AEG
Young Thug might be home from jail, but he’s still facing a multi-million dollar legal battle with concert giant AEG over a touring partnership gone sour.
In new legal filings, attorneys for AEG say they’re pushing ahead with a civil lawsuit, first filed way back in 2020, accusing the rapper of violating a touring agreement. AEG says Thug owes more than $5 million under the deal — and that he’s now obligated to hand over some of his music to pay down the debt.
The lawsuit has been delayed by Thug’s years-long criminal drama, in which Atlanta prosecutors accused him of running a violent gang. But after the superstar pleaded guilty and was released from jail last month, AEG now says it wants its money.
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“Proceedings in this action have been hampered for more than two years by reason of Mr. Williams’ incarceration,” the company’s lawyers wrote in a Friday’s court filing. “So long as Mr. Williams does not violate the terms of his probation, his criminal proceedings should no longer affect the parties’ ability to complete discovery and motion practice, or to bring the case to trial.”
AEG sued Thug in December 2020, claiming he had breached a 2017 touring agreement that gave the company the exclusive right to promote his concerts. AEG alleged that Thug had “immediately failed and refused to honor” the deal after it had been signed, including by performing shows without the promoter’s involvement and pocketing the proceeds.
Under the terms of the deal, AEG claims Thug was paid a $5.3 million advance – a sum the company says was never paid back after he breached his deal. More significantly, AEG says that debt was secured with Thug’s copyrights to his songs as collateral – and that AEG can now claim an interest in the revenue generated by such intellectual property.
“Such copyrights constituted collateral that was subject to the security agreement,” the company wrote in its 2020 complaint. “AEG has the right, pursuant to [agreement], to require that [Thug’s publishing company] and Mr. Williams assemble such [copyrights] and turn them over to AEG.”
After nearly four years, such a case would typically have resulted in a trial or a settlement by now. But the lawsuit against Thug was put on indefinite hold in May 2022, when the rapper was arrested and charged in a sweeping racketeering indictment that claimed his YSL group was a violent gang that had wrought “havoc” on the Atlanta area for nearly a decade.
After sitting in jail for more than two years during the longest-running trial in Georgia history, Thug pleaded guilty last month and was sentenced to serve only probation — a stunning end to a legal saga that could have seen him face a lifetime prison sentence.
For AEG’s attorneys, however, the end of Thug’s criminal case is just the start of the re-booted civil lawsuit – and also a chance to proceed on new accusations that the rapper has attempted to hide his copyrights.
In a court filing this summer, AEG’s lawyers said they had recently learned that Thug had sold more than 400 copyrighted songs for more than $16 million to an unknown third-party in 2021 – meaning after AEG had already filed its lawsuit seeking access to some of those songs. As a result of the sale, AEG said it might file an updated version of the case claiming the sale was fraudulent.
Now, in Friday’s new court filings, AEG says that even after “extensive research,” it remains “unclear which specific entities now own interests in such copyrights.” The company says it has filed issued subpoenas to 15 different entities seeking more information, and is still waiting to hear back.
“Based on the documents to be produced by those entities, AEG will determine whether to proceed against some or all of the collateral in this action as against defendants, to seek leave of court to
include claims against new parties with regard to such collateral, or to take steps outside this lawsuit with regard to such collateral,” the company wrote.
In technical terms, Friday’s filing was an agreement between the two opposing sides to push back all deadlines in the case by six months. That will give Thug a necessary three months to “become reacclimated to life outside of prison” and connect with his lawyers so he can “participate meaningfully in the action.” It will also give AEG the necessary time to “determine whether and how to proceed with regard to the copyrights.”
Neither side immediately returned requests for comment on Wednesday.
Political spending among the major players in the live music industry has largely remained flat this election cycle, while contributions by individuals working at Live Nation were up slightly over past years and money spent on lobbying members of Congress dropped in 2024, according to election data reviewed by Billboard.
At Anschutz Entertainment Group (AEG), owner Phil Anschutz spent $1.9 million supporting this year’s Republican reelection efforts but opted not to throw any support behind presidential candidate Donald Trump. Anschutz has never supported the brash presidential candidate, but though AEG boss is sinking millions of dollars into efforts to flip the Senate for Republicans.
Live Nation chief executive Michael Rapino, on the other hand, gave $25,000 in political donations to mostly Democratic Senate candidates and causes, records show, while the usually politically active James Dolan, chairman of Madison Square Garden Entertainment, made a single $25,000 donation this election cycle to Secure NYS PAC, a shadowy political action committee created to defeat House member Tom Suozzi (NY-D).
At Live Nation, executives donated about $387,000 to mostly Democratic candidates, a drop of about 6% compared to 2020, when executives donated $410,000.
The spending cycle comes during an unusually politically active year for the concert business, with a major ticketing reform package inching forward in Congress and the Department of Justice’s investigation of Live Nation on anti-trust grounds making its way through the courts.
