All right. Good afternoon. We're gonna get started. All right, good afternoon, everyone. We're gonna get started. So I'm Amy Yong. I'm Head of Investor Relations. On behalf of the entire team at Live Nation, welcome to our 2023 Investor Day. Before we begin, we would like to remind you that today's presentation will contain certain forward-looking statements that are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ, including statements related to the company's anticipated financial performance, business prospects, new developments, and similar matters. Please refer to the forward-looking statement section found in the presentation materials posted online for more information on these risks and uncertainties. And with that, we'll begin.
On the road again. Life on the road as a musician is about all I've ever known. Those moments are important to an artist, but the roads have gotten a little bumpier. For several years, we're trying to make enough gas money to get to the next gig. So whatever you can do to help a new artist, I think we should do it. They need all the help they can get. The program will impact thousands of artists and help make touring a little bit easier. My life, my love is making music with my friends, and I can't wait to get on the road again.
Hello. Nice... Want me to go up top? I'm gonna go up top. Thank you for all coming. I'm not sure if any of you saw this morning, but we'll do a run-through of what we presented this morning, and then we have some more slides added that Joe's gonna take you through, which kind of get more into the exactness on how we're gonna keep growing this business. I love putting that "On The Road Again." I'm proud of that campaign my team put together. Everyone always talks in this business about the high end. We forget that the club business is booming also. We're gonna do 27,000 club shows this year, which is just amazing.
You always get these messages, though: "What are you doing for the young artist?" So we wanted to kinda double down on that. So in our clubs, from September to the end of the year, we did two things. We cut the merchandise to zero, so we don't charge you when the artists are selling their T-shirts. And we give every artist and the support act a $1,000-dollar gas card and a $500-dollar grocery card. So huge difference at midnight when that artist. You're probably paying the support act, you know, you could be paying them $500 bucks, then they got this support. So we think it's a great way to keep reminding all and ourselves that's the backbone of our business, and the club business is booming. So we're gonna take you through...
You know, most of every question we get, "Great, your business is booming. You guys are doing great. Is this pent-up demand? Can it sustain? Where's it going?" All the questions around macro issues. So we thought we'd address kind of the macro level first, and then we'll get into exactly how we're gonna keep growing. So if you've been following our business, this is an industry that's had incredible growth for 20+ years, 8% compounded growth annually. And COVID happened, and now this year and last year, we've had accelerating growth beyond that. And we do think this is a forward trend. We do think that for the next decade, this business as an industry will grow above the historical 8%. Why is that?
Because we think these structural events that have occurred in this industry are really layering on the growth. So you look at social media. We've talked about it many times. Obviously, any of us live in this world, we understand the implications of live music, the artist and the fan. They're connected, engaged like they've never been before. I used it this morning, but you look at the U2 play in the Sphere. We tracked the media impressions. We've had 9 billion impressions globally about the Sphere and U2 being repost. I mean, you couldn't ask for a better marketing channel, right? So Instant, TikTok, Instagram are the Live Nation and live music's greatest marketing partner you could find.
They wake up every day giving some kid FOMO, why they're not at that show tonight and/or amplifying why you should go see Travis Scott, if you've seen this in the SoFi Instagram feed. So social media, we think it has been a big part of our business. Streaming, it's just making it accessible. Your 19-year-old, no matter where you are on your phone, you're able to actually connect and listen to that song now. Globalization of music, we'll talk about. Experience economy, we'll talk about. We've heard that for many years now. And this venue infrastructure, this is a kind of new trend we're seeing, but internationally and overall, live music now is becoming like the movie theater of the past. It's the tenant that everyone wants.
If you've got a development and you're building it, you want foot traffic, you're calling us, you're calling ASM, you're calling developers, saying: "Can you put a 2,000-seat, 5,000-seat, 7,000-seat ?" Everyone wants to build that Atlanta Braves Battery or the L.A. Live originally. So we get high demand to say, "Can you come in and help build, run, and put a venue up?" Internationally, where football is the soccer is the sport of choice, there's lots of stadiums, there's no arenas. So that's why you see us pushing globally, this idea that every major city is looking to upgrade, wants to have a great 18,000-seat venue that most bands are gonna play at. So infrastructure is being built. As it gets built, bands are touring more and more because there was...
For many years, you just couldn't show up in a lot of markets. There wasn't a place to play. Maybe it was a festival and a green site, but we know when we build infrastructure, the market increases. You take those five big core changes that are happening in the business, and we think that structurally elevates this live industry for the next decade plus. And when you ask the fans: Is this true? Is it coming to life? You can see it in the surveys when you ask fans about the live experience today versus the past. Their engagement, their excitement around it, their purchase intent all comes through in spades when you ask them about how much more engaged they are in music. I'm sure many of you have kids.
I've got a 13-year-old, a 10, and an eight-year-old. Three boys. They live on, you know, a whole bunch of shit they shouldn't, on YouTube, and Snap I catch them on, and TikTok and fake accounts. But, man, they're- they got- they know music like crazy, right? I'm in the car in the morning, they play DJ, and I'm always amazed the way they'll pick up. You know, they'll play an AC/DC song to a new song, and I'm like: "Where'd you hear that?" "Oh, the YouTuber on YouTube, the discovery on TikTok." So they're... You know, we grew up, and, you know, we were lucky if we saw a video on MTV and heard it on a radio station. You're 19 today, your g- your discovery is a new level. Plus, you're more engaged. You're talking directly. You follow Bad Bunny online.
You, you're a fan of his. You see him on TikTok, you see him on social. So engagement is through the roof. You know, the good news is it's becoming global. There is no borders in this business anymore. These fans are global, so that 17-year-old in Colombia and in Milan knows that Bad Bunny dropped a single this morning, so they're fans. There's no more gatekeepers to tell them eventually. So they become fans, and we're seeing now, whether it's K-pop, whether it's Bad Bunny from Colombia, whether it's an Indian artist, if you're on TikTok with a single and it's happening, you can be playing the Greek Theater in a few months later. The artists now are traveling faster than ever around the world, and so are the fans.
We're starting to see it come to life in our roster. So more and more artists we expect that are gonna be filling stadiums are artists like Peso Pluma and Bad Bunny and all of these artists, K-pop, et cetera, coming from all corners of the earth, able to fill the venues. You've probably seen these kind of data for the last few years. It just continually shows where are the wallets being spent. They are spending on experiences, especially live. It's more and more, this is where they're spending their dollars versus maybe the products of the past. And I, you know, I love this chart because I just think it just brings this all together, right? All this stuff we've just referred to. You know, these artists today, they are media empires.
They are able to build direct brands at such scale. Never possibly before, right? Athletes can't do this, actors can't do it, but artists can do this. And in the past, they couldn't. They didn't have a direct Instagram. They didn't know they had 100 million followers. They didn't have this kind of data. If you're an artist today, you know your data. You know you have 150 million users. You know you have 22 million in Brazil, so we probably should tour there. We know we have international. They are media moguls. And our job is actually the easiest job of it. We don't build the demand, we just sell demand through once they build their brand. So you look at something like Bad Bunny with 150 million monthly followers and listeners.
