Award Winners Power Panel

sponsored by Cast & Crew Live Entertainment

Panelists:

Tad Bowman, Red Rocks Amphitheatre

Amphitheater of the Year 2022

David Kells, Bridgestone Arena and F&M Bank Arena

Venue Executive of the Year 2022

Andrew Saunders, Seminole Hard Rock

Casino Buyer of the Year 2022

Aaron Tannenbaum, WME

Agent of the Year 2022

Moderated by:

Renee Alexander, Minnesota State Fair

Fair/Expo of the Year 2022

Moderator Renee Alexander asked her panelists to rate last year of a scale of 1 – 10 and also mention specific challenges.

Challenges & Sustainability

David Kells gave 2022 an 8 out of 10 and noted, “Nothing's ever perfect; nothing's ever completely easy. We've dealt with a lot of the challenges that everybody has, like front of house staffing issues. Those now have seemed to turn a corner, but that was something that was worked on for several years. With the volume of content out there, how do you have enough stagehands? For Nashville, as a market, there's us, the soccer stadium, the Ryman, and two amphitheaters. If we all have something humming that night, are there enough people to unload trucks? Those are the things we're struggling with. But we always find a way to make the shows work. They all happen safely. I'd say the volume for the next 12 - 18 months appears to be about the same. We have five holds on some dates.”

Tad Bowman gave last year a 9+ rating. “Just to let you know, Red Rocks is owned and managed by the City and County of Denver. I'm a city employee. Been with the same agency for 36 years. Kind of hard to believe.” Bowman, who did 200+ shows at Red Rocks Amphitheatre this year, agreed that staffing issues have been a problem and added that being an outdoor venue means weather challenges.  “Some staffing issues just due to the fact that it is cold,” he said. “Nice diversity of programming this year. Lots of opportunities for us and our staff to learn about some things. The business of Red Rocks has really changed over time. When I started 36 years ago, we were doing 35-40 shows a year and before that maybe even less. Over the last several years, it kept growing, growing, growing, to where we're doing almost every night from early April to the middle of November now. So even months that people would normally consider to be cold and snowy in Denver, those are the dates some of the artists pick, if they want to play at Red Rocks. Next year, it looks like we're booked about the same amount as this year. So just about every day from April to November.”

“Our past year has been phenomenal. I would give it an 8 out of 10,” said Andrew Saunders. “Definitely some room to continue the growth, but we've made a splash with our flagship property in Hollywood, Florida with Hard Rock Live, with 4-show runs with Sebastian Maniscalco, Paramore, and Guns ‘N Roses. We just did two with John Mayer last week, so it's really become a mainstay in the South Florida market, frankly, and in the country. Next year, I look forward to continuing to grow and use that as a halo effect for the rest of our properties around the country and the world. But it was a phenomenal year for the company and for the Seminole Tribe. And we have Morrissey tonight. I won't accept that it's not sustainable. I think that we're going to find a way to continue to do 140, 150 shows a year in Hollywood. Each of our other properties has their own unique personalities and needs. We've hired a significant number of full time management staff to run the building because we were not built to do 140 shows a year in that room – we were initially planning to do 70 to 80. That's a great investment for us to make into the team and into the company. I don't see us slowing down anytime soon.”

From the agency perspective, Aaron Tannenbaum believes that the business is healthy, “I can only speak for the company I work for, but I assume it's pretty consistent across all agencies. There is more volume, but anyone who is in the touring business will know every year everyone says, ‘gosh, there's so much traffic this year.’ And then they say it again the next year, and then the next year, and then the next year. So I don't necessarily think that. It may have increased to a degree, but it doesn't seem to be creating any kind of ticket sales constriction. I'd go a step further and say that I think the reason why the volume has increased is there used to be just one gatekeeper – music discovery was with radio. Now, because of the strength of all the streaming platforms, there's not a bottleneck anymore. Someone that has zero presence on terrestrial radio can become a superstar and play places like you gentlemen and lady take care of. And sure, we could have a recession at some point, but that doesn't just affect the music business, it affects all businesses. So to say you're immune to something would be irresponsible.”