Neither political cause has driven major spending by Rapino or his long-time rival Anschutz, who has once again sunk hundreds of thousands of dollars into an effort to flip the Senate over to the Republicans. Anschutz, a Colorado billionaire who made large parts of his fortune in energy, railroads and communications, has long supported groups like the National Republican Senatorial Committee. This year, Anschutz made more than 200 donations totaling $1.9 million to right-leaning political groups, the bulk of which went to political groups supporting Senate Republicans like John Cornyn, John Thune and former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy. Anschutz also spent $1.9 million during the 2016 cycle and $836,000 during the 2020 cycle.
Rapino spent considerably less than Anschutz this election cycle, with his biggest political contribution being the $10,000 he donated to Live Nation’s political action committee, which gave $200,000 to candidates from both political parties this cycle. As an individual donor, Rapino cut about $4,600 in donations to Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Jacky Rosen in Nevada and supported Adam Schiff’s campaign for Senate in California, as well as the campaigns of high-profile California House members Katie Porter and Eric Swalwell.
Meanwhile, Gregg Maffei, president/CEO of Liberty Media and the chairman of Live Nation Entertainment, spent more than $112,000 on conservative politicians and political causes, mostly supporting the presidential candidacy of Trump and Senate Republicans. That’s significantly down from the 2020 election cycle when Maffei spent $420,000 on right-wing political causes and politicians, and the 2016 cycle when he spent $324,000.
The $2.3 billion sale of ASM Global, the facility management firm that manages venues like Soldier Field in Chicago and the Coca-Cola Arena in Dubai, finally closed today, a full 10 months after it was announced that Legends was purchasing the firm from AEG and Canadian private equity firm Onex. The lengthy delay was the result of a U.S. Department of Justice investigation into Legends for allegedly violating anti-trust regulations during its review of the deal, recently disclosed documents show, which led to Legends paying a $3.5 million civil fine.
According to court records in the Southern District of New York — the same court where Live Nation is fighting a historic antitrust case against the DOJ — officials with Legends allegedly “assumed unlawful control over ASM” during a statutory waiting period that required “Legends and ASM to continue to operate as separate and independent entities while the Antitrust Division of the Department of Justice reviewed the acquisition.”
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According to a DOJ complaint, Legends won the right to manage a new arena project in San Diego that had been formerly managed by ASM Global. After winning the contract, Legends assigned some of the responsibility of the contract to ASM, despite not having completed the pre-merger review or received approval from the DOJ.
In August 2023, Legends officials again allegedly violated DOJ rules that the two firms act as separate companies when they bid for a contract in North Carolina to manage an existing entertainment complex. According to the DOJ complaint, “a senior Legends executive emailed Legends’ then-CEO noting, ‘I assume we would rather have ASM chase this?’ The then-CEO informed another executive, ‘we will find out if ASM is bidding as don’t want to both be bidding,’ and set a calendar reminder for himself tospeak with a senior ASM executive about the North Carolina RFP.” The DOJ alleges that Legends and ASM also illegally shared information on two other projects they were bidding for.
Legends was accused of violating the Hart-Scott-Rodino Antitrust Improvements Act of 1976 and agreed to pay a $3.5 million fine, “an amount that is less than the maximum penalty permitted,” government documents reveal, noting “a lower penalty is appropriate because of Legends’ demonstrated willingness to take corrective internal action and fight allegations in court, avoiding “the costs associated with a prolonged investigation and litigation.”
Under the agreement, Legends must “appoint an antitrust compliance officer at its expense, to conduct compliance training, to certify compliance with the Final Judgment, to maintain a whistleblower protection policy, and to provide the United States inspection and interview rights to assess compliance with the Final Judgment,” the documents read.
The sale of ASM Global to Legends got rolling last year after Canadian private equity firm Onex notified AEG of its plans to sell its 35% stake in ASM. Instead of buying out Onex, AEG agreed to put the entire company up for sale. On Nov. 3, Onex and AEG jointly announced that Legends was buying ASM, creating the country’s leading venue management company.
Representatives for Legends and ASM Global did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
“The next era of Legends starts now,” said Dan Levy, CEO of Legends, in a press release issued Friday (Aug. 23). Global investment firm Sixth Streets owns majority control of Legends, with minority stakes held by subsidiaries of the New York Yankees and Dallas Cowboys. Levy, who previously worked at Meta, became CEO of Legends in April.
Ron Bension, ASM Global president/CEO, added, “One of our ASM Global mantras for a number of years has been ‘the future is now.’ By joining Legends, that future has not only arrived, but it couldn’t be brighter. The opportunities created by our companies’ collective capabilities will elevate not only the success of our partners, clients, and projects worldwide, but the industry as a whole.”
Founded in 2008, Legends now has 400 clients under management including Allegiant Stadium in Las Vegas, Caesars Superdome in New Orleans and OVO Arena Wembley in London. ASM Global will continue to operate under its current name for now.
Moelis & Company LLC and BofA Securities, Inc. served as financial advisors to Legends, while Ropes & Gray LLP and Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton LLP served as its legal counsel. Goldman Sachs and Jefferies served as financial advisors to ASM Global, while Latham & Watkins LLP, Hogan Lovells and Arnold & Porter served as its legal counsel.