At the end of the day, his tour, while a successful tour, we only have 3 million tickets available. He can only play so many dates at the end of the day. So the scarcity of what we're doing is almost the easy part of the business, because we're gonna have no problem selling 3 million tickets to 150 million dedicated fans. So that's why when people say, "Is scarcity... Are the consumers pulling back? Do you have pricing opportunity?" Well, that chart says it all, right? Of course, you have scarcity of product and demand well beyond capacity. And it's not just the superstars, right? Every artist we meet with now, I meet a young artist and they're playing, you know, the Irving Plaza . They've got 6 million followers. They've got 10 million followers.
They've got audiences, and maybe they're only selling, you know, 400,000 tickets or 10,000 tickets, but the audience is much bigger than ever the ticket sale is. So as they're building their brands, our job is the tail at the end of demand. The good news is, while that demand is building and all of the ways they're engaging, the supply pie is getting bigger. There are more bands on the road. So all of those, you know, those earlier stories on where would the next Rolling Stones come from that people asked for so many years, it's... They're there. They're in the, they're on, they're in a garage on a computer right now, getting ready to jump into a club somewhere. More bands on the road, on a global basis, and more bigger bands selling tickets.
So supply-demand is growing at high pace. And as that earlier theater or earlier club comment I made, I just. We throw this up because people, again, we all talk about the top end of the business. This is a business that's very distributed. You know, all of our segments are growing. Our club, our theater, our mid, midsize stadiums and arenas, and globally in all countries. So very vibrant business. And if we were the sports league, we'd say the, you know, the Premier League and your farm teams are growing well. The farm team is on fire. The clubs are full, and they're making their way up. So as long as the bottom is continually growing at that level, they may jump levels.
A lot of bands, either they may start at a mid-level because they get incredible jump, or they may start at a club and jump to arenas. But the stack is full, robust, top to bottom. And I think this chart is one of the great charts because, you know, this concert tickets, as I say, is global currency... you know, this is, you hear a lot in the subscription business, this challenge of as they grow internationally, what's a customer in India worth versus in U.S.? You tend not to get that same $9. That doesn't happen in concerts. That Coldplay ticket in Detroit is selling for the same amount right now in Tokyo, same for this in Argentina, and in Europe.
So that concert, because of that scarcity, we're able to travel anywhere in the world and get that same ticket price, same economics. So international is the same margin. It is the same business. It's not a depleting margin as you get farther from the core. It's a globalization of that business, because there's only 100 of those dates or 120. So the product is scarce, the ticket's scarce, but the consumer still is abundant and will pay that same price. We look into 2024. We don't see any slowdown. We see our show count up double digits, coming off, obviously, a record year in 2023. So all of that data would come to life and say, next year looks strong again.
And when you ask customers, again, just so we're not fooling ourselves, I mean, 92 say they're gonna go to the same or more. So all those questions about, is there stimulus? Are they pulling back? Will they come again? Was this pent-up demand? And none of this data supports that. This data says this is a way of life, and I wanna go to more of it. I love the second page because I always remind my team of this, that, you know, only 36% of the population actually went to a show last year. And I always remind my team, as big as this business sounds, we only have to sell, like, 14,000 seats at an MSG to sell out a date, right, in a city like New York.
So we're actually selling small slivers in big economic models. But when you ask the consumer, 51% of the population says, "I wanna go to a show next year." So any of that idea that, you know, there's not more customers coming into the funnel every day, that data kind of helps support it. And we've shown similar slides to this. Again, whenever this recession or whatever the pullback is or isn't, history says live tends to be very durable and one of the places they cut back on last. And again, it's kind of obvious because it is one of the top three most important things in their kind of entertainment life. So it's high on their poll. It's actually one of the cheapest, though.
So while we know the consumer may pull back on Disneyland or buying a washing machine, they're gonna go to Jones Beach. That's still a high-value outing for two people, three people, that you can afford and still manage, even in downtimes. This is the support of that. Again, because the press likes to talk about the 9% or the expensive ticket, this is an industry that's overall very affordable. $38 average get-in price, can't get that anywhere for this high quality of an event. 65% under $100, so this is an industry. Again, compare it to sports. I do it all the time. Go buy a Lakers ticket or go buy a Knicks ticket. Courtside is $25,000.
You know, even at the highest end, a P1 may be $400, and that show happens once every four years. So this is, again, incredible great value. Yes, there's, at the very top, some press around it, but as an industry overall, what's gonna make this machine continue to work is the fact that it's a completely affordable business from theaters to amphitheaters onward, top to bottom. And Joe's gonna get into the detail. We've shown this every year. We like to kind of be very transparent on how we're gonna grow the business. What are the levers that matter? These are the levers that are gonna grow our business. They're the ones we historically have talked about, a bit more on Venue Nation today. But Joe now is gonna take you through the specifics.
You want it quicker? All right.
Sorry.
Thanks. So again, these levers, I think, should look pretty familiar. We talk about a pretty similar set every year. I'll walk through each of them, give you a feel for where it is we think we can go, and what's our confidence above and beyond the macro that Michael talked about, that we think is very strong. One thing I'll note, for those of you who pull things out, measure and the analytics is, I think it's pretty interesting. If you go back, we added $400 and change million from last year.
If you go back to last year's metrics and look now at our fan count and some of the other metrics, I think you see that it actually lines up very well with the progress that we made this year in terms of those metrics translating into the higher AOI for the year.
We'll start with the fan count, because that is, as we talk about, where our business begins, how we're growing our business. Now our focus is on how we're getting to 200 million fans. Again, start just on the concert market growth, the macro that we talk about, and then from there, we really see every market as having continued opportunity for us to be adding fans from the clubs up to the stadium level. As we look at the TAM over the next several years across the world, if you think about the developed markets, North America, Europe, we still have relatively low penetration in the scheme of things. We think there are a lot of fans out there. We can continue to help build the market.
A lot of hyper local strategy that we've talked about, going into those specific markets, adding more capacity and bringing more artists into those markets. And the international markets that are developing, those are the ones that we've talked a lot about recently that we think are particularly exciting. Again, a lot of opportunities as we'll start talking about the venue side, where we can be building arenas that don't exist, bring artists into those markets, and really help develop them. Then the venue side. This is the biggest opportunity that we'll talk about, $350 million, we think, from a combination of bringing more fans to our buildings and making more money with those fans when they come to our buildings. We have a great portfolio now....
