Risk Takers & Trendsetters: The Big Boom in Small Cap Venues
Panelists:
Bill Blumenreich, Bill Blumenreich Presents
Joy Brown, Orpheum Theatre (Memphis)
Stephen Chilton, Psyko Steve Presents
Jill Kratish, Broward Center For The Performing Arts
Nick Szatmari, Universal Attractions Agency
Moderated by:
Andrew Farwell, Outback Presents
Moderator Andrew Farwell began by reviewing some statistics, “This is why we’re having this discussion today: venues with capacities of 5,000 or less accounted for 24% of all overall revenue, 38% of all tickets sold, and 86% of all shows in the last 12 months. These figures outline the volume of shows we do. But, more importantly, the risks we’re taking. As we see, the revenue doesn't necessarily match up with the number of shows.”
Farwell’s panelists represent different vantage points and play different roles in booking shows. Nick Szatmari is a partner at Universal Attractions Agency. UAA has been in business for over 75 years. “I've been there the last 15 years,” he said. “I’ve watched the company grow from a handful of agents and a couple of partners to a staff of 30+ across a variety of departments, including casinos, fairs & festivals, pop & rock, and the Latin department, which I head.” Bill Blumenreich books and promotes events in his own theaters and in other venues as well. Stephen Chilton promotes shows in Arizona under Psycho Steve Presents and has been doing so for 20+ years. Eight years ago, he opened the Rebel Lounge, a 325 cap GA room. He'll do approximately 750 shows this year in Rebel Lounge and other venues. He’s also produced a few small-scale festivals. As a founding board member of NIVA (National Independent Venue Association), Chilton helped lead the Save Our Stages campaign and secure SVOG funding. Jill Kratish is the Director of Programming at the Broward Center for the Performing Arts in Fort Lauderdale. She manages four venues, ranging from 180 – 2,600 seats. The Broward Center’s mission is centered around building community through the arts and focuses on quality entertainment, educational opportunities, and creating memorable moments to drive economic vitality. Broward stages 370 self-presentations and co-promotions a year, plus 13-15 weeks of Broadway with Broadway Across America. Joy Brown is the Director of Booking and Event Operations for the Orpheum Theater in Memphis. She books a historic theater with 2,300 seats and also has a small black box theater that houses the education and community engagement department. The Orpheum Theater is a presenter of Broadway through Broadway Across America. Brown books everything else including one-night concerts, graduations, and comedy. “We definitely try and be a part of the community,” she said. “So we work really well with the hospitality and tourism industry, as well as other community and cultural arts development programs.”
Forecasting The Right Play 18 Months Out
“Broadway is the furthest out,” began Kratish. “We're dropping in our Broadway dates two years out. For the blockbusters, farther out than that.” Farwell asked about any complications with how much inventory Broadway takes on the calendar. “Constant complications. But in our big hall, Broadway is our bread and butter,” Kratish replied. “So they come first. We will put second, third, fourth holds behind our Broadway holds, but nothing else can book until Broadway locks in. Unfortunately, since the pandemic, that lock-in has been later and later. Getting tours on the road is getting more and more expensive. This is not news to any of you. So we'll lay in our season, and then things will start to move around. And with their two and three week holds, it can really cause a lot of complications.”
Chilton has October 2024 shows confirmed in his 300-cap room. “Mind-boggling,” he said. “We've got a lot confirmed through May; the calendar is pretty full. I'm in Phoenix, so I get to do festivals in December and January. I just sent out the first batch of offers for a small boutique festival in January 2025. Some agents are like, ‘what?’ But people are looking at fall 2024 right now, so our radius is going to be impacted by fall 2024 dates. So much of the business I do is developing artists. When I take someone to a 2,000 cap room, I probably booked them when less than 100 people were there. Here’s the thing with developing acts, you're working on one show for next October with a band that has only ever done one tour in 200-300 caps. They sold those out but they're looking for next October. They got the song on TikTok and an album coming out in spring, but they’ve only done one tour. Where's the history to base what you're gonna do 14 months from now? It’s really hard to predict. With a Wilco or a Manchester Orchestra, you're looking at historical data. But what do you do 14 months out with a band that’s never toured? How willing are you to take a risk and invest in the future of an artist? But one of the things I love about being in the 300 – the risks are so low. ‘Oh, you need $1,000 or $2,000? Hey, this sounds cool. Let's roll the dice.’ Hopefully we win more than we lose. Once we're in 2,000 caps, you've got to really know the deal. Once you've guaranteed $25,000 of your own money, you've got to be pretty confident. I also think the right room matters way more in small caps. Is it cool punk rock bar? The cool jazzy room? Really getting the right culture to match the artist. And if it's someone you're not really familiar with, like where does this audience land? I think there's way more variation in what those rooms are like. Are you going into a nightclub or a DIY spot? Obviously the larger the venue is, the more diversified it is. The right arena for Taylor Swift is the same as for Metallica.”
