Touring
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Sam Hunt will hit the road this summer on his headlining Summer on the Outskirts Tour with Brett Young and Lily Rose.
The 27-date, Live Nation-produced tour will launch July 6 in Hartford, Conn., and will include stops in Atlanta, Boston, Dallas, Detroit and New York City.
The tour takes its name from a new song Hunt will release on Friday, March 10, titled “Outskirts.” The track follows his previous release, “Walmart.”
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To date, Hunt has earned nine No. 1 Billboard Country Airplay chart hits, including “23,” “Take Your Time” and “Body Like a Back Road.” His current country radio single, “Water Under the Bridge,” is at No. 17.
Meanwhile, Young’s current single “You Didn’t” is at No. 13 on the Country Airplay chart. “Villain” hitmaker Rose was honored with the 2022 GLAAD Media Awards’ outstanding breakthrough artist accolade and launched 2023 with her own headlining tour. Later this year, she will join Shania Twain’s Queen of Me Tour for 11 tour stops.
Tickets for Hunt’s Summer on the Outskirts Tour will go on sale beginning with the Verizon presale on March 7 at 10 a.m. local time, ahead of the general on sale, which begins Friday, March 10, at 10 a.m. local time.
See the full list of Hunt’s Summer on the Outskirts tour below:
July 6 – Hartford, CT – Xfinity Theatre
July 7 – Gilford, NH – Bank of NH Pavilion
July 8 – Holmdel, NJ – PNC Bank Arts Center
July 14 – Wantagh, NY – Northwell Health at Jones Beach Theater
July 15 – Darien Center, NY – Darien Lake Amphitheater
July 16 – Toronto, ON – Budweiser Stage
July 20 – Brandon, MS – Brandon Amphitheater
July 21 – Orange Beach, AL – The Wharf Amphitheater *
July 22 – Charlotte, NC – PNC Music Pavilion
July 27 – Detroit, MI – Pine Knob Music Theatre
July 28 – Indianapolis, IN – Ruoff Music Center
July 29 – St. Louis, MO – Hollywood Casino Amphitheatre
Aug. 3 – Carbondale, IL – Southern Illinois University-SIU Banterra Center**^
Aug. 4 – Bonner Springs, KS – Azura Amphitheater ^
Aug. 5 – Oklahoma City, OK – The Zoo Amphitheatre ^
Aug. 11 – Irvine, CA – FivePoint Amphitheatre
Aug. 12 – Mountain View, CA – Shoreline Amphitheatre
Aug. 13 – Stateline, NV – Lake Tahoe Harveys Outdoor Arena ^
Aug. 18 – Houston, TX – Cynthia Woods Mitchell Pavilion presented by Huntsman***
Aug. 19 – Dallas, TX – Dos Equis Pavilion
Aug. 20 – Rogers, AR – Walmart AMP
Aug. 24 – Bethel, NY – Bethel Woods Center for the Arts
Aug. 25 – Syracuse, NY – St. Joseph’s Health Amphitheater at Lakeview
Aug. 26 – Boston, MA – MGM Music Hall at Fenway
Sept. 7 – Tampa, FL – MIDFLORIDA Credit Union Amphitheatre
Sept. 8 – Atlanta, GA – Ameris Bank Amphitheatre
Sept. 9 – Raleigh, NC – Coastal Credit Union Music Park at Walnut Creek
*On Sale March 17 ** On Sale TBD *** On Sale March 24 ^ Not a Live Nation date
Primary Talent International has announced a surprise decoupling with Creative Artists Agency, less than a year after CAA acquired the UK booking agency through a blockbuster $750 million purchase of its parent ICM Presents in June.
ICM Presents bought the 30-year old booking agency in March 2020, just days before international concert touring was suspended for more than a year due to the COVID-19 pandemic. That acquisition — in which Primary would retain its name and office — came just months after ICM Partners sold a minority stake in the agency to private equity firm Crestview Partners.
