Outdoor Concert Stages under the Microscope

Concert and Festival Industry see changes in outdoor concert stage construction.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

PRLog (Press Release) - Sep 14, 2011 - With collapsing stage catastrophes in Indiana, Tulsa, Ottawa Canada and in Belgium earlier this year, venues, promoters and production companies are focusing on structural integrity and liability.  The days of building stages out of scaffolding and plywood may be ending. "To bank the stage presentation success on anything built from parts, means having site inspections and structural people involved now, which never happened before" said Maryland based Festival Producer Hal Davidson.

For a recent Tennessee country music festival, Producer Davidson used a self- contained, fold-out mobile 40'x40' stage with suspended sound, lights and roof provided by Allstar Audio from Florida. "The entire setup was $32,000. and it was all set up inside of one day. When the show was over, the stage packed up into the trailer and was gone by the night after."

Davidson's Stage Manager Don Barnard from Florida, said "I've been talking a lot with some structural engineers regarding these stages that are coming down.  It is mostly unanimous that at some time, there will be a uniform certification process for "on-site" built stages that will probably cause havoc in the industry.  It all depends on what these event insurance companies decide to require and who will be responsible for inspection.  This may raise the price of staging quite a bit, but stages that are of the "trailer type", like we had at your event, are completely certified from the factory and OSHA approved in all 50 States and Canada. Guess what we're using from now on?"

This discussion took place last week after the judge in Indiana seized the stage structure that came down for a complete inspection to determine liability.

Davidson and Barnard were not involved with any of the fallen structures, but agree that event producers everywhere need to pay far more attention to the cost/ structural factor and realize no savings are worth a life. More scrutiny is now needed before set-up.

"Taking advantage of free, modern tracking technology and keeping an eye on weather radar showing impending weather fronts, and staying in touch with NOAA  is the prudent thing to do", Davidson said.

"Lowering the stage roof as soon as winds pick up to a speed pre-determined by the stage people, and getting the audience away from the stage, is about the best and fastest way to alleviate a disaster", Davidson said. Though he added, "freak 60 mph winds are hard to spot and are just that, statistically rare so the promoter ultimately needs to have a better situational awareness. Better than before. Just tethering vertical trusses down with steel cable to cement bases is not necessarily the answer if you have a 50' high roof with 10 tons of sound and lights hanging from it."  

Hal Davidson has promoted for 35 years, is a festival consultant and authors HOW NOT TO PROMOTE CONCERTS & MUSIC FESTIVALS available online at concert-promotions.com. This release is copyrighted, 2011.
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About Hal Davidson: Promoter of many festivals, concerts, circuses, ice shows, trade shows, resorts and retail, he is a festival consultant and authors the most popular book on promoting concerts and music festivals. "It's about bringing people together and being honest, caring and helpful in a tough industry."
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Concert Promoter Fails to Stage a Stock Comeback

Live Nation shares fall despite deals with Universal, Facebook.

By Joel Russell
Monday, September 26, 2011

Times are tough at Live Nation Entertainment. The Beverly Hills company is bracing for the loss of its biggest customer while suffering from a recession that has taken a severe toll on ticket sales.

While its stock price is way down, it’s not just rolling over. Last week Live Nation, the largest concert promoter in the world, announced strategic alliances with Universal Music Group and Facebook. The announcement had little immediate effect. The company’s stock closed at a 52-week low Sept. 21, representing a loss of 20 percent in value in the last year.

Analysts said increasing fears of a double-dip recession and competition in concert ticket sales explain the stock’s decline, even as they praised the strategic partnership with Universal.

Live Nation announced Sept. 19 that its music-act management subsidiary will form a joint venture with Universal Music, the world’s biggest record label, to promote bands through worldwide sponsorships and merchandising. The plan is to bundle tickets, recorded music or related products and sell them together through Ticketmaster, the largest online ticket service in the world, which Live Nation took over last year.

In a separate deal, Live Nation announced at an investor conference that the Ticketmaster division will start selling tickets through social networking giant Facebook. The service will allow concertgoers to share information about upcoming events and buy tickets near their friends for a concert without leaving the site.

David Joyce, an analyst at Miller Tabak in New York, praised the Universal deal as a smart decision. But he added that the company is especially exposed to recessionary pressure because of the direct link between discretionary income and entertainment spending.

“The stock hit a year-to-date low on macroeconomic fears of another recession,” he told the Business Journal last week. “Consumer discretionary stocks have a rougher patch when consumers might be pulling back on their spending, so the stock movement has overly punished Live Nation.”

Another factor in the stock’s decline is the announcement a month ago that downtown L.A.-based Anschutz Entertainment Group, or AEG, had launched an online ticketing service and would transform from a Ticketmaster customer to a competitor.