On Friday (May 31), AEG chairman/CEO Jay Marciano became the first major live music executive to voice support for the Department of Justice’s effort to break up Live Nation and Ticketmaster, foreshadowing the role AEG will likely play as a key witness in the DOJ’s antitrust case against Ticketmaster.
“AEG has long maintained that Ticketmaster has a monopoly in the U.S. ticketing marketplace and uses that monopoly power to subsidize Live Nation’s content businesses,” Marciano wrote in a memo to staff May 30. Beyond its longstanding criticism that Live Nation uses its scale to overpay for talent, AEG doubled down on its attacks on Ticketmaster’s use of exclusive ticketing contracts, with Marciano telling staff that AEG and its attorneys “strongly believe that DOJ’s lawsuit will succeed and ultimately bring sweeping changes” to the live music industry.
The government interviewed dozens of Live Nation’s competitors during its two-year anti-trust investigation, including AEG — executives at AEG have met with DOJ investigators on at least three separate occasions, including a 2023 meeting to discuss the crash of the ticket presale for Taylor Swift’s The Eras Tour, which AEG promoted through its joint venture with Louis Messina.
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That puts Marciano and AEG in a rare position to galvanize public opinion and build support for his call to staff and the larger music community to help “us lay the groundwork now for the future of the industry.”
But AEG’s claims aren’t as compelling as Marciano thinks, according to Live Nation executive vp of corporate and regulatory affairs Dan Wall, who responded to Marciano’s May 30 letter with a statement alleging AEG is trying to use Live Nation’s antitrust case “to advance their own interests.”
“AEG supports this case — indeed, begged DOJ to file it — because it doesn’t want to pay artists market rates or convince venues to adopt its second-rate ticketing system exclusively,” Wall said in a statement provided to Billboard after Marciano’s statement was released.
AEG declined to comment for this story.
The battle between Live Nation and AEG dates back to the federal government’s 2010 approval of Live Nation’s merger with Ticketmaster, which the government approved by imposing a number of conditions on Ticketmaster designed to increase competition. As part of those conditions, referred to as the consent decree, the DOJ required Ticketmaster to license its source code and technology to AEG to create a competing ticketing service. The government did not address some of Ticketmaster’s more controversial tactics at the time, like the use of exclusive contracts to lock venues into long-term deals, which lies at the heart of this current conflict.
AEG only licensed Ticketmaster’s technology for a year, and in 2011 announced it was instead building a new ticketing platform called AXS with the help of Montreal firm Outbox ticketing. It took two years to switch all of AEG’s venues globally to AXS Tickets, and then AEG struggled to sign on new clients, even after merging with Veritix in 2015, and in 2019 ended up losing a major client — Altitude Sports and Entertainment — to a startup called Rival launched by former Ticketmaster CEO Nathan Hubbard.
AXS’ struggles were due in part to its ownership structure following the 2015 merger with Veritix, which divided ownership among AEG, private-equity firm TPG and Cleveland Cavaliers owner Dan Gilbert, who previously owned Veritix. In 2019, AXS’ partners began exploring a sale of the company and looked at buying Rival or being bought by Rival, deals AEG blocked thanks to AXS’ ownership rules that required unanimous consent for all material decisions. AEG also blocked a merger between AXS and CTS Eventim, a powerful European ticketing provider that was looking for an entry point in the U.S. market to compete with Ticketmaster.
Gilbert and TPG eventually agreed to sell their stakes in AXS to AEG in 2019, which by then had started to explore a new business model for the ticketer, built around non-exclusive ticketing contracts. Instead of competing with Ticketmaster to sign venues to AXS, AEG would instead focus on expanding its use of AXS ticketing for AEG-promoted tours. Both Live Nation and AEG prefer to use their own ticketing platforms for the concerts they promote because it allows the promoters to directly control the customer data.
Hoping to encourage Ticketmaster to allow AEG to use AXS whenever it brought tours to buildings ticketed by Ticketmaster, AEG offered to allow Live Nation to use Ticketmaster at the venues AEG controls, including the Crypto.com Arena in Los Angeles.
AEG would extract a similar concession from Live Nation in 2021 that would earn a mention in the DOJ’s lawsuit against Ticketmaster. On June 15 of that year, leading venue operations company ASM Global, in which AEG owned a minority stake, announced it had renewed its agreement with Ticketmaster to provide ticketing services for a majority of the 300 venues ASM manages.
The government flagged the agreement as suspicious because AEG at the time owned 30% of ASM and had “advocated for AXS to serve as the exclusive primary ticketer for the ASM Global venues,” the complaint reads. “But ASM Global’s majority shareholder, Onex, worried that Live Nation would retaliate by withholding shows from ASM Global venues if ASM Global entirely switched away from using Ticketmaster.”
A source close to the deal called the DOJ’s version of the story an “oversimplification,” noting that AEG and Onex didn’t have the right to require ASM Global clients to use one ticketing system over the other and that the majority of clients opted to stay with Live Nation. ASM did, however, convince Live Nation to grant a rare exception to its venue contracts, allowing ASM venues contracted to Ticketmaster to switch to AXS tickets for any tours AEG brought to the buildings.