And let me start by saying, we don't think this is. This isn't a dramatic change to how we're deploying capital, to what our balance sheet looks like, to what our overall business is. What we've done during COVID and coming out, is we've broken up what was historically within one, the promoter and the, and the running of the venue, to say, these are specialized skills. Let's separate them. Let's bring different people with different skill sets to run them. We've seen the strong results on both sides of the business in terms of driving volume on the show count and driving the performance at our buildings. Then let's take what we're doing well, what we can earn good returns from our capital on, and let's continue to do more of that. So that's two, three...
Two things, maybe three things, depending on how you want to look at it, when it comes to our portfolio buildings. U.S., North America, big opportunity in 3,000-6,000 capacity theaters. We announced the Paramount here in Brooklyn. That's opening next year. Got a big project going on down in Nashville that's been announced. Seven or eight others that we're in advanced stages of, that we think we can build out. North America, large theater, continue to expand that market in a lot of cities. Second is international. This is now more of the arena type, taking from a U.S. view, what we've done in Austin, taking that internationally. We have that with the Ziggo Dome, with the Copenhagen Arena, with a few spots. AEG did it with the O2. Buildings that are not expensive, NBA-type, billion-dollar buildings.
A few hundred million dollars go in and create some fantastic arenas that can be used to help build the market, drives our TAM, drives our activity. Third, related in terms of opportunities, in addition to building, in some cases, we're going to buy them. So in Portugal, again, that's been in the press, that we're looking, we're buying the arena there, already established. We can go in, we can think, we think with relatively incremental capital, we can do a lot to drive the performance of that building. So those are the streams of activity. It's going to drive a lot of our economics. I'll come to capital in a bit, but it's obviously, it's where we're deploying a lot of the capital. The two things do go hand in hand.
If you want to continue to drive your business double-digit growth, you're going to have to put some money into it to do it. So we're not apologetic about that. We'll go into a little more detail on how we're thinking about what the priorities are and how we're going to do that. And then, as I said, the other half is, so how are we doing at the venues? How are we continuing to make more out of the fan experience that we have? You know, goes back to 2017. When we started this, we were getting a $16 average revenue per fan back 10 years ago. Now we're over $40 in our amphitheaters. Still, we look at a high-performing arena, that's over $60. Some of our great festivals, like BottleRock, well over $100.
So we think there's more to go. I mean, there's a couple of ways that we're doing it. There are a few situations every year where the building is old, was developed at a time when it was all GA, all state fair experience, and there's an opportunity for relatively modest but material investment to get that up. So we have 20% of it as VIP, and you're really driving at the high end. We're doing that with Jones Beach here, right now, where we're undergoing a fundamental revamp of Jones Beach as we sign a new long-term lease. Makes sense to invest the capital. You get a great return on that. We're doing that next year with Foro Sol down in Mexico City. 2.5 million fans a year, largest music-built venue in the world.
You can spend money there, and you can very quickly get a very attractive return. And then the second is, yeah, we have the network of 50 amphitheaters, and there are things we can do better with rock boxes, with viewing platforms, with VIP clubs, with enhancing the food and beverage offer. A number of tactical things that we can do. Between the two, we think we continue to drive forward and grow that average per fan spending at the buildings. The other piece that we've talked about in the past, and we'll continue to talk about as long as there's an opportunity, is how do we optimize the gross of the show? How do we help the artists figure out how they get the most value from their IP?
If I want to steal from what Greg was talking about this morning with IP.
So number one is fewer than 5% of our shows sell out. We have 35 million tickets a year that don't sell, that are worthless because they didn't sell. It's 20% of our inventory. That's what... This is what a lot of shows look like. These blue dots are the tickets that didn't sell at the onset. The shows tend to sell fairly front to back. So it's our job as the promoter to figure out, how do we help that artist sell all these tickets? Do we have the right pricing? Do we have the right promotions? Do we have the right marketing? What do we need to do to continue to be more effective at selling these tickets? As Michael said, 2/3 of our tickets are under $100.
So a lot of the value in get-in these tickets is, frankly, getting the fans in the building and getting that $40 average per fan revenue on top of the ticket price that you're getting. And then the other half is, yes, we continue, all the press notwithstanding, to see that there are a lot of tickets that are underpriced relative to their market value. This chart's a little complicated, but I thought it was pretty compelling when we look across type of artists, you look across building types. I'll just give you the first one. The hip-hop artist, last tour in gray, current tour in red. Last tour, $110 ticket price went up to $243, so it went up $133.
In the secondary, those same tickets, we use like for like, tickets here, was $184 last time, $453 this time, so $270 increase. So your gap between your primary and secondary value, even as the artist doubled the price of their ticket, the gap doubled relative to what it was last time. And you go through all, every single one of these examples, increase in primary, less than increase in secondary. Increase in primary, less than secondary. These are amphitheaters, are gonna tend to be lower priced tickets, but you see the same story consistently. So we're big believers. We're here to help the artists figure out what they wanna do with their IP, how they wanna get the value out of it. They wanna maximize it as close to market value as they want.
You can see here, they're not actually generally maximizing it against the market value. They're simply capturing more of the money, taking that away from scalpers, and working with us to figure out how to get those tickets sold to fans. So again, the delta, we simply look at it as the delta between primary and secondary is the artist opportunity, which as their partners, we participate in, as over time, we continue to work with them to help them get what we think they deserve. Going on to sponsorship, and we've got a number of sponsorship folks here in the room who can also answer questions during Q&A or after. But look, this one's pretty straightforward. At 140 million fans, we've got a huge on-site platform that they're selling sponsors how they can reach the fans.
With 600 million tickets moving through the Ticketmaster platform, they have a huge online platform they can amplify. They've got a tremendous track record at growing this double digits over the past several years. Just did a great job with Mastercard, working with them now in 19 countries internationally, a great new program that's launching next year, and we continue to see this as being a double-digit growth business for some period. And then ticketing. Again, ticketing has had a line that looks pretty similar, I think, in this, to our concert line. 90% of the growth over the past couple of years has come from concerts globally, not just Live Nation, but all concerts, as the entire industry has been on fire.
When we think about how they're gonna grow now from roughly 320 million tickets this year to 400 million tickets, first, as Live Nation grows globally, about 80% of those tickets end up on a Ticketmaster platform. So you have some natural growth that comes as we're building our Live Nation. Importantly, some of those tickets are helpful in a lot of the international markets where you have split allocations between venues and promoters. Then when Live Nation's the promoter, and Ticketmaster can use those tickets, it helps Ticketmaster get established in markets, build their share, build their brand, puts them in a more competitive position to go win new business. It's been a huge success in Germany, in Spain, in Italy.
We expect that to continue with more market penetration, where they're under-penetrated relative to some of the more established markets. As we go into new markets, those are opportunities for us throughout Latin America, throughout Asia. Then, the other piece that we've started talking about is this non-service fee. So Ticketmaster, primary job is selling the tickets. The second is, how does it use its platform to make money in ways that aren't tied to the specific service fee? Now, ballpark, it's two real things. One, it's tied in with sponsorship. How do we create the ad units? How do we think about what is there along the journey that we can sell or we can monetize the fan relationship, per se?
