Morgan Wallen Signs With Austin Neal for Management
Written by djfrosty on July 11, 2024
Morgan Wallen has signed with his longtime booking agent Austin Neal for management via Neal and Wallen’s newly formed firm, Sticks Management, Billboard has confirmed. Wallen will be the firm’s only client.
Wallen was previously managed by Big Loud partner/CEO Seth England alongside K21’s Kathleen Flaherty, who will now serve as executive director of the Morgan Wallen Foundation on a full-time basis. Wallen’s relationship with his label, England’s Big Loud Records, will remain the same, and England and Neal will continue collaborating on Wallen’s career strategy. HITS was first to report the news.
Neal began booking Wallen under the radar in the fall of 2021 several months after the country star was dropped by WME over his use of a racial slur. The following February, the partnership was made official when Neal announced the launch of The Neal Agency with Wallen onboard as a client.
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England, who was named Billboard‘s 2024 Country Power Players Executive of the Year in May, began managing Wallen shortly after signing the then-rising singer-songwriter to Big Loud Records in 2016. Since that time, Wallen’s stardom has expanded beyond the bounds of country, with the singer scoring two nine top 10 hits on the Billboard Hot 100, including two long-running No. 1s: 2023’s “Last Night” (16 weeks at the top) and his Post Malone collaboration “I Had Some Help,” which spent six weeks atop the tally earlier this year. Wallen has also racked up two No. 1 albums on the Billboard 200: 2021’s Dangerous: The Double Album and last year’s One Thing at a Time, which spent 19 weeks at the chart’s summit, surpassing Garth Brooks‘ Ropin’ the Wind as the longest-running No. 1 country album ever on the tally.
On the touring front, Wallen scored the fourth-highest-grossing concert tour of 2023, according to Billboard Boxscore, taking in $260.4 million from 44 shows. More recently, he played to 50,000 fans when he headlined BST’s Hyde Park in London on July 4, marking the largest country concert ever held in the United Kingdom. His most recent single, “Lies Lies Lies,” was released on July 5.
Billboard has reached out to England and Flaherty for comment.