Price Resistance and Dynamic Pricing

“What about price resistance,” Alexander asked. “Are you seeing any?  Do all of you use dynamic pricing?”

Bowman answered, “Right now I think we're feeling really good. Even when there was a downturn in the economy, people still came out to shows. At Red Rocks we're doing shows, like I said, seven nights a week.

Kells added, “Tennessee just put all-in pricing in place.  Now, on Ticketmaster, the price you see is the price you pay. There are no fees after the fact. The buyer may not see the all-in price on a secondary site, so it may appear cheaper than the primary on some points. That is a learning curve that we're going through right now.”

“My goal every day is to create experiences that simply don't exist elsewhere,” said Saunders. “A prime example of that would be the Rolling Stones. We played them in November 2021. We were the only non-NFL stadium on the run. And they played in front of a red curtain with no production – without millions of dollars of production. The hypothesis behind our general strategy is that people will pay for an experience that is different and unique. And we absolutely have higher price tickets than you'll find at the other buildings in town. With all due respect to everybody else in town, people will pay to sit in a more comfortable chair. They will pay to sit closer to an artist. And we've seen that yield fantastically for us, and not just on the casino high roller side. I'm talking about selling tickets for cash to people that have no interest in a slot machine.”

Alexander asked Tannenbaum if his artists are more in tune to ticket pricing and if they’re paying attention to scaling. “I can only speak to the clients that I work with – it's less the artists, more the managers, and it's a spectrum of how much they participate with me in setting scaling. When I do it, it's a lot of conversations with promoters. I am a huge fan of dynamic ticketing. In fact, I think music is so far behind the airlines and hotels in using that, whether it's increasing or decreasing. If we're smart, we’ll use it more and more and more. I love it. Some managers have a perceptual issue with it because they don't want their fans to see that you're changing. Even if you could get X dollars for a ticket, they don't want people talking about this artist charged X dollars for a ticket. Even though the scalper bought it and is selling it for X dollars on other platforms. If you aren't a fan of scalpers, you should be a fan of dynamic pricing. It’s the only reason scalpers are in business – they make money between what you charged and what you should have charged. So I love dynamic pricing. It's a valuable tool and I'm glad the ticketing platforms have invested money and the technology to take care of it.”

Ticketing Legislation and Chargebacks

“I think all of us need to have more of an invested partnership with our elected officials. If you have a regular conversation with their staffers, there's more of an understanding of what we do for our business versus somebody in their ear telling them something that doesn't reflect how it is in the real world.” Bowman added. “Last summer, there was an effort to pass a state bill in Colorado for improving ticketing operations. It was brought about by some of the venues, promoters and primary ticket sellers in town and one of the state senators. This thing was really trying to take care of bots, speculative, and people that put out websites that look like our website. If you try to buy a ticket at Red Rocks online, you're going to see a lot of fake websites and people will buy tickets off them. Those tickets may not be good. So there was a lot of effort to get that bill done. Kells talked about education. If you listen to these legislative proceedings, they just don't know what the industry is about. And they're the ones that are voting on whether to pass this bill. Ultimately -- through a lot of effort and even though there was resistance from some of the resellers -- the legislation passed but our governor vetoed it. He had concerns about the conflict between people's rights to buy and resell their tickets and resell tickets, primary sellers, and people who operate venues. It's still a challenge. Our accessible seating at Red Rocks is very difficult. It's either the first row or the last row. The first row is very lucrative for people. We have a new procedure for buying that ticket and reselling it. Just last week, we figured out that there's a reseller who makes fake names, fake accounts, and fake driver's license and sends those fake driver's license to people so they can get into those row one seats.”

“If people are creating fake driver's licenses to scalp tickets, that shows how much of money there is to be made,” said Saunders. “We have very aggressive dynamic pricing initiatives. And that's so that we can afford to pay the artists what we are paying them. It's not to gouge anybody. I think that our industry has done a pretty terrible job of educating the public about why certain things happen and why ticket prices look the way they do. Other industries don't have the PR issues that we're currently experiencing. Airlines or sporting events don't encounter the same level of virality on complaining about price gouging.”