In exchange, Ticketmaster paid a large advance for the multiyear contract and issued a press release, quoting ASM Global president/CEO Ron Bension saying, “Aligning with industry leaders like Ticketmaster is a critical component in providing millions of people with the most seamless and secure live experiences.”
Happy to have secured the largest carve-out in Ticketmaster’s exclusivity contract to date, AXS decided to push for more exceptions. In 2022, AEG began routing Swift’s The Eras Tour alongside its partner, Messina Touring Group. The majority of the venues on the tour were Ticketmaster-exclusive facilities, though ASM managed five of the stadiums, representing 12 shows on the 52-date trek. But two of those dates — a pair of concerts at State Farm Stadium in Glendale, Ariz. — would be ticketed by SeatGeek under its exclusive deal with the Arizona Cardinals. Making matters worse, two of ASM’s management clients decided to partner with Ticketmaster for the sale.
Down to just five shows at two stadiums, AEG dropped the matter, but not before reporting the issue to the DOJ, encouraging them to look at Live Nation and Ticketmaster’s use of exclusive contracts as anti-competitive.
After the fiasco, Live Nation chairman Greg Maffei appeared on CNBC to defend Ticketmaster and claim “AEG, who is the promoter for Taylor Swift, chose to use us because, in reality, we are the largest and most effective ticket seller in the world,” he said. “Even our competitors want to come on our platform.” AEG leadership was quick to respond. “Ticketmaster’s exclusive deals with the vast majority of venues on The Eras Tour required us to ticket through their system,” the leadership said in a statement, adding, “We didn’t have a choice.”
In the months following, AEG’s relationship with Live Nation only worsened. In January 2023, AEG announced it was backing a U.S. tour for chart-topping singer Zach Bryan who had just released a live album called All My Homies Hate Ticketmaster. The album title succinctly encapsulated decades of anti-Ticketmaster sentiment from music fans over Ticketmaster fees, pricing and indignities and AEG was eager to get in early. With AEG as his promoter, Bryan embarked on an expansive tour of non-Ticketmaster buildings, a gambit that hadn’t been attempted since Pearl Jam in the 1990s. AEG even deployed a sophisticated anti-scalping system to keep tickets out of the hands of scalpers.
Despite the tour’s success, Bryan had reached a surprising conclusion about the experience — some of his homies hated AXS tickets too.
“Everyone complained about AXS last year. Using all ticketing sites this year,” he said of his 2023 Quittin’ Time Tour, which was still being promoted by AEG but would no longer route around Ticketmaster buildings and would play all venues, regardless of which company was the ticketer.
“All my homies still do hate Ticketmaster, but hard to realize one guy can’t change the whole system,” Bryan wrote on X, formerly Twitter. “It is intentionally broken and I’ll continue to feel absolutely horrible about the cost of tickets.”
In his written response to Marciano’s letter, Wall, a former litigator for Live Nation who helped architect the 2010 consent decree, says AEG is now trying to use the legal system to compete against Ticketmaster instead of focusing on improving AXS.
Marciano contends that there are many things that the DOJ can do to level the playing field and ended his letter by encouraging his employees not to “get distracted by Live Nation spin” and instead to “prepare for a world with more competition, more innovation, artist and consumer choice, lower ticketing fees, and more music.”
AEG CEO Jay Marciano says Live Nation acts like a monopoly and agrees with the U.S. Department of Justice’s effort to break the concert giant and Ticketmaster up, according to an email Marciano sent out to employees on Friday (May 31). In the memo, the executive accuses the company of “preventing other businesses from competing” and “leaving consumers to suffer the consequences.”
In the two-page email, Marciano said the lawsuit was an important milestone for addressing alleged monopolistic behavior in the concert business, noting “the entire ecosystem of our industry” is at stake as the case winds its way through the U.S. legal system.
“Notwithstanding its claims about its profit margins or its market share, it is a monopoly, and it uses its monopoly power to impose its will on the live entertainment business,” wrote Marciano of Live Nation, later writing, “We strongly believe that DOJ’s lawsuit will succeed and ultimately bring sweeping changes.”
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Billboard obtained a copy of the email, which can be read in full below. An AEG spokesman did not respond to a request for comment regarding the letter. Live Nation had not responded to a request for comment at press time.
From: Office of Jay Marciano
No doubt all of you are closely following the ongoing media coverage in the wake of the Department of Justice lawsuit against Live Nation and Ticketmaster. As I mentioned in my note from last week, we spent the last few days carefully reviewing the DOJ filing, as well as Live Nation’s subsequent response to the complaint.
AEG has long maintained that Ticketmaster has a monopoly in the U.S. ticketing marketplace and uses that monopoly power to subsidize Live Nation’s content businesses, preventing other businesses from competing in those areas and leaving consumers to suffer the consequences. This lawsuit is not simply DOJ suing to break up a monopoly; at stake is the entire ecosystem of our industry, one that has long suffered from a badly broken ticketing model. As you know, the cornerstone of Live Nation’s monopoly is Ticketmaster’s exclusive ticketing contracts with the vast majority of major concert venues in the United States. These agreements block competition and innovation and result in higher ticketing fees, denying artists the ability to choose who will ticket their shows and how much their fans should pay.