So every product they come up with, whether it's the rocked ad unit afterwards, the insurance, the upsell to VIP parking, any of those things as a sponsorship team and ticketing team work together to think about: How do you maximize that flow? Secondly is, Ticketmaster is getting a lot of data, getting a lot of understanding. How does it use the information it's gathering, the data analytics, to sell more services to the venues, to the promoters, to anybody putting on a show? And that's another way that, that they've been successful, particularly coming out of COVID, in helping sell those opportunities and raising more money or making more money at Ticketmaster. So then what everybody asks, "Okay, that's great.
You guys are going to grow double digits, but can you also just return a lot of capital to shareholders?" So this is roughly as we think about it, you know, the title was carefully thought. It's deploying capital to drive growth. So as we think about driving growth, this is roughly the sequence in terms of the order that we think about. The first thing is, how do we strategically continue to drive our business? I'll step back. If you look at our... We have capital to deploy in two ways, right? One is our current balance sheet, the other is our cash generation. So historically, we've tried to maintain debt ratios, gross debts, between between 3.5 and 4.
We're on the high side of that right now, but fine, just coming out of COVID with the debt we had to take on. So we're not seeing our balance sheet as something that we're gonna dive in and do a lot on, particularly not right now. Cash flow, you guys, consensus has us, you know, close to $2 billion next year, mid-60s conversion. So you have $1 billion-ish of cash, right? Just as you're sitting here planning out what are you doing next year? So we work through these categories. Venue portfolio expansion. So I talked through those. You've got these large theaters in the U.S., it's $100-$150 million-ish. You've got arenas internationally you're building, that could be same or even a little more, depending on the timing of when those come. You're gonna buy some venues....
Bigger venues are gonna be, you know, high $10s of millions. Maybe you spend $200 million between some large venues and some smaller ones there. So you're deploying a large portion of your capital there. You've got your existing venue. As I've said, you got the major remodel projects, the Jones Beach's, the Foro Sol's, and then you have a lot of tactical improvements you're making across your portfolio of 50 amphitheaters, of 100 clubs in your festivals, so you've got another $120 million-$150 million there. Ticketmaster product. Again, we just talked about non-service fee revenues. We talked about a lot of things going on with sponsorship. You've got a double agenda with Ticketmaster. One is how do we continue to improve the on-sale experience? How do we continue to improve the product? How do we improve customer service?
How do we also deliver a more effective marketing platform that Russell and Chris and the team and sponsorship can sell against? So that might be a $100 million-ish CapEx. And new market M&A. You wanna go into Asia, you wanna go into Latin America, depending on the opportunities, we don't rush the deals, but that, that could be in the $10 million-$200 million, just depending on what opportunities come up. All of these opportunities being accretive, all of them, having the opportunity to be another OCESA, where we've hit a home run by turning our fire hose on that and building the business. And then finally, you've got some put call obligations.
As you guys all know, when we go in and we buy a business, we're generally buying between 51%-70% of that business, keeping the entrepreneur engaged, giving them a put/call after five years, seven years, eight years, so they have an opportunity to get all of their money out because they're ceding control to us, but we keep them engaged in building the business. So you're gonna have some obligations there. Next year, not too bad, but also setting up for OCESA obligations that start to come due in 2025 and 2026, which, again, you know, you guys know what we paid for OCESA. We've talked a lot about how well it's doing, so it's a large put/call that comes at that point.
So you add all these things together and you start to understand, as we're planning out next year, we're saying, "Okay, so there's $1 billion-ish that we can pretty easily see that we're spending to drive growth in the business, that we think consistently has very attractive returns." Sets us up for compounding that future growth, because growth is not something you start and stop. Growth is a path that you go on. So we believe we can drive that, that growth by spending this money. Now, this is something that Michael and I sit down, we reassess it formally, quarterly. We go really deep every year when we're doing the budgeting process and asking ourselves what we're gonna do.
And clearly, in today's environment, we need to stay on top of. We're not religious about anything. We're not religious about not returning cash to shareholders. We're just fervent believers that the best way to serve shareholders is to grow the business in a profitable manner with judicious investments that have high returns, and keep that machine going and moving forward. So that's the summary. I think, Amy, we're happy to take questions from everybody else, right?
Yep. We're gonna start with our sell-side analyst first, and then we'll open it up to the rest of the audience. I'm gonna go with David first. David Karnovsky with JP Morgan.
Go with David Karnovsky.
Joe, since you highlighted venue expansion, I'll ask one there. Historically, you guys have focused on, I guess, from the growth perspective, your amps, because the per caps are really good, your footprints in theaters and clubs. You've shied away from arenas. You're starting to do that now, and I get it, it's internationally, but, you know, why is that a good opportunity? What changed, you know, just given the size of those projects?
Yeah. I'll jump in quickly. Yeah. So the you know, the core to growing your business is we've always said it, there's, like, there's 100 cities you wanna be in. It's a city strategy more than anything else. And if you look at Live Nation's history, the amphitheater was a big part of what drove that city's success. Ron Delsener in New York, having Jones Beach, was a big part of why his business did well and he was able to expand it. Most of the promoters we consolidated around the way, around America had that amphitheater. When you go international, if you're just buying the promoter in the market, and he doesn't have ancillary revenues, it's a little longer to get to a good, profitable path. So you always like to figure out how you have...
In any city, you wanna have a great promoter, you wanna have some real estate. That real estate probably is the reason you're gonna launch ticketing. It's gonna excel your sponsorship business. So it becomes a real anchor to saying: How do you get that market to, you know, a $5 million-$6 million concert business, or I'm in the $30 million-$40 million business? So international, as we're expanding, for many years, when I lived in London, we kind of the system was by the promoter that had the big festival. That was kind of as close as you got to real estate, and that dominated for many years.
So while we bought Dennis Desmond and Mean Fiddler and the big promoter in Belgium on the Werchter Festival, and in Holland owned the MOJO Festivals, that's pretty much who we were buying, because that was the best ancillary revenue model for us to grow on. Over time, though, as we kind of built our venue development, our venue management business here, we started to realize that the opportunity international for the arena, we had one in Dublin for a long time, we've had one in Amsterdam. We started to realize that there really was a white space, and we were missing out completely, as a core competency. It's one of the biggest things we realized. We were getting the call after.
T he OVG, the ASM, or the Legends went into the market, won the arena, and then called us and said: "Hey, can you come to that last meeting and talk about putting shows in there to help validate our business model?" We actually realized, much like here, we should be building that venue, running it, and filling it with our content and others. So, as we kind of looked through COVID and brought our venue management business together, we really realized the piece we were missing that was the big growth unlock, was being able to run these venues. And OVG did a kind of a master class in training me on that, on the Austin arena. Although it was America, it's kind of the only city left that didn't have a real arena.