Tannenbaum stated that ticketing legislation is “the last thing any of my artists are thinking about. When asked about transferable tickets, he added, “Yeah, some artists are more sensitive, and some artists have the luxury of caring. Some artists are trying to make the jump from theater to arena and they don't care how tickets get sold. In terms of laws, the only thing I could speak to is international touring over the past few years -- understanding each country's ticketing laws. It's very different in France than in the UK and Switzerland, et cetera.”

“It'll be interesting to see if that happens in the U.S. What if we're looking at this state by state?” pondered Alexander. “If there's different legislation by state, that can have a long term effect. A ticketing issue that's come up for the last couple years is chargebacks. Have you guys dealt with the bane of my existence -- chargebacks?”

Kells responded, “Online shoplifting is what I call it. I buy something on an Amex. I have X number of days to refute that charge. If I buy a ticket the day of the show, I can refute the charge the next day even though the ticket was scanned and used. There's no proof that I used it. I could have passed it to somebody else. All credit card companies are going to side with the card holder versus us, and that money just evaporates. It seems like it was a bad -- a high enough volume -- several years ago. But we curtailed a good bit by turning off certain sales at certain points -- you kind of know who's going to grab what inventory and when -- specifically on the stuff that we control, like inside sales or game sales. We know certain things we're not going to sell in a three-week window. If somebody's making plans months and months out, they're not going to charge back. They're making their plans, and they're coming to that game. You see the challenges on the shorter window items. It's the secondary too. It's a scalper selling the ticket again. The person uses the ticket, it scans, it's legit, and then the charge is refuted after the fact.”

At the Minnesota State Fair, Alexander sees chargebacks on gate admission. “It's that quick buy, right before coming in the gate and then they turn around.”

Weapons Policies & Bomb Sweeps

Alexander posed the question about weapons policies. Bridgestone uses EVOLV metal detectors at most entrances to enforce their no outside weapons policy. There are other magnetometers at the remaining entrances.  He added, “We've tried to hammer home our limited bag policy. The quickest way in the building is not to bring a bag, but some fan bases are just going carry more things with them and we want to be accommodating. Backstage security is tighter than it used to be. There are more metal detectors. We now have those conveyor belt security metal detectors for all packages that come in. If it comes off the FedEx truck, it goes through that thing. We weren't doing that type of stuff ten years ago.  Most shows have bomb sweeps, usually the show's request. It’s more and more frequent.

Red Rocks started bomb sweeps with Denver Police a few years ago. “Every single show, they do a sweep of the backstage area, the stage area, and some of the seating area,” said Bowman. “Denver is concealed carry. You must have a permit for concealed carry. And at the venue, we're able to say no weapons allowed.  We do not get much pushback on that.  Occasionally, we get a police officer from a different district, but we work with our DPD to get that taken care of.  They'll log it and make sure they know who they are and that it's all legitimate and so forth.”

Andrew notes that his venue is on tribal land, sovereign land in the state of Florida. No guns are allowed on this plot of land. “Of course, it's Florida,” Saunders said. “Guns make their way into the building. We also have EVOLV and, if weapons are detected, they are asked to leave the property with them. Obviously, no one wants any kind of firearms in a large setting where people are drinking.”

Alexander agreed and added, “But as a venue that was sued in order to allow them, I can tell you there are people who think that they should.”

“As an agent sending an artist to a venue, there's some inherent trust in a venue or promoter that you’ve worked with,” Tannenbaum said.  “You trust they know what they're doing, and they're taking care of security in an appropriate way. Back to the international thing, Europe is different. It's not an issue. It's just a different culture.”