Farwell asked Blumenreich about the talent he is investing in and how far out he’s investing. “At the 1,200 cap Wilbur Theater, we have 324 shows on the books right now,” he answered. “We only have some Monday and Tuesday nights open. So we'll go out a year or further. At the Chevalier, usually about six months out. In Las Vegas, I have a resident show with Shin Lim, the card magician who won America's Got Talent. He's on a 14 year deal. The one-nighters -- we just take them as they come.”
Szatmari recalled the six-week booking windows common 10-15 years ago, “Things were organized very last minute. We're trying to plan things further and further out. For us that's a welcome change and being met with more receptivity from venues and talent buyers. We're dealing with mostly established acts. I imagine in a space like emerging acts, trends have more influence and there’s unpredictability around what's gonna be happening in 18 months. But for us, time helps us navigate conflicts better and also gets our artists in front of bigger players who are putting out major blockbuster tours. From our perspective, it's good to be able to plan 18 months from now.”
Farwell asked his panelists, “What makes a certain room, especially one in a market with multiple venues, that right play?” “A lot of factors that go into that,” answered Szatmari. “Artists always want to be growing the number of tickets they sell. So bigger is always better, right? Not always. You wanna be strategic. You wanna look at the audience. Where do they wanna go see their shows? You’re looking at similar artists. Where are they playing? Where are they successful? Where are they not? Is it a grown and sexy kind of crowd? Is it a downtown dirty kind of crowd? Do we want to be in the suburbs or in the city? There are a lot of taste factors that go into that decision. From a size perspective, you really want to be careful not to overstep your value in the market because underplaying will help you build. Scale back a bit, underplay, and stoke demand.”
Blumenreich opened The Wilbur 16 years ago. He said, “The balcony and mezzanine are very close to the stage. It looks like a big comedy club, and everybody in the audience has a good seat. When comedians do a Netflix special, they always want to do it at The Wilbur because it gives them the best audience and the best quality of show. Comedy got very hot, and I see comedians go into bigger and bigger venues. They can sell the tickets. They want the money. So that's where you have to go. I do worry about losing the quality. We did our first stadium show last year – we sold out a comedian at Fenway Park. When I got into the business, I never dreamed that was possible. ”
“That's obviously the goal – growing an artist's career,” said Farwell. “Another interesting thing that I want to touch on – when we reviewed those numbers at the beginning, it seems the small cap business is almost its own industry, a viable business within a business. We're all trying to sell tickets. But it varies so dramatically. Obviously, this has been a huge moment for live entertainment, and the number of billion-dollar-grossing tours is higher than ever. But again – why this panel is so important – talking about how viable this sector of the industry is. Venues and promoters, what makes your venue or your market attractive? What's your pitch? What are you telling agents? Why is your room the right room?”
“You have choices at the Broward Center,” Kratish answered. “You can choose the correct room for the artist at that time in our market and build them through our venues. We have a tremendous database for all kinds of acts. Our county is a third African American, a third Latino, and a third white. But we also sit right between Miami-Dade and Palm Beach County, so we are perfectly situated to pull from the tri-county area. We sell more tickets than anyone else in the state of Florida. We're consistently in Top Ten Venues lists. The last thing is we hire the best of the best to run our production teams. I regularly get complimentary emails from agents and managers saying ‘Your people are the best! My artist doesn't want to go anywhere else because you treated them like gold.’ Long ago at this conference, I heard ‘you have to have hot showers and good catering’ and I've always said that. We make sure the showers are hot, everything's clean, the equipment works, and everyone is treated like they're special.”
“Just being the Orpheum Theater in Memphis, Tennessee is a seller,” said Brown. “We’re a beautiful theater in the heart of downtown. And like Jill said, you're gonna have your nice towels. I am a hospitality girl. So I make sure everything is clean and well-furnished. I am following that rider to the T. We're going to actually treat you like family. You're not gonna be looking around for people. I'm there. Sometimes I don't have to be, but I'm there. I hire the best caterers. I vet our runners. Sometimes being the runner is not an easy job. So it's all the things.”