Following the DOJ filing, Live Nation issued several public comments in service of its ongoing strategy to maintain its dominance – unfairly blaming others for industry problems they have created, making false and misleading statements, and dismissing the significance of the case. Artists, venues, and brokers are not responsible for the broken live entertainment business model in this country – that responsibility lies with Live Nation. Notwithstanding its claims about its profit margins or its market share, it is a monopoly, and it uses its monopoly power to impose its will on the live entertainment business. Live Nation may claim that its margins on promotion are low, but that’s only because it deploys the excessive profits of its ticketing monopoly to outspend what the concert market can profitably sustain. Live Nation does this with the goal of removing competitors from the business and in turn using its continued control of content to preserve a stranglehold on ticketing through venue exclusives.
The DOJ’s case is serious and reflects widespread sentiment among 30 attorneys general from across the country, numerous media outlets, industry commentators, consumer groups, and antitrust experts that Live Nation’s conduct violates the law and harms competition and consumers. While it may take some time, we strongly believe that DOJ’s lawsuit will succeed and ultimately bring sweeping changes resulting in increased competition and more innovation and choice that benefits fans, artists, and ourentire industry. DOJ’s lawsuit means that artists will have a choice in who tickets their concerts, that the ticketing fees consumers pay will be lower, and ultimately that artists and fans will have access to what we all want: more and higher quality live entertainment experiences at a price that fans can afford. We look forward to each and every one of you helping us lay the groundwork now for the future of the industry.
Let’s not get distracted by Live Nation spin. Instead, let’s stay focused on continuing to execute at the highest level, and preparing for a future state of the industry: a world with more competition, more innovation, artist and consumer choice, lower ticketing fees, and more music.Jay
AEG Presents, a global leader in live music and events, announced Friday (May 10) that Brent Fedrizzi, who currently serves as co-president and COO of AEG Presents’ Rocky Mountains and Pacific Northwest regions, has been named president, North American regional offices.
Fedrizzi’s promotion follows Rick Mueller’s exit from the company, which the former AEG Presents president for North America announced earlier this week.
Fedrizzi, who will continue to be based out of Denver, is set to guide the company’s 100 U.S. venues – including the 50 owned and operated clubs and theaters in the AEG Presents portfolio – in all aspects of talent buying and promotion, as well as overseeing its 12 regional offices. He will report to AEG Presents chairman and CEO Jay Marciano and will join the company’s executive committee.
“I’ve known Brent for close to 30 years and have worked with him almost as long, so it’s especially gratifying to make this announcement,” said Marciano in a release. “He has a vision, a drive, and an insight into our business that’s been forged over his many years promoting events in every type of venue across the western United States. As co-president of our Rocky Mountain region, his feel for the business is a key reason AEG Presents is the dominant promoter in the market and the Denver office is one of our top performers. Simply put, he’s the right person for the job.”
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“When Jay and I first spoke about this opportunity, I jumped at the chance to work more closely with him, the regional team, and the company as a whole,” Fedrizzi said. “I’m excited for the challenge ahead, and I can’t wait to dive in; there’s never been a more exhilarating time in live events. I’m grateful for the trust Jay has put in me to guide the business into the future; the ability to do so with the people and the company I love is icing on the cake.”
A Colorado native, Fedrizzi began his career in 1991 at the Fey Concert Company in Denver, booking artists at various venues across the Rockies and the Southwest. In 1998, he joined forces with Chuck Morris and Don Strasburg to launch Bill Graham Presents/Chuck Morris Presents in the market. Through a series of acquisitions including SFX and Clear Channel Entertainment, that company would eventually become Live Nation in 2005. Fedrizzi remained there for nine years before leaving with Morris and Strasburg to join AEG Live as COO of the Rocky Mountain region. They quickly established themselves as the dominant force in one of the most competitive and active live music markets in the country and now promote more than 1,100 events annually at a variety of venues including Mission Ballroom, Red Rocks Amphitheatre, Fiddlers Green Amphitheatre and Ball Arena, among many others.
In addition to his work at AEG Presents, Fedrizzi is a board member and four-time president of the North American Concert Promoters Association, a four-time Academy of Country Music award nominee, and a nominee for International Entertainment Buyers Association’s promoter of the year. He currently serves as chairman of the board for Visit Denver and sits on the board of the Colorado Music Hall of Fame.
Making live music events as environmentally friendly as possible is a task executed by thousands of workers who install solar panels, transport waste, collect reusable cups, measure energy use and execute other operational tasks. But every employee doing this work ultimately falls under the purview of any given live event company’s head of sustainability. Erik Distler is one of them.
As vp of sustainability at AEG, Distler leads the company’s corporate sustainability program. There are executives in similar roles at Live Nation, ASM Global and Oak View Group – and together, this group is responsible for greening a significant percentage of global events and venues. In February, the group – who Distler says all know each other given that the sustainability space is relatively small — appeared together in public for the first time during a panel at the inaugural Music Sustainability Summit in Los Angeles.