We partnered with them on that, built it together, funded it. I think I've used this math before. It was a $350-ish million venue. We wrote a $75 million equity check. Estimate was low financed. We sold sponsorship, premium seats two years in advance. Didn't even write the $75 million check. That is turning a 30%+ IRR right now. So we know that if you can have a big, a big venue, an arena, an amphitheater in a major market, you're trying to build your total business, that's the best way to jump fast and excel your overall business. So that's what we looked at as... And as anything, you know, since we started this company 16 years ago, it's always been, what's taking us to the next level, right?
When I started this, we made $30 million-$40 million on amphitheaters. We said, "We have to own - we have to be a sponsorship company." And I launched that with Russell, and we became a great sponsorship business now, and that was a whole new lever we started that now is obviously very profitable. Then it was about really, we needed to be a ticketing business. We launched our own ticketing, then bought Ticketmaster to own the customer and realized that was a big. And as we spent the last few years going, "What's our next lever? Where do we keep going with this company? How do we keep finding the growth?"
Venue ownership, management, especially international, as our growth of our sponsor, our concert business, that looked like the great new opportunity for us. So that's where we're kind of gonna put the next level of growth down. I think that's the next leg on the stool. It's opportunistic. I don't know if you want the microphone or-
Yes. Oh, Stephen Glagola, TD Cowen. I had a question on, is there a limit to your venue expansion in North America, particularly United States, given that you are, you know, vertically integrated across the value chain? And, you know, I know that there's, like, 4,000-some venues out there. You have a small subset of them today, but, you know, worries that you could trigger more regulatory scrutiny on your business if you take, you know, your venues, you know, too much of a degree.
Yeah, it wouldn't be regulatory, although it's always, you know, part you have to manage. Now, we've always looked at America as not a huge venue opportunity, because in America, it was for so many years, it was being overbuilt by the sports business. So, you know, most cities now have an NBA, an NHL, the Major League Baseball, the football, probably the old building, too, like the Forum. So we never looked at America as being somewhere where we could probably even. We don't even have any added many amphitheaters historically, because we really weren't able to, you know, build a lot of them anymore at the right price, so they were always built way out of town.
We always thought America was really just more of a 5,000-seat, 4,000 tuck-in, bolt-in strategy, where you have a nice market, and if you can do a Paramount, not a long-term, big growth plan in the U.S. We looked at Canada a little differently because we had nothing there, but we really look at—we've always thought internationally in general would be the opportunity where you don't have that NBA, NFL, NHL, MLB infrastructure built. So in America, we're best friends with MSG and the sports guy filling their buildings. I don't need to compete.
Microphone.
I'd say for Michael, I was wondering if you could speak a little bit more about the mindset of the artist and maybe how that's changed over the last five years. You mentioned a lot of these secular trends, globalization of music, social media, the supply of the market increasing and the demand to tap into increasing as well. How do you expect that to translate into the supply year to year of artists touring and the amount of available inventory you have to sell on an annual basis going forward, looking, you know, three, five, 10 years out?
Yeah, you know, I think we've had this thesis for many years, and it's, I think it holds true and is stronger than ever, that, you know, we believe live was going to become the center of the wheel from an economic perspective for the artist. Certainly has happened. You know, they're not making much money on the Spotify. It's obviously where their art's distributed, but the road is where they're making fans and economic returns. So, we think now that they absolutely understand who their customer base is. Anecdotally, I talk about when they say, "I've got all these fans in Brazil," they didn't know that for years.
That means now they want to go tour in Brazil because the artist does know when they get on stage, they make fans for life live, you don't make fans for life on a stream. So, you know, every artist we see, from young to old, still has that dream to be the Rolling Stones, sell out stadiums, make a ton of money, and also, you know, reach as many fans as they can because they know from there they can sell merchandise, they can build all of their ancillary businesses. So while they have all these great promotional tools, they're brand- direct, they want to all have their own lip liner or some version of a product that's going to make them rich, and they should, because they have the power of the medium.
They know live is the part that keeps the entire machine moving. So, we're excited about that.
Okay, great. Behind the poll here. So, I was curious, there was a transaction kind of around your sector, Legends buying ASM. And I was just wondering if you could talk a little bit about, you know, some thoughts about the meaning of that in terms of, does it mean anything competitively? Is it some validation of your strategy? Is there a valuation benchmark there? Any thoughts about that's relevant for you guys?
Yeah, I don't know. Listen, I don't know a ton about it. I've heard some of the financials. I think your point is valid. I thought it was a great validation that Sixth Street, who I met with, are all in on the idea that, you know, live is a great industry and venues and premium from what they've told me. So Legends is a pretty good premium business that spends a lot of time international. ASM is a venue management business, so the idea that they would put those billions to work to bring them together to be a global hospitality venue company, I think, talked about everything I've kind of reiterated today, that we think there's a big global opportunity out there in venue management and premium.
So we don't... You know, we compete, but you know, the landscape is large, right? So, yeah, well, we're always... If there's a RFP for a new arena in Vienna, we're competing, ASM, CTS, you know, the three or four are always going to be there bidding on it, and whoever's got the best overall product will win. So still kind of the same competitor, because ASM was kind of what the core of what we were doing on venue development. But I think it validates it, and I think they've done a good job with Legends. We were shareholders in Legends, and did well.
David Joyce.
David Joyce with Seaport Research. Drilling down on the international opportunity, a couple things. One, can you help us understand how much of the AOI growth has come from the development of the infrastructure, these venues, and the localization that turns to globalization of the artists? And related to that, what are you doing on the Artist Nation front to help develop, you know, these new artists in these regions that, you know, because of social media, what have you, can then leap up to the global stage?
You get the first part?
Yeah. I don't think we've broken out specifically what the economic mix has been. What we have said is that the economic, Michael showed it earlier, the economics of doing a Coldplay show in L.A., Milan, or Buenos Aires is the same. So those fans are generally going to have the same value in a concert. The sponsorship team for the festivals, for the buildings we operate, will tend to drive similar economics on the sponsorship side as well. So, and a lot of our growth has been coming from international, some of which has been from the addition of OCESA, some of which has just been a big push into Latin America, continued push in Asia. So we haven't broken it out.
I would expect it to increase going forward as we put more venues there, since the economics are more attractive when it's our fans in our buildings, which has been disproportionately U.S., North America-based. If you just look at where our theaters and clubs are, the amphitheater base, it's tend to be skewed more in North America, and I think that'll shift as we do more of this arena development internationally.
We're going to go with Brandon Ross.
We got to come out. Thanks. On a lot of this international growth stuff, you've talked mostly about bringing more artists abroad and, the venue development. One thing we haven't heard much about is Ticketmaster. So I was just curious, I know you went through that globalization project a couple of years ago during COVID. What are the real tailwinds on Ticketmaster, and what additional opportunities internationally are being unlocked there?
