I just got off the phone with Irving Azoff.\u00c2\u00a0 Doesn’t matter what you think of him, his reputation for veracity, because as Sting so famously sang, it’s a brand new day.\u00c2\u00a0 Irving’s chairman of a public company.\u00c2\u00a0 He can’t lie.<\/p>\n
Then again, if the "New York Post" can get it so wrong and Wall Street bankers live in a world where the laws only benefit them and don’t ever hurt them, is what Irving says true?<\/p>\n
Because I’m a moron, I accepted the Rihanna story in the "New York Post" at face value.\u00c2\u00a0 I forgot to delve deeper.\u00c2\u00a0 To see what agendas might be involved.<\/p>\n
Like that of the writer.\u00c2\u00a0 Who is or is not speaking to this person?\u00c2\u00a0 Who gets no credit, but whose name is known to all those on the inside.<\/p>\n
Now I don’t want to say Live Nation is great, everybody hates the company, on principle.\u00c2\u00a0 Because it’s tied in with Ticketmaster, because ever since the Sillerman roll-up concert tickets have gone through the roof and you’ve got to point your finger somewhere, and it’s quite accurate to point it there.<\/p>\n
1. There are 56 sold out Rihanna dates in Europe including 9 02’s.\u00c2\u00a0 Live Nation has the tour worldwide and it’s all cross-collateralized.<\/p>\n
(Speak to any touring pro and they’ll tell you that the European business is healthier, that promoters can make more money there.)<\/p>\n
2. 64% of tickets for Rihanna’s domestic shows have already been sold.\u00c2\u00a0 And right now, they’re selling at the rate of 700 a day.<\/p>\n
3. Rihanna’s Boston show is four months out.\u00c2\u00a0 Projections say that 90% of the seats will be sold by showtime.\u00c2\u00a0 Yes, those are just projections, take them however you want.\u00c2\u00a0 But there are other inaccuracies in the "Post" story.\u00c2\u00a0 It states that break even is 15,000 when only 13,500 seats are for sale.\u00c2\u00a0 And it says that 3,700 tickets have been sold when the actual count is 5,800.\u00c2\u00a0 Begging where the writer got her information, because it’s so wrong.<\/div>\n
Now I also spoke to an unnamed Ticketmaster source who gave me some numbers for that company.<\/p>\n
Year to year, the company is up 4%.\u00c2\u00a0 That’s 12% international and 2% domestic.<\/p>\n
In the U.S., concerts are up 8% and sports, arts and family shows bring the number down to 2%.<\/p>\n
So there you have it.<\/p>\n
Does this mean there’s going to be a healthy touring season this summer?<\/p>\n
No, that’s still unclear.\u00c2\u00a0 And the reason I linked to the "Post" article was it doesn’t feel like business is going to be boffo at the b.o.<\/p>\n
Then again, how do we explain Coachella?\u00c2\u00a0 Turns out that’s an institution, it doesn’t matter who plays.<\/p>\n
But it does matter who plays at Bonnaroo, that no longer sells out.<\/p>\n
But Lollapalooza and Austin City Limits are gold mines, people are clamoring to go.<\/p>\n
I believe there are not enough superstars and tickets are overpriced and that that will be reflected in the final numbers.<\/p>\n
But ultimately it is about numbers.\u00c2\u00a0 And I wanted to clue you in.<\/p>\n
We’ll see what happens.<\/p>\n
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Who told the "New York Post" the Rihanna tour was a stiff? Slow going for Rihanna tour I just got off the phone with Irving Azoff.\u00c2\u00a0 Doesn’t matter what you think of him, his reputation for veracity, because as Sting so famously sang, it’s a brand new day.\u00c2\u00a0 Irving’s chairman of a public company.\u00c2\u00a0 He […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3965","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-music-business"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p96vPs-11X","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3965","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3965"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3965\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3966,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3965\/revisions\/3966"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3965"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3965"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3965"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}