“The symbolism of us being together on that stage is powerful and hopefully inspiring to the industry that we’re cheering each other on and perhaps exploring what we can do together,” says Distler. With the stakes being so high, there’s an incentive to share information, he says, particularly given that “this work is really replicable. What you do in one venue or festival can, barring local infrastructure, be done anywhere else.”
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Distler came to his role after working in sports and entertainment sustainability for more than a decade. At AEG, he and his five-person team design and direct sustainability initiatives across the company’s more than 25 festivals, as well as over 50 music venues; nine arenas and similarly sized venues; four entertainment districts; and more than 15 tours to date.
AEG has had a sustainability program for 15 years, but when Distler joined in October 2021, his task was to “take our program to its next phase” amid the worsening climate crisis, the increasing demand for sustainable events among consumers, and new sustainable technologies and regulations.
“The external forces are louder and more influential than they’ve ever been,” he says. “That’s really pushing the industry forward in a way that’s making the case for companies to prioritize and devote internal teams to understand this work, build resources and take action in a meaningful way.”
Distler spent his first three months on the job meeting with 50 internal stakeholders to better understand the business, how to make it more sustainable and get senior executive buy-in, which he says “was fundamental and really paved the way to get more granular with other colleagues.”
From the information collected, he created a strategic framework around sustainability, along with an official vision statement — “Inspire the world’s many voices to protect our planet” — and a mission statement declaring that the company is “committed to operating responsibly and to catalyzing the influence of live entertainment to preserve the planet for future generations.”
“It’s important to have a strategy on a page,” Distler says, “and ultimately a framework that can be used to guide us moving forward.”
This framework also includes a set of focus areas including carbon and energy, waste and materials water, and stewardship and engagement, along with six guiding principles (“collaboration over competition” and “communicate with transparency and often” among them) and seven pillars: operations, suppliers, employees, fans, communities and partnerships.
These partners include Schneider Electric, a French multinational energy management company that AEG has worked with for 14 years for support with target setting, strategy, energy sourcing, market intelligence and risk management. A Greener Future in the U.K. and Three Squares Inc. in the United States are sustainability consultants, while r.World provides reusable cups in all of AEG’s Denver music venues, along with select venues in Seattle, San Francisco and Los Angeles, along with six Goldenvoice festivals. For Coachella and Stagecoach, AEG has donated 44.2 tons of food to its partner Coachella Valley Rescue Mission and 34.6 tons of material to the Galilee Center, which provides clothing and other basics to families in the Coachella Valley.
Distler has also sought additional help. Last year, he worked to get four people hired into three newly created sustainability roles. “It’s not uncommon that a sustainability team is small in count and under resourced,” he says. “ What I see as a large part of my responsibility is ensuring our department is sound economically and building and making the case for staff and resources.”
In addition to Distler and his new hires, the team also includes a data and analytics lead responsible for measuring the impact of AEG events and “all the other people that have jobs like those in festival operations that eat, sleep and breathe this.” Additionally, AEG’s employee-led People For The Planet group is composed of employees from other parts of the company who want to contribute to sustainability projects.
Altogether, this group is “probably pretty emblematic of a sustainability department,” Distler says. “You may have a small core team, but you’ve got external and internal partners that help get the work done.”
Given that Europe has tighter sustainability regulations that the U.S., the industry there offers good examples of initiatives that might eventually be adopted in the States. Last November, AEG’s O2 Arena in London launched a green rider: a best practice guide for sustainable touring and events that outlines what the venue is doing in key areas.
“It’s a great way to sit with an artist and their management team and figure out what we can do while they’re [at the O2] that’s truly sustainable and ultimately communicated to fans,” Distler says of the guide, which was produced in collaboration with U.K. based sustainability consultancy A Greener Future.
Distler says his team is “constantly” collaborating with artists including Billie Eilish, who in June 2022 hosted an event at The O2 called Overheated that featured vegan food and water refill stations along with climate-minded programming. Last April, after learning that rock band Muse “was passionate about climate issues,” he says, AEG’s Crypto.com Arena made a donation on behalf of the and to the Los Angeles Cleantech Incubator, which works to further clean tech, climate action and the green economy in the city.
Distler on site at Cali Vibes
Courtesy of AEG
AEG made a donation to the L.A. Clean Tech Incubator, which works to further clean technology in the city, from AEG’s Crypto.com Arena on behalf of the band. Last year, the team also worked with Maggie Rogers to measure the carbon footprint associated with one of her U.S. tour stops and provided that info to Rogers’ team, along with mitigation suggestions.
In the U.S., AEG has launched a comprehensive sustainability program for its Goldenvoice festivals — including Coachella, Stagecoach, Cruel World and Just Like Heaven. In particular, Goldenvoice’s Cali Vibes functions as a testing ground for sustainability initiatives, including solar panels that light parking lots and the transformation of unpurchased merch into staff uniforms, with these projects be studied for possible use at other events.