Yeah, in part, we didn't talk about it as much because I feel like a little bit of a broken record, because I think for the past year and a half, every quarter, right, I don't remember the exact numbers ended up being last year, but it's, "Oh, and Ticketmaster added 24 million net new tickets, 70% internationally." And this year, it was, "Oh, 17 million, majority are international." So I feel like we've been saying pretty consistently, coming out of COVID, every quarter, a benefit of moving to a single global platform is we have taken a lot of the capabilities of our North America platform, delivered it globally, that feature set matters a lot in the international markets, which in some cases are less sophisticated, and that's helped drive a lot of Ticketmaster growth.
I mean, you clearly see in the Ticketmaster financials, they've done tremendously well because they've continued, and you've also seen the volume of tickets, both fee-bearing and non-fee-bearing, that are going through their system, and that's driven the volume of tickets through to the bottom line heavily because of the international growth.
Thanks.
Go with Jack. Question right here.
Hi. Thanks. Cameron Minson from Morgan Stanley. I'd like to hear a little bit more about, you know, the international opportunity is obviously big, exciting, OCESA is doing well. How do you think about, in a way, the efficacy of investment in leaning more into Latin America versus spending to enter markets that you're not in, in scale today? And then, like, just anything on the characteristics generally that you look for when you're thinking about a new market entry, and, you know, what would make it exciting or a priority?
So you're asking us about... Say that again about Latin America, ex-Mexico, you're saying?
Whether it's your view a more exciting opportunity or how you think about the way, the opportunity of leaning more into Latin America versus spending the investment that you would make doing that, by entering a new market and scale.
Yeah, we think the, you know, Latin America is huge opportunity.
Brazil is where we're spending a lot of time because we got some of the blocks down. We bought Rock in Rio, obviously. We launched Live Nation Concerts there. We just launched Ticketmaster there, did our first festival, sold out instantly, a few hundred thousand tickets on the town, big festival in São Paulo. We've looked at some venue development in that market. So we think that Brazil is a huge, you know, $300 million-$400 million kind of business you can build to, so big market. But part of our touring strategy is we've always wanted to kind of have a franchise store in all of these markets. So when we're doing Coldplay in Argentina for 10 nights, we have a great business there.
And a lot of those markets, you know, we looked at Colombia, we're looking at all of them where they don't have an arena, and if you're the only arena in town, you're gonna have a really good business in that- in those major cities. So, we think, coming off OCESA, our strength in Brazil, and now the, you know, the internationalization of the artist, Latin America is gonna be , a big priority and a big growth area for us.
One more question from Jeff.
You're clearly in a sweet spot of having a lot of people, a very engaged audience that want to go to your events. So can you just talk about the pricing power of your sponsorship unit now that you're driving so many fans to your events?
We give it to Russell. Russell Wallach runs global sponsorship business for us.
Yeah, well, look, we're continuing to see tremendous growth everywhere in the world from a sponsorship standpoint. We know our assets are wildly exciting to brands. One of the great things that we have versus sports, which we talk about all the time, is the diversity of our audience. You know, half our audience is women. We've got a host of festivals and things that target Latin audiences, Black audiences. So we're able to provide brands things that they actually can't get in sports. So yeah, so everywhere we go, Brazil, Michael talked about one of the biggest sponsorship markets in the world. You know, Germany, U.K., Australia, we're seeing big growth in Asia. So yeah, really everywhere, we're seeing continued excitement for the products we're putting out there.
We just met upstairs on the 2024 business plan, and it was the first time, Russell, we met, where, you know, you really are showing how the globalization's happening, right? Where, you know, we're not. It used to be a regional business and a local, and then you tried to make that a national, then a little bit of international, and now this globalization's working where, you know, just mention that, how you're talking to Coke about not Atlanta anymore.
Yeah. That's a great... Yeah. So we're doing. Coke's a great example. Anheuser-Busch, we're working with them in multiple markets around the world. So Coca-Cola sponsors a number of our Lollapaloozas in South America. They're involved with our Lollapalooza in India, across Europe. So we're seeing more and more brands interested in taking our platform from the U.S. and extending that to other territories around the world. We're also doing a really solid job of taking products that we're building here in the U.S. and giving those products to our sponsorship teams around the world. The other thing, you talked about OCESA.
They've got one of the best sponsorship teams in the world. We spent a lot of time with those guys. Huge opportunity on the digital side. So now we're working closely with them to build the digital business there. They're the best in the world at selling festival sponsorship, venues, ticket access. So we're using some of our skill set here to transfer that to some of these key regions where there's already great teams.
It's, you know, really unique, right? Because as a property, you know, most of it is U.S. sports. You, you got to do a U.S. deal. Other than the Olympics and kind of FIFA World Cup, there's very seldom , a property as a CMO, you can sit down with and talk about some global ideas. So, you know, we, are that real unique opportunity for them.
All right, we're gonna go back to David Karnovsky and then take questions from the general audience.
All right. I guess since it's come full circle, I'll ask a regulatory one.
Really.
So Michael, Joe, you guys have talked about the DOJ looking at discrete business practices, as you, as you termed it, and not the structure of the company. So I wanted to see if you would expand on that a bit. And then assuming something like exclusivity, for instance, you know, is an issue, have you, you know, looked at your structure and said, "Okay, if we were non-exclusive with, you know, some of our venues on a booking side, on a ticketing, open allocation side," have you, you know, looked at the impact of that potentially?
Yeah, not a lot's changed in the last week, I'll say. And a lot of this continues to be trying to read tea leaves based on what we hear are our impressions. So nothing particularly concrete. We hear things oftentimes through the press, as you guys do, and we try to figure them out. We saw some of the points about the venues and exclusivity on venues. I mean, what I'd say on that one is, as we separated our promotion business from our venue business and both excelled, trust me, our venue guys for the past year have been saying: Why do I, why can I only be open for those promoters? I'm making $40 a head now. I'm not making $16 a head. I can make as much money as they can make.
Just let me drive utilization. So, that particular point, I think, is one that a large portion of our organization are pushing for today, independent of anything that would be going on elsewhere.
And I'll just jump on a strategy point on that.
Yeah.
You know, if you work for me, you know, like, I am a, I'm not a synergy guy at all. I hate that word. We don't work in that world. So, you know, I have one of the smallest head offices you're probably gonna find for a big company. We are really decentralized. So I always look at our company as saying: How do you decentralize and make a business out of a piece of the business? So when I look at sponsorship, I think of that as the largest entertainment agency in the world that stands on its own. Venue Nation will stand on its own. You know, my festival division, C3, is a, you know, a festival company on its own, the concert.