Szatmari added, “I can't stress enough how important those things are – what an impact good hospitality has. I remember being out with our ‘I Love the 90s’ tour. Four shows back-to-back and a lot of travel. We're all exhausted, completely drained. I think it was Bank of New Hampshire Pavilion. We get there and there are basketball courts backstage, scooters, bikes, a giant chess board, a pool – all this stuff just for talent and crew. Staff is walking around with lobster bisque for the crew. And we're all like, ‘this is Shangri-La, this is amazing.’ That level of care made such a difference on stage. Coolio, rest in peace, had a standing ovation in the middle of his set that night. So taking care of the acts makes an enormous impact and really makes a difference with which venues artists choose.”
Keeping Everyone Happy
“Several of you have boards of directors, owners, stakeholders or some ethereal being that oversees all of your bookings,” Farwell said as he segued to his next topic. “It's not always easy to keep everyone happy because happiness is subjective. How do we keep everybody happy?”
Kratish and Brown both have a board of directors. Education and community engagement are a big part of their missions. Kratish noted, “Not everything we book makes money. Some of what we book helps pay for programming that doesn't make money but serves our community. We have that balance. We have a huge educational program. We have about 125,000 students come through our doors each year for free educational programming. That programming is not designed to make money. We don't sell any tickets to it. We also have an Arts for Action program, which came out of the many, many, many EDI conversations we had during COVID. We asked ourselves ‘Who are we not serving very well?’ We opened a conversation with our local black community who said, ‘You need to open your doors to the local community, the local artists.’ So we created an initiative and our development department raised money to fund a series with local black artists. It doesn't need to make money; it's funded by some donors and some grants. Other mission-based programming – a little bit of classical, a little bit of dance. Not to make money, but to have balanced programming.”
Kratish and Brown have board members who are very, very involved and some who are not. “If we are hitting financial goals and also fulfilling the mission, our board doesn't really dig into the nitty gritty of our programming,” added Kratish. “But there are absolutely board members who have an opinion about something they’d like us to book. It's usually an arena act. They're like, ‘Why we can't have Michael Bublé?’ The good thing is that they’re all businesspeople, so they can do the math and get it.” Brown shared another example, “When we first went from handheld mags to walk-throughs, we had board members who were very concerned that they were not in the right position. That may seem like a small issue, but it was a huge conversation. And we compromised. If board members are very involved and want to see changes, whether it's operational or in programming, we have to come to the table, have a conversation, and do some negotiating.” Kratish offered another example of board involvement. “We had a board member who actually sponsored the illusionist series. He thought that was the best family show. And we were like, ‘Yes, but not in our 2,300-seat venue. We've done it, it doesn't work.’ So it's a series in our 361-seater, sponsored by one of our board members because he thought it was the right thing to do.”
Blumenreich and Chilton both “work for themselves.” Blumenreich elaborated, “It's really turned out to be a big advantage. I can make a decision in two minutes. I don't answer to anybody. But, because it's my money, I have to care.”
Chilton agreed, “It’s a risk but I just really like it. I've been very bad in my career -- not chasing things. I’ve watched someone else make a bunch of money. But I’ve had bands on a festival main stage that I booked when 30 people were in the room. I’m so excited to be a part of that. I was booking Jack Antonoff when there was 100 people in the room for Steel Train. And there are a lot of shows that aren’t about the economics. It’s about who I want on the bill.” Chilton also discussed partnering. “We partner with kind of everyone in Arizona,” said Chilton. “I do shows in basically every club in Arizona and with every combination of partnership. When I take a show to one venue, I'm getting three emails from three other venues. It's massaging all those relationships, always being super transparent and honest with everyone, and telling people really why it did or didn't happen. Most people are pretty reasonable.”
Farwell asked Szatmari, “What do you need to do to make your clients happy? Is it more than just making sure that their calendar is full?” He replied, “As a partner, I want my other partners to be happy with the job that we're doing. Anybody in a leadership position knows leadership is more about serving than being served. We want our employees to be happy and have a good place to work. We've had very low turnover, and we’re very proud of that. Externally, you've touched on one of the central paradoxes of being an agent – who's the boss? I represent a client. I'm literally the person who does business on their behalf. So ultimately, their needs have to come first, right? What about the customer that walks into your shop to spend money, aren't they always right? Are we talking about two entities that are in perfect harmony? Hardly. An artist wants to earn a million dollars for an hour, and someone wants to pay $10,000. So how do you square that circle? It's really tough sometimes. Artists come and go. Careers rise and fall. Venues open and close. Then you see people with 20, 30, 40-year careers. It's all about relationships with both sides of the table. Trying to convince everybody to be the least unhappy in a compromising situation. At the end of the day, we have to represent our clients and we have to please the customers that shop at our store. I don't know that I have a definitive answer to that except that there's a constant push and pull. And a good deal is sometimes, like I said, when everybody's the least unhappy with the outcome.”