AEG, a sports and music conglomerate, is now Ticketmaster’s biggest customer. Joyce estimates Ticketmaster will sell about 136 million tickets this year, with AEG shows accounting for about 42 million of them.

AEG’s new ticketing service, called Axs and pronounced “access,” will gradually grow to handle all ticketing at AEG’s venues by the end of next year.

However, Joyce believes that it will only be a 5 percent loss for Live Nation because the company has a plan to increase international sales.

“Live Nation has been embarking on international ticketing growth that should more than offset what might be lost from AEG,” he wrote to investors Aug. 23 after AEG announced Axs. “This was an expected development.”

Live Nation declined to comment for this story.

Hal Davidson, a concert promoter and music festival consultant in Rockville, Md., said that as Ticketmaster’s processing fees have grown and consumer’s wallets have shrunk, about 30 Internet companies have sprung up to sell tickets with much lower fees. Axs will become the largest player in that field of competition.

For independent concert organizers, contracting with startups makes financial sense. Ticketmaster charges promoters to sell the tickets for them and also takes a service charge from concertgoers. The startups don’t charge the promoters and are happy with a smaller service charge. For example, Ticketmaster might charge a $9 processing fee on top of a $60 ticket, while a startup competitor might charge less than $1.

“You have free ticketing for the promoter and it’s cheaper for the customer,” Davidson said.

Not even positive earnings could prop up the stock, however. In its most recent quarterly statement, Live Nation reported net income of $13.3 million compared with a loss of $32.8 million the same quarter the previous year before.

Douglas Arthur, an analyst at Evercore Partners in New York, said the key to the turnaround was the company’s decision to schedule fewer concerts and sell a higher percentage of the tickets without any discounts. This yielded double-digit increases in revenue per concert attendee and concert sponsorships.

However Arthur questioned if the company could stay profitable after the summer ended. He maintained a “neutral-weight” rating with a target price of $13.25.

“The stars aligned perfectly for Live Nation in the second quarter with a lot of large acts on the road, filling large stadiums at high ticket prices,” he wrote to investors Sept. 20. “We choose to wait for further evidence of an upturn.”

Miller Tabak analyst Joyce sees the Universal Music partnership as good positioning for Live Nation for the time when the economy returns to strength. He rates the stock a “buy” with a long-term target of $19 per share, more than double its current price.

“The strategic importance of this (Universal) partnership is that it helps to keep privately held competitor AEG at bay,” he wrote to investors Sept. 20. “We view this as a wise move by Live Nation to help solidify its artist relationships.”

Concert Promoters Motivate Buyers To Get Tickets Now

In the new economy, American ticket buyers are purchasing later, Promoters offer advance sale incentive

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

PRLog (Press Release) - Jul 05, 2011 - Many music festivals have been using tiered pricing for years, but since advance concert ticket sales are suffering due to a changed customer ticket buying behavior in the last 2-3 years, concerts are seeing better advance sales with better discount incentives.

For many years, music festivals have offered an early bird price, advance price and a gate price, promoting through email broadcasts just before the price change to create a sales spike. These prices are usually separated by $5, $10, or up to $20 increments. The greater the price change, the greater the sales spike. "A tiered pricing matrix in your website connected to a ticket landing page is the best way to direct the buyer to action. Just don’t make your pricing too complicated", said consultant Hal Davidson.

"Once the landing page comes up, at the top of the web page, offer some add-on discounts (special parking, limited time seating upgrade, meet and greet photo op, or a VIP package", Davidson advised. Just a 5% conversion relates to added gross revenues that don’t get passed onto the bands.

"Make sure once these ticket tier deadlines pass, you are not slow or sloppy about making sure no advertising is out there that shows the lower, earlier prices. Feature the new price and the new deadline immediately, even if it has to be changed just after midnight", Davidson said. Your tickets also need to be designed so that the right price is on the ticket you are selling at that time.

Pre-sale is another technique used to offer a super discount for a very limited amount of time (2 weeks or less), that is launched prior to the Early Bird sale.

Abrasmon added, "we live in a time when the correct PRICE POINT can make the difference in selling tickets and not. So be careful of the ending gate price because many are waiting to buy and you don’t want to penalize them for waiting to the point of hurting your gate walk-up. New lower ticket pricing is working to increase volume."

Sticking to higher ticket prices because the event costs dictate it in your figuring should alert you to re-thinking the viability of that particular event. If that ticket price is too high for your area, you may have trouble selling enough tickets to make it work. High break even points in this troubled economy is a bad gamble. It’s better to pass.

High unemployment, high gas prices, changes in consumer confidence and competition for that discretionary dollar have all changed the concert and festival world. Newer festivals and everyday concerts by indie promoters must offer a special appeal to increase chances of profitability.

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