So we don't have a lot of synergy on purpose, because great leadership usually means I want my own pie, I wanna run it, and I wanna build it my way, and I want strategic support and resources from head office. So I say all that, and there's probably, you know, a belief that this intertwining thread is really important to the existence of the overall. These are strong businesses that are gonna operate well on their own. And the intertwine that maybe the conspiracists put together probably doesn't exist or isn't as precious to us as one would think. So we're very. We've mapped out all versions, and we think our business model is absolutely defendable. We think, given the artists are making 90%+ of the door, they're doing well.
or we're a really dumb monopoly, as we say, because we haven't figured out the economic part. But we believe that, you know, there is no intertwine magic here, that we wouldn't be able to adjust some business practices and still be a really good company. And I really push my team all the time because I don't want Ticketmaster reliant on this. I want them to be a great ticketing company that can win on their own, and the promoter should win the tour on their own, not because they have a venue company. So I've always operated that way, because otherwise, they'll draft off different P&Ls and not be great at something. So you are right. We look at it on... We don't care about long-term contracts in ticketing.
We probably don't care about exclusive in ticketing, exclusive in venues. There's lots of things that I think the world will change around. We think we're the best in the world at what we do, and we'll continue to grow our business. So we're not worried about any of those kind of ramifications that could play out, whatever they may be. Well, thank you.
Sure.
Hi, Craig Melcher, Tudor. This morning, John and Greg talked a few times about potentially using their Liberty Live tracker to do something in real estate, something that could be additive or, I guess, I won't say synergistic, but helpful to your portfolio. How do you see that playing out? What do you think they could do in real estate that you might not be able to do yourself?
Well, listen, I'm proud that they like our strategy, right? John's a smart man, so is Greg. They're a large shareholder. I sat at Sun Valley this year, I sat beside John, and he said, "I love your real estate strategy. Like, we should do more of that." So that's kind of like, I'm gonna go home now. I've won my piece. So yeah, I think, you know, John and I talked, as Greg. I think they have full belief that there's a great venue strategy at play here. So I don't...
You know, when I say to them, "What are you gonna do with Live?" Boy, I hope they buy some assets that are synergistic to us, that give us opportunistic options in the future versus a, you know, a bowling alley or something else, right? So I'm thrilled that John and Greg endorse our strategy enough to think they may use some of their own capital in Live to do it on their end. Got nothing?
Anybody?
No. Yeah.
Last one.
Michael, I think on a podcast, maybe like a year ago or so-
Uh-
You said on a major trend you were seeing was, you know, more artists booking national, global tours versus local. And I was surprised you gave a stat that I think still, like, 75% of artists are booked locally. Like, why, like, why is that happening still? And what's, what do you... Over the next five years, 10 years, how do you see that tailwind benefiting your business?
Yeah, you know, listen, we know, we know a lot of the noise that makes its way to the regulators is, you know, this is a little bit of the hardware store in Walmart, right? There's the local promoter that wants the world to stay the same. And that still is in existence on a global basis, and an agent's job is to wake up every day and call a local promoter, call AEG, and call us, and make sure that there's a competitive bid, and get the best price. So, you know, we still see locally, club level, local wise, there's a big piece of the business that the artist and the agent and the manager still will sell off.
But yes, trend data started, you know, with really 1990, with Michael Cohl and the Rolling Stones, was the first time someone bought a world tour, and it was considered the, you know, the end of the world to the local promoter and Bill Graham and all that legacy that went with that. Then slowly, artists started to go, "Maybe I should have one partner, just like I got one record label. I might want to have one idea." So that started that trend, and maybe I'll sell you just the U.S., or maybe I'll sell you a global. And that was really the rise of Live Nation and AEG. So you're now looking, you know, 15 years later, we're probably all buying somewhere in the, you know, the 20-70 tours globally or nationally, are bought by somebody.
From zero, 10, 15 years ago, so it's moving in that direction. And probably every new artist that's developed or every new manager probably wakes up and says, "I should make one phone call with my agent and find a global partner." Some of the historic promoter or historic managers or artists maybe have some more relationships they're holding on to. So we think it's the future. I don't think it's ever all the way there. I think there's always why we always say we're a local and national company. We have 100 offices in 40 countries, and that local job is to execute Coldplay when they're in town, and go hunt and acquire local tours or local dates for the local venues. So we think it's a combination. On scale, it's still way local versus global.
On quality, it's probably touring versus local. I think over time, it continues to tread on a global basis, but I think it's still a, you know, a 50/50 business in the end. So it's why we actually can't just be a central company. We've always prided... We can't just have a global, central buying department that buys. We gotta actually have feet on the ground in market that can execute, and while you're executing that global tour, you're buying local, local talent, too , to fill your pipe. So it's a, a dual combination you have to build out.
Hi, Angela Simonton from ClearBridge. I was wondering if you could maybe talk a little bit about the non-fee-bearing ticketing revenue and maybe what the composition looks like today between the consumer-facing revenue and the revenue that is facing the artist, events, venues. And then kind of going forward, how you see that composition evolving as the big driver, sort of the venue promoter, artist piece, how is the consumer piece kind of growing and kind of maybe you laid out a lot of buckets within that.
Yeah.
What are, like, the top two or three of those biggest buckets that will be driving that?
I'll start, and then Joe, fill in. You know, we do think of the business kind of like an enterprise business and then a consumer business, right? That's how we kind of run it internally. So we've always been pushing Ticketmaster to be much more of an enterprise platform, and they wake up every day and say, "I gotta go get a customer to use my platform," a venue, and depending on what size the venue. Our goal should be, which has been now moving in that direction, was when you get that customer and you deliver that Ticketmaster platform, what other products can I sell that customer?
Because I have data, I have analytics, I have capacity. So on the enterprise center, non-fee-bearing tickets, we've had some great upgrades the last couple of years based around our analytic pricing models.
We're able to charge for that. So that's been kind of our first step forward in the enterprise side. The consumer side, we started a while ago with our ticket insurance, and that side is the biggest side because it's just scalable, right? If we launch our travel company there, we're testing that right now. You have such scale on that side that you can really build. So we look at it in two different buckets. What products can we deliver on the enterprise that someone will pay for? And then, what new products can we drop on the consumer side? I don't know what we've said out loud.
Yeah, we haven't broken it down for competitive reasons. We don't really want to give... notwithstanding the press, there are a lot of ticketing competitors out there who'd like to have our exact economics and breakdowns, so we're not doing that. The only thing I'd add on the consumer side, and this goes back to what we were just talking about with the team right before this meeting, is Russell and Chris have developed, I mean, they've got the eight consumer products now. That, how am I using the digital ticket? How am I using the checkout process? All of these products, how do I scale them all from small to medium, from medium to large, to continue to drive that number?
So a lot of the brains behind that is actually in our sponsorship organization, is thinking about, okay, how am I gonna help a brand connect with a fan on that Ticketmaster platform that we can extract some money from?
Not very specific, but at least strategically, we're giving you.
Yeah.