“I always say that sustainability doesn’t happen within our team,” says Distler. “Things like waste avoidance or diversion at a festival happen in collaboration with our operation teams, partners and haulers. That requires work that doesn’t ultimately get done in the corporate office.”
While the music industry is ultimately responsible for a tiny fraction of global emissions and waste, Distler is resolute about its impact. He recalls being on a panel in New York last fall alongside sustainability heads from major corporations with, he says, “huge footprints, like millions of metric tons of emissions.”
And yet when it came to the audience Q&A, “everybody had questions for me, and no one had questions for them.” Given its “influence [on] the heart and mind,” the music industry has a responsibility to focus on sustainability, share these initiatives with fans and “create the setting for positive, inspiring and uplifting work.”
It helps that Distler “absolutely” sees real progress being made, with fans, partners, artists and athletes “putting the right level of pressure on the businesses to take on meaningful action.” He says many of the major corporations AEG works with are also taking on sustainability in a more focused way.
“It’s sitting down with partners and saying, ‘What are your focus areas? Your goals? Your aspirations?’” he says. “Then sharing ours and seeing what lines up…seeing the eagerness and willingness of our partners to ideate and brainstorm is really encouraging, and is signaling that the industry is moving in the right direction.”
The concert business has had a record year in 2023 — tours by Taylor Swift and Beyoncé were pop culture moments, festivals roared back to life and consumers’ splurging on tickets seemed to defy gravity. There’s likely more good news on the horizon, too. By all forecasts, next year is shaping up for continued success, even as consumers still feel pinched by inflation.
Among the big names to announce stadium tours next year are The Rolling Stones, Foo Fighters, Green Day and a pairing of Journey and Def Leppard. Chris Stapleton, Zach Bryan and Luke Combs will hit both stadiums and arenas. Drake, Bad Bunny, Thirty Seconds to Mars, Hootie & the Blowfish, New Kids on the Block, Alanis Morissette and The Trilogy Tour featuring Enrique Iglesias, Ricky Martin and Pitbull will play arenas and amphitheaters. Taylor Swift’s The Eras Tour continues in 2024, too, with 85 shows announced for Asia, Australia and North America.
Advanced ticket sales suggest consumers remain eager to see their favorite artists perform live. Through mid-October, Live Nation’s event-related deferred revenue — from ticket sales to events that had not yet occurred — was up 39% year over year, according to the company’s third-quarter earnings release.
AEG Presents, the second-largest promoter, is “feeling really positive” about 2024 tours across all venue sizes and genres, says Rich Schaefer, president of global touring. “I think people are discovering new artists and want to see big shows — and they’re willing to pay for it.” They’re buying well in advance, too: AEG put tickets on sale for 76 Zach Bryan shows in 2024 — some won’t happen until December — and has “largely sold everything out,” says Schaeffer. “That artist especially has a crazy connection with his fans. They’ve seen videos of what his shows are like, and I think everybody wants to experience it.”
Those big tours — and thousands of others — are counting on consumers to continue to open their wallets despite continued high prices for staples and living expenses, rising debt delinquencies and Americans’ credit card debt reaching a record level in the third quarter. The holidays are presenting mixed signals: Black Friday spending was up 2.5% compared to 2022, but numerous surveys have found consumers plan to spend less on gifts this year.
Consumers may feel beleaguered, but they continue to spend to see their favorite artists perform live. “I have weekly booking calls with the over 40 presidents around the world and we talk booking clubs up to stadiums and festivals, and we have not seen anything taper off in any sense,” said Live Nation CEO Michael Rapino during the company’s Nov. 2 earnings call. The company is “not seeing any pullback in any way” in consumer demand regardless of the region or venue size, he added.
A big question, though, is whether consumers will be in a spending mood throughout 2024. A new Goldman Sachs economic outlook report says the U.S. economy today is better than was expected a year ago, inflation will continue to subside and the likelihood of a recession in 2024 is “limited.” The latest data from the University of Michigan is encouraging: U.S. consumer sentiment soared in December and people’s expectations for year-ahead inflation dropped to 3.1% from 4.5% last month.
Whatever uncertainties exist — including falling savings rates and weakening credit conditions — have not materialized in ticket sales thus far. “We certainly see the headlines [about macroeconomic conditions], but it’s not flowing through to numbers that we can see,” Lawrence Fey, CFO of secondary ticket marketplace Vivid Seats, said during a Nov. 7 earnings call.
One could simply look at who’s touring in 2024 to get a sense of where ticket buyers are thinking. “You got The Stones going on the road in parts in North America,” says Doug Arthur of Huber Research Partners. “They’re always a pretty big draw. The Stones are pretty savvy historically about touring when they think the economics support it.”
Consumers’ willingness to spend increasing amounts on live music isn’t a new trend — although some of 2023’s record-setting box office numbers appear to be the result of music fans may be clamoring for live events in after suffering through pandemic-era restrictions. The concert industry has benefited from a lasting shift among consumers from goods to experiences over the last 10 to 15 years, says Brandon Ross, an analyst with LightShed Partners.
