Business

Taylor Swift’s orbit is so powerful, it even draws in CEOs.

That’s what’s brought Tim Leiweke, chairman/CEO of Oak View Group (OVG), to Toronto in November. Joining us in a boardroom at OVG’s Toronto office in Liberty Village while an Eras Tour pre-party raffles off tickets to the excited sounds of “oohs” and “aahs” in the next room, Leiweke says Taylor Swift Mania represents a pivotal moment for the city and its big and growing live music industry.

“I’m always amazed not just by her talent, but that she’s just a genuinely very nice human being,” Leiweke said. “But to me, I love Toronto. I’m happy the city gets this moment and this platform. It’s a nice spotlight, and the city always does well in the spotlight.”

OVG played a minor role in the Eras Tour coming to Toronto, arranging the sponsorship of the Canadian leg and helping out with venues behind the scenes. But her presence is a perfect chance for Leiweke to survey the company’s operations in Canada, entertain clients and make ambitious plans.

“Canada is a place where we’re going to plant the flag of this organization and watch it grow,” says Leiweke. “Our entrepreneurial spirit is high in Canada.”

OVG has broken ground on a major renovation of an as-yet-unnamed 18,000-seat arena in Hamilton, Ontario (a large metropolis not quite two hours from Toronto) set to open in 2025. A partnership with Live Nation and the Hamilton Urban Precinct Entertainment Group (HUPEG), it’s a nearly $300-million private-public investment in the former FirstOntario Centre/Copps Coliseum building.

“You’re not gonna recognize the building when we’re through with it,” says Francesca Bodie, OVG’s Chief Operating Officer (Leiweke’s daughter), who also joins the interview with Billboard Canada. She’s excited for the different kinds of entertainment they can bring to Hamilton, from K-pop to South Asian music to boxing. “Hamilton is very diverse, and they’ve got a tremendous appetite for a variety of content. They just don’t have the venue yet.”

As it readies the new arena, which is poised to operate on a scale you’d more often see in Toronto, OVG has been increasing its presence north of the border. It’s hiring new staffers and investing in new ventures, like Departure conference and festival (formerly Canadian Music Week), and partnering with venues like Rogers Place in Edmonton, Canada Life Centre in Winnipeg and Scotiabank Arena in Toronto as part of its Canadian Alliance.

Leiweke is no stranger to Canada. He spent four years as the President and CEO of Maple Leafs Sports & Entertainment (MLSE), the company that owns the Toronto Maple Leafs and Toronto Raptors, from 2013-2015. He even personally cut the ribbon on BMO Field, home of the Toronto FC Major League Soccer Team. He has fond memories of the city, telling stories about buying beers for fans and personally ensuring hot dog buns were toasted.

Leiweke, who is also a former CEO of Anschutz Entertainment Group (AEG), broke away to partner with music industry titan Irving Azoff to form OVG in 2015, initially starting with four employees and funding it with their own money. Now, Leiweke says the company has 62,000 employees and did “half a billion in sales this year.” The company manages approximately 500 facilities, and built a number of them during the pandemic, anticipating the post-restrictions boom in concerts.

The exec compares the Hamilton Arena Project to Climate Pledge Arena in Seattle when it comes to sustainability (reusing 30,000 pounds of steel by renovating instead of building from scratch) and to CFG Bank Arena in Baltimore for how the company built a splashy project in a city that many didn’t then see as a top-tier market. He also compares it to the big-budget Co-op Live Arena in Manchester for its focus on music and special acoustic treatments to get the best possible sound.

The live music industry is hot right now, especially when it comes to stadiums and arenas. That’s good news for OVG, but it’s also increased scrutiny around the most successful companies. In the United States, the Department of Justice is investigating Live Nation in an antitrust complaint that ties back to the company’s 2010 merger with Ticketmaster. Correspondence from Leiweke and OVG was used as evidence in the case, which alleges that the two companies colluded to undercut competitors. Live Nation has countered to say OVG, which is focused on venue operations and services, is not a competitor in the realm of concert promotion, and that the company’s use of Ticketmaster is above board.

In this wide-ranging interview, the first in Billboard Canada‘s new Executive Spotlight series, Leiweke gives his opinion on the legal challenge from the DOJ. He also shares why OVG is investing in Hamilton, and talks about his big dream for a national stadium of Canada.

Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour is arguably the biggest tour of all time, but it seems like there are more mega-tours than ever before. Do you see it as a healthy market for arena and stadium concerts?

I’m also a huge fan of Coldplay, and they kind of sometimes get lost in the Swifties. They opened our building at Climate Pledge Arena in 2021, and they’ve been touring ever since. These guys have been on the road for like four years! We have Sir Paul McCartney at our building in Manchester next month, and to me that’s just another incredible story. Here’s this 80-year-old guy and he’s still in phenomenal shape. We have Springsteen doing three nights. He’s 70-something years old. I mean music is an interesting industry right now. We’ve got a bunch of young turks and a bunch of us old jerks.

It’s a healthy industry. This is still pent up demand from COVID. It’s what people have been talking about forever in our industry, which the transfer of power from recording to touring – because that’s where the money is.

Oak View Group is making a big push here in Canada with the new Hamilton arena that’s coming and then Canadian Music Week, which is now Departure. Is it an intentional push in this country?

Yes. I spent roughly four years with Maple Leafs Sports & Entertainment. I very much enjoyed my time here. I was just blown away by Toronto in particular. There’s a lot of great cities in North America, but in my mind there’s not a cleaner, bigger, better city than Toronto. So when we started the new company, I told Francesca I want to focus on opportunities in Canada and I want our company to grow. There were two people when we started this Toronto office. Now, we have at least 40 or 50.

I think the largest single private investment in the history of arenas is what we’re doing in Hamilton. And part of it is just because I was from here [Toronto] for four years. This metro area has to move south. It does. [Toronto’s] metro area is not gonna go backwards. It’s gonna continue to grow. It’s gonna continue to thrive. But if you look cost of living, you look at the campuses and the colleges down there, you look at companies that are moving there, I think Hamilton is an interesting alternative. I mean, just look at the number of condos being built in downtown Hamilton.

Toronto is one of the biggest global touring markets and Hamilton is relatively close by. Is that proximity part of the appeal to build there?

I’ll tell you a story. When I first got here, one of the first things I did is I went to meet every partner. And so I went to the Ford plant [in Oakville, Ontario] to meet the people there, and I realized that plant is almost as close to Hamilton as it is to downtown Toronto. And that was the first time that I understood Hamilton, essentially. It’s like a suburb of Toronto. It’s not that far away. Where I come from, it would be like as Anaheim is to L.A.

If you look at that old building, everyone looks past it. We saw a jewel. We did this in Baltimore where we took an old arena and no one got what we were doing there [at first]. There, we invested about a quarter of a billion. Here, we’re putting in about $300 million. But what we saw was the economy, the energy level, the kids and youth, they’re in Hamilton.

Why build in Hamilton though, and not Toronto directly?

Well, I didn’t want to take on Maple Leafs Sports, because that’s my home. I still have a very good relationship with everybody over there. We’re gonna grow our company with those people, so I’m not coming into their marketplace and competing with them. But what I knew running Air Canada Centre, now Scotiabank Arena, is they’ve got a calendar issue. They’ve got too much going on. There has to be another play. What I love about Hamilton is if there are conflicts [in Toronto], we can have the dates available at that building. But it’s also the ability to go play two nights in Scotiabank and two nights in Hamilton.

There’s lot of opportunity in Canada in general, including a national stadium. You need a national stadium.

What does a national stadium look like? What would that look like? Can you make a comparison?

Wembley Stadium in London. That’s really the inspiration and the concept. Everyone always talks about the NFL coming to Toronto. I say, you don’t understand. They are never coming here until you have a stadium first. You’ve got to find a stadium solution.

Also, I think this is actually one of the greatest soccer markets in the world. You could do 10 international games every year here during the summertime with all the big teams. The national team is also getting good and they need a place that ultimately becomes their home for the qualifications. I think Toronto FC is going to have some big games as well. They have the ability of putting some games into a big stadium. You’ve also got Live Nation building a temporary stadium in order to do concerts [in Toronto] because they’re going to do 20 a year.

So now, combine all of that into a national stadium and then add the opportunity to do NFL football. That’s a huge opportunity.

Are you talking about this theoretically, or is this something that you’re planning to do?

It’s a dream. It’s a really expensive dream. But it is a dream.