It's huge. It's been a great priority and really impressive numbers. You mentioned regulatory. I'll just say to talk about the legislative side, just so we're clear, and everyone kind of knows where we stand there. You know, it was a, geez, we joked this morning, it was a year ago, backstage, talking to drama. So we've learned a lot in a year. Better have a better government relations department, so we've staffed up our Washington presence. We've spent a lot of time, Joe and I, meeting with legislators. It's been interesting. So you know, I would say this, the good news and the bad news. The reality is, a year later, there's not much legislation that can really get done in the end, as we all know.
So, we had dreams earlier that maybe we could convince regulators that the challenges in our business that are most pressing tend to be around the onsale and the scalper, right? The circle we go through every day, the unhappy customer that maybe blames us or me and my inbox is, "I'm Olivia fan, I want a ticket." We're already starting with some crazy demand-supply problem, as that chart showed you, right? I'm, 7 million fans want 700,000 tickets. So no matter what you do on onsale, you're pissing off 6 million young fans that can't get a ticket, and they listen to every song, and they follow them. So that's never easy, and that's why any ticketing company, whoever you are, is probably always gonna have an NPS score that's tough, right?
It's a tough business to tell anybody, "You can't get in the party." The second problem, though, and that'd be one problem, if we could just do, and we're doing better and better at transparency, and how many tickets, and you're in line, and all those things. They're still unhappy they can't get a ticket. What they really get mad at, about, though, is at 10:01 A.M., why is there 10 pages of scalpers selling $2,000 tickets? Now I don't trust the system. I think you, Ticketmaster, must have actually delivered the tickets at 10:00 A.M., you didn't give them to me, and I'm mad at you. And that's the circle we go in, right? Then you try to explain, "Trust me, I wish we couldn't. I wish we had better bot control.
I wish it wasn't industrialized and professionalized, but we can't, you know, we can't get legislation." We can't get anyone to talk about and really deal with that, because in America, you know that idea that the ticket is free, and who owns it, and it's freely transferable, we go through this, kind of, this mess. We had visions a couple of years ago that a digital ticket could help us, right? Because when you go from a barcode to digital, maybe you can put some control in place, so an artist could be able to say, "You know what? I don't want my ticket transferred, or you can transfer it, but like I'm doing on Tyler Childers, it's face value. Or you know what? Put a 20% cap on it.
Make some money, but let's not, let's be fair to the artist who didn't charge market and wants the fan to get it at the right price. Let's preserve that." We haven't been able to get any of that stuff really done. We fight every state, some level of a scalper lobbyist that's gone to Congress and state, doing the anti-transfer bill. They're very, very scared that the ticket has any restrictions on it, because they want it freely transferred. So, you know, the good news is, you know, a year later, there's no legislation in any state that worries us at all. Most of it is around all-in pricing. We jumped ahead this year.
We've decided through our tailor and our last year experience, we've got to do a better job of leading and jumping out on things like no merch cut in our venues, all-in pricing. We'll have a few more policies we'll roll out. So, all-in pricing, we're ahead of that. Hopefully, they industrialize that everywhere. That's good for the industry. We hope they put some more teeth around a BOTS Act spec selling, some of the fringe stuff. They may get done. Different bills come and go. So that's all we really see legislative-wise. Probably won't get any real dream of stopping bots or stopping scalpers or limiting... But you know, they're nipping at the heels. I think we've done a good job educating this year. And when you walk in, they have this perception on how the business is run.
Thankfully, you can deal with their staff, and they understan "Oh, the - oh, the, oh, I see. The artist doesn't, the scalper, the... Oh, I understand. The venue sets the service fee, not you." You know, so we've done a good job educating all year, and that's probably been our best skill at making sure that a bill that's rooted in kind of a conspiracy versus facts doesn't get passed through. So we're very in tune with every state, federal, could-be bill that's brewing around, and all of it is supportive around when we launched our Fair Ticketing Act as a way to kind of say, "Here's what we stand for." So we don't see any legislation, national or state by state, that will do anything to our business that we wouldn't be aligned to.
We'll take one last question.
I just wanted to follow up on that. I have a question. You set the paradigm with Pearl Jam right before the pandemic about having tickets that are capped on the resale market. But so it's clearly there's an ability to do that from a, you know, a state-by-state perspective. Why aren't more artists doing that? And is it incumbent on the promoter to help the artists, to, you know, make the fans think the system isn't rigged by implementing those sort of things?
Yeah, I think... You know, the artist's job is to do what they do best, right? Write great songs and perform. They're pretty smart to think this looks pretty hot.
But they're brand builders also, right?
Yeah, but I think they're also, you know, Zach Bryan tried to do a no transfer. You know, I think he kind of, you know... The world of dressed-up bots and scalpers and who hits you on Twitter and who takes, you know, there's lots of noise out there, right? And the noise ain't coming from the good side. So, I think the tools are out there, where, you know, face value exchange is a big idea because it gives an artist a real credible way to say, "We're not against transferring or reselling the tickets." And that's a big difference than, you know, "Don't resell my ticket." Tyler Childers, we just did, is great. If you can't go and you want to resell it, you want to...
Great, we should give you a place to do it. We like that platform because it still talks about an exchange. We're not limiting anyone's ability to give it to your grandmother or your sister, or all those theories that they come up with on why, you kno n-transfer is bad. So I think you'll see more of that come because it doesn't have that. It doesn't come with that baggage of, "Now I'm really saying it's not transferable." And then it, the non-transferable just creates this, this great talking point that the other side gets to use. It says, "Now I can't give it to my sister, I'm sick. Oh, my God!" You know, so transferability is a good thing.
We think transferability with pricing on it, limits would be great for the artist and fan, but we'll start at face value as a good foundational tool that those that want to do it.
Yeah, it seems like that kind of is the middle ground that no one could argue with.
Yeah.
Except the scalpers.
Well, and also, you know, the other thing we've noticed, that you've seen this year and is the artist is starting to price it a little smarter, right? I mean, it comes with some baggage. We, you know, we all, you're all going to live a little bit of the press on that for that 9%, but if any of us could sing and dance like these artists, you, you wouldn't, you wouldn't be letting those front rows go to the secondary provider while you're charging way under market. So they're getting, they're getting smarter at, "Okay, let's, let's increase the front row." Now, the biggest strategy we always talk about with the artist isn't about increase the front row, it's make sure there's no blue dots.
The best way to make sure blue dots is lower the price on the back end, so your gross is still the same, but be smarter about, you know, pricing the front a little bit, so you can subsidize the back, so you get a full house. That's the magic of the game of dynamic pricing. Most people only talk about the front end part of it, but it gives you great flexibility to price the house better and get a complete sellout. All right. Thank you, guys. We're gonna open the bar. Everybody's gonna be around for a while. Russell, Chris, a bunch of people from the sponsorship team are here if you want to talk to them. John Reid, who runs our European concerts business, so I know we've talked a lot about international.
If any of you guys want to hear something about international from a guy without an American accent, you can talk to John over there. But we'll be around for a while as well. Thank you.