When ICM acquired Primary Talent, ICM CEO Chris Silbermann noted that the 32-year-old company, with clients including The 1975, The Cure, Lana Del Rey, Noel Gallagher, Jack Harlow, alt-J, Dropkick Murphys and Patti Smith, “greatly enhances our ability to serve our clients on a global scale, through added resources, support and even greater opportunities,” noting the agency’s reputation for being “fiercely independent, which we love about them.”
Silbermann added: “We are honored that they believed we were the right partners to help take their clients and their agency to the next levels of success, while retaining their brand and management identity and philosophy.”
Primary Talent asked for a split from CAA in order to “re-establish Primary’s independent status,” one source tells Billboard. Shortly after closing the ICM deal last year, CAA laid off 105 ICM Presents employees from different parts of the company.
An agreement to terminate the coupling was finalized earlier this year in a deal led by Primary Talent managing partner and CEO Matt Bates along with former ICM founding partner and COO Rick Levy. Veteran agent Ben Winchester will continue to serve as a board member along with Bates and Levy.
As part of the new management configuration, the agency has promoted Primary agents Laetitia Descouens, Sally Dunstone, Martje Kremers and Ed Sellers to partner status. They will be joined by veteran agent Simon Clarkson, who will be based in Los Angeles. The agency, which currently numbers 35 employees, expects to announce additional agents to their growing ranks in the coming weeks.
“The pandemic changed the landscape of the music touring business, and we felt it was beneficial to return to our roots as the UK’s largest independent music talent agency,” said Bates. “Adding to the strength and experience of the original Primary agent team, we are excited to bring aboard the next generation of talented agents to join as founding partners. In this new incarnation, Primary will be even better positioned to support the evolving careers of our artists and guide them wherever needed.”
BRISBANE, Australia — A brouhaha between Bluesfest and a touring party that includes the Soul Rebels and Big Freedia is entering legal territory after the groups — which also includes Talib Kweli and GZA — has jointly claimed they were canceled by the Australian event “in bad faith and in breach of contract.”
All of those acts were initially slated to perform at the festival this Easter in Byron Bay, in addition to several theater shows on Australia’s east coast promoted by Bluesfest Touring.
And then, they weren’t.
When the second artist announcement for Bluesfest dropped in October 2022, the growing lineup included The Soul Rebels & Friends with special guests Talib Kweli, GZA and Big Freedia.
The bill as it stands for Bluesfest 2023 no longer features the four acts.
A strongly worded statement from the tour’s reps, seen by Billboard, lays all the blame at Bluesfest and its director Peter Noble.
“The artists had fully executed signed contracts with Peter Noble and had already booked travel to Australia and were looking forward to returning to the country to perform for their fans,” the statement reads.
“Peter Noble removed the artists and the tour without further communication or reason from Bluesfest other than him stating his decision to not want to pay the artists.”
Furthermore, it continues, “these are all black artists, and Big Freedia is an LGBTQ icon.”
Bluesfest
Courtesy Bluesfest
The statement then points to the controversial Australian rock group Sticky Fingers, which, after a weeks-long backlash, has been removed from the lineup.
“It appears the tour may have been replaced by other artists including Sticky Fingers,” reads the statement, which was originally distributed to a handful of media outlets in late February, including the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s Double J network. “We are uncertain about who else on Bluesfest may have also been cancelled.”
Noble’s “cancellation of the tour of the aforementioned artists and on Bluesfest has resulted in significant financial loss to the artist,” the statement continues. “Peter’s egregious treatment and disregard of his contractual and moral obligations and disrespect can be completely supported by his actions and written communications.”
Speaking with Billboard on Friday (March 3), Noble read from a prepared statement from Bluesfest’s lawyers.
“The termination of the Soul Rebels contract by Bluesfest has nothing to do with the announcement of Sticky Fingers playing at Bluesfest 2023,” the statement reads. “The Soul Rebels contract was terminated because they did not comply with the contractual terms. By that, we mean, Soul Rebels, Big Freedia, GZA and Talib Kweli.”