This year’s boffo box office numbers weren’t outliers, and Ross expects to see “outsized performance on a global basis” in 2024. “There has been a year-and-a-half long concern for a broader pullback in consumer spending,” says Ross. “I don’t think will not impact growth, but I think there’s substantial tailwind supporting this industry.”
Those tailwinds probably won’t be strong enough for next year’s touring business to duplicate 2023’s stellar growth rate — but no one seems to be expecting that. “I don’t think you’re talking about another up 30% type of year, and I don’t think [Live Nation is] talking about that either,” says Arthur. “But can the concert revenues be up high single digits between volume, fans per show, price per ticket and spending per fan? Yeah, I think that’s not unreasonable at all.”
Artists and promoters will continue to encounter high costs in 2024 — labor, catering, buses and staging are stretched thin with a high number of big tours on the road. That’ll continue to push ticket prices up. Even so, AEG hasn’t seen resistance to higher prices, says Schaefer. “There’s very few instances where we think that pricing is responsible for tickets not selling.”
Crypto.com Arena in Los Angeles is pilot testing a new waste diversion initiative at the arena’s upcoming two-night run for Depeche Mode on Dec. 15 and 17.
The program, held in conjunction with reusable cup manufacturer r.World, could help divert hundreds of thousands of single-use cups out of local landfills and eventually serve as a staple sustainability initiative at the AEG-owned facility, which is widely recognized as a leader in the live entertainment business’ efforts toward long-term sustainability.
As part of the program, Crypto.com Arena and its janitorial servicer, ABM, will work with r.World to receive and distribute 13,000 beer, cocktail and soft drink cups around the arena. On the nights of the Depeche Mode performances, the cups will be utilized by the arena’s bar, beverage and concessionaires to serve drinks to attendees, who will then dispose of the cups in specially marked bins staged around the arena. At the end of the first show, the cups will be collected by r.World staff and taken to a nearby cleaning facility where they will be washed and returned to the arena for the second night. Both shows are being promoted by Live Nation.
The program, explains Crypto.com Arena president Lee Zeidman, was inspired by Depeche Mode’s long-running commitment to environmental and sustainability initiatives. “Commencing with the electrifying Depeche Mode concerts, our aim is to ignite a wave of positive change and rally our audience and partners to actively participate in shaping a more eco-conscious future,” he tells Billboard.
Last year, a similar pilot program was launched by AEG-owned Goldenvoice with r.World to eliminate plastic cups from its Cali Vibes festival in Long Beach, Calif. Following the pilot, Crypto.com Arena will evaluate the data from the two concerts and, if the program is successful, will look to collaborate with current or future partners to make r.World a full-time option to guests and fans in the future.
“We believe that there’s going to be less labor needed in terms of cleanup and the cleanup crew, and we believe we’re going to have lower waste disposal fees,” Zeidman says. “We also believe that people will embrace this opportunity to keep single plastic waste out of the stream and perhaps buy more beers or Cokes.”
In addition to Los Angeles, r.World boasts industrial “Wash Hub” facilities that also service Denver, Las Vegas, Minneapolis, San Francisco, Seattle and Washington, D.C. To meet market demand for reuse, the company plans to expand the program to eight to 12 more cities in the next 24 months.
“We’re excited to work with Crypto.com Arena — as one of the busiest venues in the world, the positive environmental impact potential of reuse is massive,” said Michael Martin, r.World founder/CEO. “They’ve led the industry and operated in the most environmentally innovative ways since opening in 1999, and so it’s no surprise they’re launching the pilot reuse program in the LA market and ultimately, driving change across the live events industry.”
AEG Presents is the latest music-related company to announce a move to the Nashville mixed-use district Nashville Yards, which is being co-developed by AEG and Southwest Value Partners.
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AEG Presents will relocate its regional office to Nashville Yards in 2025. The company’s new location will be comprised of the company’s regional office, members of its global touring division and the Nashville outpost of AEG Presents partner Messina Touring Group. Combined, these three entities oversee everything from bookings at intimate clubs to stadium tour dates, having promoted tours for artists including Kelsea Ballerini, Zach Bryan, Kenny Chesney, Eric Church and more.
AEG will also book and operate the upcoming 4,500-capacity music venue that’s slated to open in Nashville Yards in 2025.
Rick Mueller, president of AEG Presents North America, said in a statement: “We’ve been hyper-focused on expanding our presence in Nashville for a few years now. It’s a big opportunity for us to be consolidating all our operations under one roof at what’s soon to be one of the most popular destinations in the city, and to be booking and operating a new, state-of-the-art music venue on-site makes it that much more exciting.”
“We have an exceptional partnership with AEG, and together we believe we are constructing one of the most uniquely attractive music, retail and creative workplace environments in the world,” added Cary Mack, managing partner of Southwest Value Partners. “Independent of that, AEG Presents is a preeminent entertainment brand and operator of world class entertainment venues, and we are very excited to have their extended presence at Nashville Yards.”
In November, booking agency CAA announced that its Nashville office will also relocate to Nashville Yards in 2025. Upon completion, the 19-acre mixed-used development will feature pedestrian pathways, open green spaces, plazas and Class A+ office, residential, hospitality, entertainment, retail and culinary offerings.