season, Roskilde’s Signe Lopdrup and Isle of Wight’s Caroline Giddings discuss the triumphs and tribulations of their 2024 events.

For this edition’s columns, Pax Nindi champions change in festival production and Pascal Van De Velde outlines Gent Jazz Festival’s transformation.

A selection of magazine content will appear online in the next four weeks but to ensure your fix of essential live music industry features, opinion and analysis, click here to subscribe to IQ – or check out what you’re missing out on with the limited preview below:

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Adele wrapped up her “historic” concert residency in Germany at the weekend, setting several new records.

The London singer performed 10 nights in August at a bespoke 73,000-capacity pop-up stadium in Munich – the largest temporary arena ever built.

With over 730,000 tickets, the Munich shows registered the highest attendance of any concert residency outside Las Vegas, according to promoter Live Nation.

The exclusive European concerts, which mark the first time Adele has played mainland Europe since 2016, were co-promoted by Live Nation GSA’s Marek Lieberberg and Austrian promoter Klaus Leutgeb. Adele’s team, including manager Jonathan Dickins and agent Lucy Dickins, have been instrumental in shaping the project.

“The flair of the unique Adele performances combined perfectly with the special atmosphere of this city,” says Lieberberg.

“It was trendsetting: the harmony of concerts in a never-before-seen visualization in an epic custom-built pop-up colosseum”

“Her music, the fans and Munich came together in a way that is rarely experienced. It was trendsetting: the harmony of concerts in a never-before-seen visualization in an epic custom-built pop-up colosseum with perfect open-air sound, created for Adele fans. A joyful, cheerful and peaceful pre-Oktoberfest.”

The “bespoke” outdoor venue, imagined by co-promoted Leutgeb and designed by Florian Wieder, boasted a 220m x 30m LED screen. The screen, supplied by Solotech, has been certified by Guinness World Records as the Largest Continuous Outdoor LED Screen (temporary) ever built.

Alongside the venue, the 75,000-square-metre Adele World – which included an authentic English pub, a fairground wheel, karaoke, Farmers Markets, merchandise and a typical Bavarian beer garden with live entertainment – attracted 500,000 visitors.

The residency gave a spending boost of more than €540 million to the Munich economy, according to the head of Munich’s economic department Clemens Baumgärtner.

“I believe that something historic has been created here in our fast-moving age that will have a big impact for a long time to come,” Lieberberg continues.

“I believe that something historic has been created here in our fast-moving age that will have a big impact for a long time”

Adele adds: “To the many people who helped organise these events and let me put on the most spectacular show, thank you for taking the chance on me and letting me go out with a bang. I’m so grateful.”

During the final night of her Munich residency, the 36-year-old announced that she will be taking an extended break from music when she concludes her Las Vegas residency in November.

During the 31 August concert in Munich, Adele told fans that she has 10 more shows to deliver to fans in Vegas “But after that, I will not see you for an incredibly long time.”

The Grammy-winner explained that she has been touring and performing non-stop for almost three years – the “longest” time she has ever performed for – and that’s she’s ready to get back to “living my life”.

The next edition of IQ magazine, due mid-September, will go behind the scenes of Adele’s Munich residency.

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Adele has launched her long-anticipated German residency to stellar reviews, with critics asking: “Is this the future of the big concert experience?”

The London singer is performing 10 nights at an 80,000-cap pop-up stadium at Munich Messe exhibition centre this month, with further dates to follow on 9-10, 14, 16, 23-24 and 30-31 August.

In a four-star review of Friday’s (2 August) opening show, Will Hodgkinson of The Times wrote: “Adele was met with hysterical cheers from fans who had come from all over Europe,” and suggested the model would serve as a template for other A-listers in the future.

“Rather than coming to the people in stadiums everywhere, will the world’s biggest artists expect us to catch a flight to see them in a specially built venue, dedicated to themselves, where they will remain as long as stamina, vocal issues and ticket sales allow?” he pondered. “The residency approach is common in the United States but rare in Europe. It suits a relative homebody like Adele, who has spoken in the past of her dislike of touring.”

The “bespoke” outdoor venue boasts a 220m x 30m LED screen – thought to be the largest screen ever assembled for an outdoor concert. Alongside the temporary stadium, a themed outdoor environment named Adele World includes an authentic English pub, a fairground wheel, karaoke, Farmers Markets, merchandise and a typical Bavarian beer garden with live entertainment.

The exclusive European concerts, which mark the first time Adele has played mainland Europe since 2016, are being co-promoted by Live Nation GSA’s Marek Lieberberg and Austrian promoter Klaus Leutgeb. Adele’s team, including manager Jonathan Dickins and agent Lucy Dickins, have been instrumental in shaping the project.