Noble declined to go off script.
The impresario and his long-running festival have rolled with many punches these past few years, from the pandemic to floods, to the border closures and public health orders which saw the 2021 edition nixed just hours before showtime.
In the new year, a new problem.
King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard and Sampa The Great recently bailed from the bill, a boycott to the booking of Sticky Fingers, whose frontman has a well-publicized and controversial past.
On Thursday of this week, after a weeks-long backlash on social media, Noble and Bluesfest announced that Sticky Fingers “is to step off the Bluesfest 2023 line-up.”
The 2023 edition of Bluesfest is set for April 6-10 at Byron Events Farm, with headliners including Gang of Youths, Paolo Nutini, Tash Sultana, Bonnie Raitt, the Doobie Brothers and more. Last year’s event reported more than 100,000 attendees.
LONDON — Security services could have prevented a suicide bomber from killing 22 people in a terror attack outside an Ariana Grande concert at Manchester Arena in 2017 if they had acted swiftly on key intelligence, a public inquiry has found.
The chair of the inquiry, John Saunders, says there was a “realistic possibility” that the bomber could have been stopped from carrying out the atrocity if British security service MI5 had acted decisively upon on two pieces of intelligence that they received in the months leading up to the attack. The significance of that intelligence, Saunders notes, “was not fully appreciated at the time.”
A 207-page report, published Thursday (March 2), details the radicalization of bomber Salman Abedi but does not disclose details of either piece of intelligence, citing national security reasons. It does, however, state that neither piece of intelligence was shared by MI5 with counter-terror police — a failing that Saunders calls “a further example of a communication breakdown” between security agencies.
The inquiry found that an MI5 officer, identified as Witness C, failed to write a report on the second piece of intelligence on the same day MI5 assessed it and did not discuss it with colleagues. That delay “led to the missing of an opportunity to take a potentially important investigative action.”
Abedi flew from Libya to Manchester on May 18 — four days before he detonated a homemade explosive device in the foyer of Manchester Arena (now known as the AO Arena) at the end of Grande’s sold-out show. Twenty-two people died in the terror attack, the youngest aged 8 years old. Hundreds of people were injured, many of them children.
The report contends that had MI5 taken the intelligence more seriously Abedi could have been stopped at Manchester Airport upon his return from Libya and followed to his car where he had stored his explosives.
In a press conference in Manchester on Thursday, Saunders said the “failure by the security service to act swiftly enough” had contributed to a “significant missed opportunity to take action that might have prevented the attack.”
The inquiry chair went on to say that while “it is not possible to reach any conclusion on the balance of probability” as to whether the bombing would have been prevented, he believed “there was a realistic possibility that actionable intelligence could have been obtained which might have led to actions preventing the attack.”
The report also found that Abedi’s family held “significant responsibility” for the radicalization of both him and his brother, Hashem Abedi, who was sentenced in the U.K. in 2020 to a minimum of 55 years for his role in the murders.
Thursday’s report is the third and final set of findings to come out of the public inquiry into the terror attack. The U.K. Home Secretary launched the inquiry in October 2019 with its first hearings taking place in Manchester in September 2020. In total, more than 250 witnesses gave 194 days of oral evidence, although much of the evidence from MI5 and counter-terror police officers was heard in secret.
The inquiry’s two previous reports have focused on how emergency services responded to the attack and whether police and concert security should have done more to prevent the bombing.
Families of the victims called the failures exposed in Thursday’s report “unacceptable” and a “devastating conclusion” to the inquiry. “Those killed and injured in this murderous attack had every right to feel safe and protected, but as this inquiry has demonstrated, they were failed at every level — before, during and after this horrific attack,” said Richard Scorer, principal lawyer at Slater and Gordon, reading out a statement on behalf of 11 of the victims’ families.
Andrew Roussos, the father of 8-year-old Saffie-Rose Roussos, who was one of the 22 victims, said the security services’ actions amounted to a “cataclysmic failure.”