Weather

Alexander took the conversation to weather. “As an outdoor venue, in addition to weapons, weather is one of the things that keeps me up at night.” Bowman agreed, ”Weather can be an issue from time to time, just like any outdoor venue. There's not a lot of shelter space at Red Rocks. Out of 9,000 people, we could shelter 1,500 - 2,000 people inside the venue. We have a weather service, just like most outdoor venues – the same weather service that services the large stadiums in town. They'll call us whenever storms are approaching. We track that. We use radar on an iPad. We're watching weather all the time. I mean, sometimes I can't wait for the season to be over so I don't have to watch the weather because that’s all I do all summer long. It’s great just to delay doors for an hour and then get the show started. The worst is when you've got 3,000 - 4,000 people in the venue and the weather service calls with a storm cell warning. Now you're trying to stop other people from coming in, telling those people to go back to their car where they can seek shelter. At Red Rocks, some people park a mile away. Those are all challenges we deal with on a regular basis. We had the one major incident that a lot of people heard about, right? We had a hail storm that developed right above Red Rocks. The next day, weather guys told us that a mile north and a mile south there was no hail at all. The demographic of that audience was young female. They came without weather gear, wearing shorts and t-shirts -- nothing to protect them in case of weather. We did an after action. Actually, we've done after actions several times. I’m kind of tired of talking about hail, as a matter of fact. But we have tried to adjust where we can -- the slides we put up on the screen to tell people about weather, the announcements we make. Those are really the big tools that we can use. Then there's looking at other options for notification. We want to do a better job of telling people ahead of time to be weather aware when you come to a show at Red Rocks. What to bring. At Red Rocks, we must allow bags to come in. We're actually putting together a little slide for our website -- these are the things you should bring to a show at Red Rocks: a raincoat, a sweatshirt, things that will help you when you're outside in a weather condition.”

Florida is in the height of hurricane season. “The main rooms that I work with in Florida are indoor,” said Saunders. “As long as it's not currently hurricaning, people will come out to the show. We had a close call this past year with a hurricane in Tampa. Luckily, it didn't really hit town but, of course, I was on the phone with the agent for a show that was supposed to play the day after. Our mentality is if the artist feels unsafe coming to the show, it probably means the fans are feeling unsafe coming to the show. We'll find another time to do the show, assuming that schedules permit. We do have some outdoor looks in Florida. We just did Wu-Tang Clan at the pool in Tampa, which was an incredible show, and we were nervous. It is the height of hurricane season, but a little rain wouldn't scare any Floridian away from having a great time at the pool at Hard Rock Tampa.”

Alexander asked Tannenbaum, “Do your artists look at rain insurance?  Is WME insistent on weather insurance at big outdoor show situations?” He responded, “I am 100% confident in speaking for everyone, but I think with the larger tours playing amphitheaters or stadiums, the business manager will probably take out some sort of cancellation insurance for the client on tour. I can only speak for country here – with most country fans, if they get close to a 75 - 90 minute headliner set that's really all they expected. That's what's on the ticket. As long as everyone's flexible – cut support, cut set time, start something early – generally speaking, it would have to be something pretty catastrophic not to get in an adequate amount of time, especially if the city could be flexible on curfew. That’s just the nature of severe weather in the summer – it's usually pretty brief, at least the lightning. That's just how thunderstorms are. They're intense, but they're usually done relatively quickly. Can we get in 75 minutes? We've got literally from doors to curfew to figure that out. We’re working with our venue partners and a savvy road manager who's in constant communication with the venue.”

Crystal Ball Predictions

Alexander wrapped her session by asking for a prediction from each panelist for the next year.

Kells: “49 Winchester, a band opening for Luke Combs. I think they're going to be big. I think they're going to sell a lot of tickets.”

Bowman: “First, I told David that I predict he'll win at least three more awards at all of these award shows. I predict I'll continue to have to look up on YouTube some of these artists that we get booked at our venue because I don't know who they are. And lastly, the success of the Sphere in Las Vegas will make all of us want to wrap our buildings in LED bulbs and there'll be a shortage of LEDs and President Biden will have to open up LED factories.”

Saunders: “I'm really enjoying this moment in our business because of what virality can do for artists. We see headliners that are coming faster than ever. By the end of 2024, we're going to have many, many arena headlining artists that none of us on this stage have heard of today. It's super exciting, but it means that we need to have our fingers on the pulse more than ever before, both on the comedy side and the music side.”

Tannenbaum: “I would say dynamic pricing will become more and more ubiquitous throughout the industry and more sophisticated. And I think ticket prices will probably continue to go up, just as everything usually gets more expensive over the years. We can do what we can to try and prevent that, but I think it's an inevitability.”