“Even the people in the cheap seats could feel up close and personal with Britain’s most relatable superstar”

“Yesterday marked the first of 10 nights in Adele World, a pop-up stadium-cum-festival in Munich complete with a pub modelled on one she went to in Kilburn before becoming a household name, a food court with the I Drink Wine bar, a 93-metre catwalk and a 220-metre-wide screen so huge, even the people in the cheap seats could feel up close and personal with Britain’s most relatable superstar,” added Hodgkinson.

Billboard, meanwhile, compiled a list of the 10 best moments from night one.

“Even in an era of over-the-top concert production, this was overwhelming,” wrote Robert Levine. “Rather than lean into that, though, Adele just remained her charming self. ‘What do you think of my screen?’ she asked the crowd at one point, as though she had just picked it up at a sale at Best Buy.

“After thanking the audience, as well as the promoters behind the show — ‘I’d only trust the Germans with this,”’ she said of the formidable logistics issues — Adele tore into a soaring cover of her most upbeat song. It was punctuated with more confetti, plus fireworks — not a quick burst of them, but a serious display. Most acts would have been buried under the sturm und drang, but Adele’s musicians and her voice seemed to go with it fine.

“By then, she had been moving, nervous, funny, touching and funny again. She was entitled to triumph and this was it.”

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A limited number of €35 “Lucky Dip” tickets have been made available for Adele’s 10-night German residency, which begins this week.

Restricted to two per person, the tickets are being sold on a first come, first served basis and must be collected from the box office on the day of the show. They cannot be transferred or resold and the location of the ticket could be “anywhere from the back row to standing in the front”, and will not be allocated until the day of show.

According to Ticketmaster, “There are a very limited number of Lucky Dip tickets available each week, when they are gone, they are gone!”

The 36-year-old British singer will perform at a 74,000-cap pop-up stadium at Munich Messe exhibition centre on 2-3, 9-10, 14, 16, 23-24 and 30-31 August. The Lucky Dip allocation for the first two dates has already sold out, with further sales to take place on 5, 12, 19 & 26 August for two shows each week. The price points for the shows are otherwise set between €79 and €430.

The exclusive European dates will mark the first time Adele has played mainland Europe since 2016.

Live Nation GSA boss Marek Lieberberg, who is co-organising the run with Austrian promoter Klaus Leutgeb, recently told German media that the gigs were “95% sold out”.

“It is the most elaborate project in my 50 years in the music industry,” said Lieberberg.

While the overall costs have not been disclosed (estimates have exceeded €100 million), the residency will boast a 220m x 30m LED screen – thought to be the largest and priciest screen ever assembled for an outdoor concert. The “bespoke” outdoor venue will also host an “Adele experience” featuring an English pub, a covers band and stalls selling specially designed cocktails.

“Munich has excellent transport links and Munich has an incredibly enthusiastic audience”

Speaking to German broadcaster ZDF, the promoter elaborated on why Munich was selected as the host city.

“Munich is a city in Germany that combines modernity and tradition like no other,” he said. “Munich is a functioning metropolis. Munich has excellent transport links and Munich has an incredibly enthusiastic audience. Experience has shown that it is a metropolis that has the greatest interest in concerts, as we know from our decades of activity.”

Leutgeb, who has enlisted the help of renowned stage designer Florian Wieder, has previously organised shows at Munich Messe with artists including Andreas Gabalier, Helene Fischer and Robbie Williams in 2022.

“I have been in contact with management for two years; I had a vision that drove me forward,” Leutgeb previously told Krone. “I had to develop something very special, something that was 100 percent Adele.

“It’s a multifunctional arena, twice the size of a football stadium, with a diameter of 300 metres, the stage alone is 220 metres wide. But for me, it’s not about size or dimension. For me it’s about content, I want to realise my dreams and visions because that’s the only thing that makes me happy and I’m restless.”

Adele, who is represented by Lucy Dickins and Kirk Sommer at WME, announced she plans to take a hiatus from music upon the conclusion of her 100-night Weekends with Adele Las Vegas run at The Colosseum (cap. 4,100) at Caesars Palace is due to wrap up in November this year.

“My tank is quite empty from being on stage every weekend in Las Vegas,” she told ZDF. “I don’t have any plans for new music, at all. I want a big break after this and I think I want to do other creative things just for a little while.”

Adele is not the first A-list act to offer “Lucky Dip” tickets; the Rolling Stones have utilised the tactic in the past – most recently on their 2024 Hackney Diamonds tour – which had a limited number of tickets on sale for US$39.50.

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