“The fact that MI5 failed to stop [Salman Abedi] despite all of the red flags available demonstrates they are not fit to keep us safe and therefore not fit for purpose,” said Roussos.
Following the report’s publication, MI5’s director general, Ken McCallum, said he was “profoundly sorry” that the security service did not prevent the attack. “Gathering covert intelligence is difficult,” McCallum said in a statement, “but had we managed to seize the slim chance we had, those impacted might not have experienced such appalling loss and trauma.”
Adam Sandler fans have one more chance to see him on tour. On Thursday (March 2), the singer-comedian announced that he has added another leg to his Adam Sandler Live tour that will see him make seven additional stops throughout the United States this spring.
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“One more week of fun? Let’s do it!” the three-time Grammy nominee wrote on Instagram, captioning a photo of the tour’s official poster that features him playing a guitar to an excited crowd.
The new leg of the tour begins on April 13 at New Jersey’s Prudential Center and will make stops in Philadelphia, Buffalo, Detroit, Louisville and Cleveland before concluding on April 21 at Baltimore’s CFG Bank Arena.
Fans looking to secure tickets can do so through Live Nation’s presale starting on Thursday (March 2) at 12 p.m. local time. Tickets will then go on sale to the general public starting on Friday, March 3 at 12 p.m. local time via Ticketmaster.
Before hitting the road, Sandler will star opposite Jennifer Aniston in Murder Mystery 2, which premieres March 31 on Netflix.
See Sandler’s list of tour dates — and official poster for the trek — below.
ADAM SANDLER LIVE TOUR DATES:
Thu April 13 — Newark, N.J. — Prudential Center
Fri April 14 — Philadelphia, Penn. — Wells Fargo Center
Sun April 16 — Buffalo, N.Y. — KeyBank Center
Mon April 17 — Detroit, Mich. — Little Caesars Arena
Tue April 18 — Louisville, Ky. — KFC Yum! Center
Wed April 19 — Cleveland, Ohio — Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse
Fri April 21 — Baltimore, M.D. — CFG Bank Arena
After a weeks-long shower of bad publicity and multiple artist withdrawals, Australia’s Bluesfest has removed the controversial rock band Sticky Fingers from its lineup.
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The popular, and long-running, music festival today (March 2) issued a statement in which organizers remarked, “Bluesfest cannot, sadly, continue to support Sticky Fingers by having them play our 2023 edition, and we apologise to those artists, sponsors and any others we involved in this matter through our mistaken belief that forgiveness and redemption are the rock on which our society is built.”
In recent days, festival director Peter Noble had doubled-down on his decision to book the polarizing band, despite growing calls from within the music community to boycott the event.
Melbourne prog-rock outfit King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard and two-time Australian Music Prize winner Sampa The Great recently withdrew from the lineup in protest to the inclusion of Sticky Fingers, with King Gizz issuing a statement remarking that “as a band and as human beings, we stand against misogyny, racism, transphobia and violence.”
Sticky Fingers has a reputation that, well, sticks.
The issues relate to the past behavior of lead singer Dylan Frost, who has been accused of threatening Indigenous musician Thelma Plum and making racist remarks at a gig featuring Indigenous punk band Dispossessed.
Sticky Fingers took a break after those incidents allegedly occurred in 2016, reuniting again in 2018.
Frost went on to address his mental health battles, and issued a statement in which he said he was “wholeheartedly against racism, and so is the band,” and that he doesn’t “condone or in any way excuse violence against women, straight up, I never have and I never will.”
Noble and Bluesfest’s statement claims “the narrative that they continue to deserve to be cancelled, as well as anyone who publicly supports them, is difficult to accept, wherein a portion of society and media passes eternal judgment toward those, in this case, a diagnosed mentally ill person whom we feel doesn’t deserve the continued public scrutiny he’s being given.”
The message continues, “We thank everyone who has contacted us and advised their support in this matter, especially those suffering from a mental illness who feel they cannot have their illness supported in a manner whereby they feel included in society.”