Is your strategy different from what you’re doing in the United States and in the rest of the world?

Here’s one thing I learned in Canada. I came up here thinking about open competition. We don’t want to be controlled by U.S. media and U.S. banks. And I came here thinking, well, they’re very open to entrepreneurial spirits. And then I remember the first time I walked down Lawrence Street, I think it was, and the banks were all right next to each other. I think they all talk to each other every day. And then I realized, well, wait a minute. There’s only three media companies here and they own everything. It was a learning lesson.

Michael Bloomberg always used to tell me if you want to see economic development, go out and ultimately be the first one in with a vision and then watch how many people will follow you. So, we privatized all 300 million dollars in Hamilton. That’s an amazing commitment on behalf of our partners and the company. And Live Nation, which is interesting that now they’re jumping into the facility business.

You’re partnering with Live Nation on the Hamilton arena. How does that relationship work?

Carefully. As you may know, we got dragged into the lawsuit [with Live Nation and Ticketmaster].

I get the debate on Ticketmaster and Live Nation. But guess what? They approved that merger. So now to sit there and say, you’re a monopoly. You should have dealt with it then. But you approved it. So you can’t now go back and say, we made a mistake.

When we started our company, AEG wasn’t going to do anything with us. There was still some tension [after Leiweke left the company]. They wouldn’t do our conferences. They wouldn’t do our publication [Pollstar or VenuesNow, which OVG owns]. They didn’t want to book our buildings. They wouldn’t talk to us. So if you looked at where we were as a company, it was like, hey, I don’t have a choice if I am going to survive and make a go of this company. Me and Irving Azoff, we personally put our own money into growing this damn thing. Now, I have to find somebody [to book shows] because I need content. My buildings can’t work if I don’t have content.

And so then [the authorities] come back and say, well, why didn’t you be a promoter? I barely had enough money to meet payroll. Me and Irving put $10-15 million into the company and started it up. We were doing the dog paddle.

Now you come along and you want to whack me? And the question I have is, shouldn’t we be like the gold statue winners for entrepreneurial spirit? All I’ve done is given people choices now on food and beverage companies, or facility management companies, or facility development companies. And I’m competing with all these other people. You let AEG and SMG merge. And I’m the dumb schmuck that took them on. I’m the one that went and competed with them. And by the way, I kicked their butt.

Now you penalize me? I didn’t go buy other companies out and try to eliminate competition. If you look at everything we’ve done – privatize the building in New York, privatize the building in Seattle, privatize the building in Austin – isn’t that what we’re supposed to be, entrepreneurial spirit? Shouldn’t we encourage that instead of condemning that?

But it’s like, well, anyone that’s partners with Live Nation, we’re going to get. Why? If you’ve got a problem with them, go talk to them. But at the end of the day, you’re going to penalize me, because I’m working with the only company that would return my phone calls? That’s the mindset now. And I just think it’s wrong.

Now, everybody has an opinion, and theirs counts. And so we will fight through that. But I think we’ve had a four-year stint, at least in our country, where there has been almost ruthlessness towards companies. And to me, this private-public partnership in Hamilton, where we’re putting up all the money and taking all the risk and the city ultimately gives us a long-term lease, I think that’s a good thing. But you’ve got to have entrepreneurs who are willing to take risk.

And so I think we’ve got to get back – in the U.S., but I’d say this applies to Canada, too – to encouraging competition, but celebrating entrepreneurs, and trying to encourage privatization of certain aspects of risk. I think governments should be focused on security, and education, and health, and wellness, and services. That means the private sector has to go figure out a way to build arenas. I don’t think the taxpayers should have to pay for arenas. But it means you better then find people who want to take the risk to develop them. We’ve spent $5 billion as a company. $5 billion. I think that’s a good thing. And by the way, we’re not a monopoly. We have lots of competitors.

Coming back to the arena in Hamilton, what are your hopes for the future of concerts and entertainment in the city?

If you think about arenas, they’re a point of destination that brings the entire community together. And as we’re proving again with Taylor, music moves people. It’s the one thing that unites us and always brings us together. If the arena can be a symbol of rejuvenation and renovation in Hamilton and we can get people pumped up, other developers are going to jump in and other projects are going to get built. There’s a chain effect, and that’s fantastic.

This story was originally published by Billboard Canada.