Chilton agreed, “Sometimes the right rooms aren’t available. And sometimes you have to make something happen. There are all the reasons why it’s not really right but an artist/agent really needs the date. After the show, I get an angry call about how unhappy the artist was with all the things that I explained to them weren’t gonna be right. I have to remind the agent ‘I told you. We knew that going in.’ We knew it wasn't the right play, but it was the only play that could work on the date that they needed. Almost everything we do is routed. And yeah, we knew that wasn't the right situation but we tried to make it the best we could.”
“Not always the easiest,” Farwell summarized. “Communication is key. This is a relationship-based industry. Keeping everyone you can happy. Keeping that communication line open. Really important to success.”
Sustaining the Business
To introduce his final takeaway, Farwell began, “We're going to talk about ticket sales and sustainability. How much longer can this last? I think everybody has seen record numbers in their buildings. Hopefully that is going to last forever, but good things don't always last. There is a paradigm shift in the development of what the live industry means to the music and entertainment industry. That is undeniable. Everyone else is finally realizing that we were ahead of the game. What has caused this? Why is there such a glut of tours, of tickets being sold, of record average ticket prices, grosses, everything? What's the main factor?”
Blumenreich was quick to respond, “Social media. I started 35, 40 years ago in comedy clubs. Back then, if a comedian got on the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson and was very funny, that meant another 350 tickets in Boston that weekend, which was huge for us at the time. Back then, a good comedian was making $2,000 per week. But now with social media – I'll give you an example: I do a lot of shows with John Mulaney. During COVID, I noticed that John was doing some very small shows in New York at City Winery. I think it was like 50 or 60 podded people a show. It was selling like crazy. So I bought 51 shows for Boston. And these tickets sold like crazy. It was all young girls in the audience. I found out he's on TikTok all the time. That's how he sold it. Acts can hit a thousand times more potential customers than TV or radio used to. When I got in the business, you had to be in the newspaper. We never advertise in the newspaper anymore. You had to be on TV and radio. We don't do too much of that at all anymore. It's all social media, and social media is changing. We've all seen what happened with Matt Rife this year. I don't get it, but the business is there.”
‘We're booking bands that are still in high school,” said Chilton. “Because we do so much with developing acts, obviously the audience is young. Like college and high school kids. Their musical tastes are so much more varied than when I was in high school. Kids will go to a punk rock show one night, to a hip-hop show the next night, then a pop show. The audience is more open to all these things because they're listening to all this Spotify and YouTube. How they're discovering music isn't by genre. The kids who go see Kendrick Lamar go to Taylor Swift and want to go see, you know, Ghost.”
“If the question is sustainable, the answer is no,” Kratish said. “I am not an economist, but many of us have been in this business for a while. We remember 2008. And we all took a hit. Housing crashed. Salaries had to go down. People were being much more careful with their money because they felt poorer. Right now in many markets, housing prices are astronomical. A lot of people have been given raises because cost of living has gone up so much. I think we need to remember that there's no way this can be sustainable. And let's be honest, all the smart people got out of the industry during COVID. They got out of this craziness. So there are a lot of new folks in the business. They haven't been in the business for the past 20 years. This new run of people isn’t necessarily as experienced. We are in a high; we will have a low. And we all need to keep diversifying our programming to protect against that.”
For Brown, labor shortages and other pain points are a result of the big influx of entertainment options. She said, “We had to really take a hard look at how to reinvent our staffing -- bringing in an HR person, retraining, doing some redaction in our job descriptions. We had to do some grassroots recruiting. We're still short in some places. We have housekeeping staff this day, and the next day they may or may not show up. We've hired more people. We've hired backup. We're cross-training.”
“For the fan, the live experience is a lot less optional or peripheral to the human experience than we all might think,” said Szatmari. “The experience is very cathartic. People had been stuck in their houses for three years. Everybody was clamoring to get out. I think we're still seeing a lot of that. You also had a huge influx of government funding behind the pandemic. So it’s those factors combined with some non-economic factors. From pure demand and supply, artist fees have been driven up a lot faster than any other spike we've seen over the last 10-15 years. I definitely agree with Jill -- none of this is completely sustainable. But our industry is very nimble. If a show's not selling, we make adjustments.”
Chilton added, “There will be a downturn at some point. But I think we’ve experienced a fundamental shift with Gen Z. They are dramatically different from older Millennials and certainly Gen X. They're buying fewer and cheaper cars because they value their travel and experiences more. Gen Z goes to 1.5x more shows than Millennials did. It is big economic trend, and I don't think it will be cyclical. I believe it is independent of the sort of economic trends we’ve discussed. I hope it will be long-term for, you know, hopefully decades.”