It’s not the first time Australian event organizers have performed a u-turn on Sticky Fingers.
In 2018, the band withdrew from the Newcastle fest This That, with promoters explaining at the time that “if their inclusion began to impact negatively on the other artists performing and our Newcastle and wider communities, that it would be best if they refrain from performing. That’s the decision we have both taken today.”
Sticky Fingers, notes Bluesfest in its statement, “has done so many good deeds that have never been reported, including building and funding recording studios and music education programs in disadvantaged regional communities.”
After enduring a two-year obstacle course which included the pandemic, floods, border closures, public health orders, and more, the 2022 edition of Bluesfest welcomed more than 100,000 revelers.
The 2023 edition of Bluesfest is set for April 6-10 at Byron Events Farm, with headliners including Gang of Youths, Paolo Nutini, Tash Sultana, Bonnie Raitt, the Doobie Brothers and more.
Read the full statement from Bluesfest below.
Bluesfest Byron Bay Statement Regarding Sticky Fingers
We are sad to announce that Bluesfest has decided that Sticky Fingers is to step off the Bluesfest 2023 line-up.
Bluesfest cannot, sadly, continue to support Sticky Fingers by having them play our 2023 edition, and we apologise to those artists, sponsors and any others we involved in this matter through our mistaken belief that forgiveness and redemption are the rock on which our society is built.
The narrative that they continue to deserve to be cancelled, as well as anyone who publicly supports them, is difficult to accept, wherein a portion of society and media passes eternal judgment toward those, in this case, a diagnosed mentally ill person whom we feel doesn’t deserve the continued public scrutiny he’s being given.
We thank everyone who has contacted us and advised their support in this matter, especially those suffering from a mental illness who feel they cannot have their illness supported in a manner whereby they feel included in society.
Sticky Fingers has done so many good deeds that have never been reported, including building and funding recording studios and music education programs in disadvantaged regional communities.
We will now move on, put this behind us and continue to plan and present our best-ever edition of Bluesfest… proudly.
For those that wish to know more, there is a carefully researched article in The Australian in 2018 that took the trouble to examine the facts, unlike a lot of the current published material.
It’s official: KISS shared the news on Wednesday (March 1) that they’ll be hitting the road for their last run of concerts ever.
The veteran glam rockers made the announcement during a sit-down on The Howard Stern Show, telling the host, “Dec. 1 and 2 is Madison Square Garden. Those are the last two shows of the band. We’re finishing up where we started.”
Ahead of the back-to-back nights at the iconic New York City venue, KISS will play 17 other shows across the U.S. and Canada as part of its End of the Road World Tour, including stops in Los Angeles, Seattle, Calgary, Montreal, Toronto and Baltimore.
“Look, some people have kind of snickered and said, ‘Oh this End of the Road tour’s gone on for years,’” Paul Stanley continued. “Yeah, we lost two and a half years to COVID. We would’ve been done already! So, yes, this is the end.”
Prompted by Stern, Gene Simmons said he’s almost certain he’ll be emotional once the band reaches its final performances. “I kid around a lot about, ‘Men don’t do that,’” he added. “I’m sure I’m gonna cry like a 9-year-old girl whose foot’s being stepped on. KISS was born on 23rd Street. It’s only taken us 50 years to go play the final shows 10 blocks away on 33rd Street, which is Madison Square Garden.”
Last month, Stanley starred in Workday’s Super Bowl commercial along with fellow rockers Joan Jett, Billy Idol, Ozzy Osbourne and Gary Clark Jr.
Watch KISS dish on their final concerts above.
After Frontier Touring announced on Tuesday (Feb. 28) that Justin Bieber‘s planned six-date, five-city Australasian leg of his Justice World Tour was canceled, the rest of the singer’s scheduled 2023 dates appear to also been called off.
No reason was given for the cancellation of the stadium gigs in Australia and New Zealand, and at press time, spokespeople for Bieber and the tour had not returned Billboard‘s requests for comment.
The Ticketmaster site listed all the 2023 Justice dates as canceled on Wednesday (March 1); the tour was scheduled to pick up in Dublin at the 3Arena on Thursday (March 2), followed by a four-night stand in Paris and a gig in Poland.
Bieber’s official website has no tour dates listed and, according to the Ticketmaster site, his handful of 2024 U.S. arena shows have also been canceled. CNN reported that fans in London — where Bieber was originally slated to perform in February — got an email from event company AXS on Tuesday night that read, “We regret to inform you that the Justin Bieber shows planned to take place at The O2 arena have been cancelled.” A note on the site for the Utilita Arena in Sheffield also confirmed that the Feb. 25 gig there had been canceled.
In June, Bieber told fans that he would take a break from the road after one month of dates because of the effects of the neurological disorder Ramsay-Hunt Syndrome, which left his face partially paralyzed. “As a result of this illness, I was not able to complete the North American leg of the Justice Tour,” he wrote in a message to fans at the time. Bieber went on to explain that after taking some time to rest and consult with his family and doctors, he went ahead with the European leg of his tour.
“After getting off stage, the exhaustion overtook me and I realized that I need to make my health the priority right now,” he explained about how he felt after completing his Rock in Rio set in September. “So I’m going to take a break from touring for the time being. I’m going to be ok, but I need time to rest and get better.”
He got back on the stage a month later, but after just six shows he said he need to take a break again. The AEG Presents-promoted Justice tour was Bieber’s first global outing since the 2016-2017 Purpose World Tour.
The outing was originally supposed to launch in 2020 as the Changes Tour, but was postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic and delayed until 2021, then to February 2022. But after playing gigs across North America through June 2022 as well as a series of overseas dates, he came off the road to heal from the effects of Ramsay-Hunt, pulling the plug on all remaining 2022 dates through December.
Independent Brooklyn venue Elsewhere is taking a new approach to ticket buying for loyal patrons. Starting today, the multi-room venue is widely launching its membership program, which ranges from $2 to $30 a month and provides tiered benefits including free entry to shows, access to the venue’s Discord and new music discovery.
Freaks With Benefits, the cheapest tier at $2 a month, provides free coat check, the ability to skip the line and access to the venue’s member-exclusive Discord channels, along with other perks. Sonic Explorer — which costs $6 a month — provides half off an unlimited number of tickets for the member and a guest, plus the perks from Freaks With Benefits. For $30 a month, the Patron Saint membership provides free entry to shows and parties, half-off tickets for a guest, reserved tickets for sold-out shows, free merch and all other previously mentioned tier benefits.
The “unlimited” free or discounted entry included in the two higher-priced tiers does come with an asterisk: Members must make a reservation in advance to reserve those tickets and are subject to “space permitting.” The reservation option is built into the backend of Elsewhere’s website and allows members to reserve up to eight events at a time. The venue has been beta testing the membership program since November — 600 people applied for the first 50 slots in just 48 hours — says Elsewhere co-founder Jake Rosenthal. “A big part of testing it was really about figuring out what is this special math where enough people feel like they’re getting enough access or that it feels very valuable,” he says. The limited reservations help members prioritize shows and keep them from “parking” on any and every show, which Rosenthal says wouldn’t be sustainable.
“There’s no limit to the number of events you can go to discounted or free,” Rosenthal explains, “There’s only the fact that like, if there’s an event several months out that you want to unequivocally park a reservation on, then you have to spend one of your reservations. But if you want to go to Elsewhere every night [without a reservation], you could do that unlimitedly for forever.”
The new program helps drive more customers to the venue, which means more artist discovery, more bar and merch sales and better-attended shows, says Rosenthal. While the price reduction on tickets for members means less money for the artists if shows sell out (roughly 15% of shows meet this criterion, according to Rosenthal), the venue only holds a small percentage of the room for membership reservations and artists are made aware of the program in their contracts.
“For 85% of our events, the incentive of the artist and Elsewhere is quite aligned,” says Rosenthal. The idea is, “How can we incentivize people to show up to those events that they otherwise probably would not have come to because they’re unfamiliar with the artist, for example. Another reason could be that $30 was too much to check something out that they’re on the fence about.”
As Rosenthal puts it, the membership program is less a money-making venture — or about providing velvet-rope treatment to VIPs — than it is about building community. That’s a longstanding goal for he and Elsewhere co-founders Dhruv Chopra and Rami Haykal-Manning, who have been tied to the DIY underground music scene in Brooklyn for years; the three ran the venue Glasslands Gallery in Williamsburg before it closed in 2015 and opened Elsewhere, which hosts upwards of 600 shows per year, in 2017. The memberships are also a way to acknowledge the price pressure that many are facing in New York and around the world.
“If you’re someone who is coming to Elsewhere once a month, twice a month or up, you’re already doing your part supporting the music scene in our community and you shouldn’t have to spend $30 five or six times a month to be at Elsewhere,” says Rosenthal. “It’s built with that ethos first, which is connecting our community more tightly and making it cheaper to come more often.”
Action sports producer Nitro Circus and Round Room Live today announced a multi-year global partnership that will see the Travis Pastrana-led Nitro Circus Live tour return to North American arenas this fall for the first time in five years — just in time for the brand’s 20th anniversary.
Since 2018, Nitro Circus Live has mostly operated as an outdoor event, held at stadiums and festivals like 2019’s Gnarlytown festival in San Pedro, California. Under the partnership with Round Room, the event will return to indoor venues in North America, including arenas like the Honda Center in Anaheim, California. The touring show’s main attraction is the Giganta Ramp, a massive 70-foot portable ramp used to launch motocross, BMX bikes and homemade vehicles like an ironing board on wheels.
Launched in 2003 by Pastrana — who raced in the coveted Daytona 500 on Feb. 19 and came in 11th place — as a straight-to-DVD series chronicling Pastrana’s extreme motocross stunts and action sports costars, Nitro Circus would find a television home on Fuel TV in 2006 before landing on MTV in 2009. In 2010, Australian motorsports promoter Michael Porra would launch the Nitro Circus Live tour with partner Andrew Edwards (Porra sold a piece of the company to Raine Group in late 2013). Nitro Circus was eventually rolled up with several other action sports brands and renamed Thrill One in 2020, before being sold off to Fiume Capital and Juggernaut Capital Partners in a $300 million deal last summer.
“Since 2003, Nitro Circus has stunned fans across the globe with a kinetic mix of boundary-breaking world’s firsts alongside outrageous comedic moments,” a press release announcing the agreement reads. “Nitro Circus has showcased a collection of action sports’ best athletes and biggest stars in packed venues worldwide, including dual BMX and scooter threat Ryan “R-Willy” Williams, pioneering WCMX rider Aaron “Wheelz” Fotheringham and many more. Now these fun-loving daredevils are back with an electrifying new live show celebrating two decades of pushing the limits, featuring huge never-before-done tricks and a host of new crazy contraptions.”
Joe Carr, CEO of Thrill One Sports and Entertainment, said, “This partnership allows us to elevate our production value, increase our show output, and bring Nitro to new markets around the world.”
Pastrana added, “I’m so pumped to see Nitro celebrate by going back under the big top and bringing the party to arenas worldwide. Everyone on the crew is ready to send it bigger than ever before.”
Round Room Live was founded by industry veterans Stephen Shaw and Jonathan Linden and currently produces Blippi: The Wonderful World Tour, Blippi The Musical, Baby Shark Live!, Peppa Pig Live and more. Last year, Round Room completed a management buyout of its lead investor eOne in a deal backed by Manhattan West, a Los Angeles-based strategic investment firm.
“We are very excited to partner with the Nitro Circus team and this incredibly insane group of athletes, to bring Nitro Circus and its high-adrenaline style of entertainment back to arenas in 2023”, said Shaw. “This tour promises to be the most exciting and electric live action sports production in the world – and we can’t wait for our audiences to see what we’ve been building.”