Touring
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Sphere Entertainment reported quarterly revenue of $308.3 million, slightly lower than the year-ago period, owing to half-a-dozen fewer shows, the Las Vegas venue company reported on Monday (March 3).
Sphere — which chairman/CEO James Dolan reminded analysts on a call is still basically a brand-new company — reported an operating loss of $142.9 million, a $16.7 million improvement compared to the same quarter a year ago. Meanwhile, adjusted operating income of $32.9 million was down $18.6 million from the prior-year quarter and events-related revenue of $54.4 million was $800,000 less than the year ago period. The quarter included shows by the Eagles and Anyma as well as the Las Vegas Grand Prix, which returned to Sphere in November as part of a multi-year deal.
With additional shows from the Eagles and Anyma and upcoming residencies by country star Kenny Chesney and Backstreet Boys, Dolan said 2025 will be marked by continued demand and improved operating efficiency.
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“This year, the biggest opportunities are the nuts and bolts of how well we operate the business. That is going to provide a boost,” Dolan said on a call with analysts. “Longer term, the expansion of more Spheres is what is going to deliver the most [return].”
Sphere grossed $169 million, while MSG Networks generated $139.3 million, for the quarter ending Dec. 31. Sphere’s operating loss of $107.9 million on an adjusted basis was $800,000, while MSG Networks reported an operating loss of $35 million. On an adjusted basis, MSG reported an adjusted operating income of $33.7 million.
Advertising on the outside of Sphere, which the company calls Exosphere, plus suite license fees generated $20.3 million, a $2.7 million improvement from the prior-year quarter.
Here’s what else you need to know from the earnings call.
In addition to Sphere Abu Dhabi, the company is working on mini-Spheres.
Last fall, Sphere Entertainment announced plans for a second Sphere venue in Abu Dhabi, the capital city of the United Arab Emirates (UAE), that would be entirely funded by the UAE’s Department of Culture and Tourism. The new venue will be operated as a franchise, with Sphere Entertainment receiving a franchise initiation fee that grants Abu Dhabi the right to use the company’s intellectual property and content from The Sphere Experience, like Postcard from Earth and V-U2: An Immersive Concert Film.
As plans for Sphere in Abu Dhabi move forward, the company is exploring smaller versions of Sphere that could seat around 5,000, compared to the Las Vegas venue’s 20,000-seat design, Dolan said.
“We’re currently working on the architecture of our smaller Sphere” and identifying mid-sized cities that could present opportunities, Dolan said. “We’re looking to take advantage of the content we’ve created already and the business we’ve created already and bringing it out to other markets. Right now, we’re in the planning and design phase.”
While the cost of playing Sphere is “high” for artists, demand is higher.
Dolan acknowledged that playing Sphere, a first-of-its-kind venue, comes with a slew of costs that can set performing artists back. But acts like Chesney, who will kick off a 15-show residency in May, and Backstreet Boys, who start an 18-show residency this summer, save on the cost of touring multiple cities, Dolan said.
“We know that the content costs are high for a band, but they are offset by the fact that it’s a residency,” he said. “So a touring band has to go to 50 cities, move place to place. The bottom line for bands is they do better.”
In response to a question about the biggest opportunities ahead, Dolan said the demand from fans, artists and corporate sponsors is overwhelming. The Las Vegas venue has 55 shows planned for the first half of 2025, up from 37 in the first half of 2024.
“We have a desire to do those concerts, and artists have a desire to play the Sphere,” Dolan said. “If there is anything that is going to limit concerts, it’s probably going to be [demand].”
Expect more concert videos like the one made of U2’s Sphere show.
Dolan declined to share details about the newest The Sphere Experience, but he said it’s likely the company will do more concert films like V-U2 in the future owing to the success of that show and the low cost of creating content like it.
These films, which are akin to “attending the concert without having the band there,” cost less than $500,000 to record and create, Dolan said, adding that they have more performance recordings in the wings.
“The cost of that product is quite low, and I expect that we will continue to build up the library and that you’ll be seeing those kinds of experiences for years to come,” Dolan said.
Lady Gaga will perform her first concert in Mexico in 13 years on April 26 at the GNP Seguros Stadium in Mexico City, Live Nation announced on Monday (March 3) in a press release, followed by a post by the pop star on Instagram. “¡Viva La MAYHEM! We’re coming back,” she wrote. The highly anticipated […]
In 2000, after Larry Magid sold his Philadelphia promotion company Electric Factory Concerts for an undisclosed sum, the buyer, Robert Sillerman, called at 12:30 a.m. to congratulate him. Then Sillerman said, “Now you congratulate me.”
“OK, congratulations on what?” Magid asked Sillerman, his new boss.
“Well, we merged,” Sillerman said.
Sillerman, then executive chairman of SFX Entertainment, was referring to his company’s $4.4 billion dollar sale to San Antonio, Texas-based broadcast behemoth Clear Channel Communications, which he’d finished at almost exactly the same time he bought Magid’s company. Thus, Magid would become an employee not of SFX, but Clear Channel, for the next five years — a period that was not easy for Magid, who had been Philly’s top independent promoter since roughly 1968, when he opened the Electric Factory club with a Chambers Brothers show. “It just seemed to be a struggle,” he recalls. “There were a lot of meetings, none of which we were used to.”
All this took place 25 years ago this week — Clear Channel’s purchase of SFX was announced Feb. 29, 2000 — and it would change the concert business forever. For decades, the live industry was ruled by unaffiliated local promoters like Magid, who ran their cities like local cartels as rock’n’roll evolved from tiny events to stadium concerts. Sillerman had spent the past three years buying out those local promoters — an acquisition spree that included big names like the late Bill Graham’s company in the Bay Area (for a reported $65 million), Don Law‘s company in Boston ($80 million) and lesser-known indies such as Avalon Attractions in Southern California ($27 million). The result was a consolidated behemoth that guaranteed advance payments of up to millions of dollars for top artists to do national tours, prompting promoters to raise prices for tickets, parking, food and alcohol to pay for their costs — all of which has become standard industry practice for concerts over the ensuing 25 years.
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Then Sillerman turned around and sold everything to Clear Channel.
By that point, the concert business no longer operated as a collection of regional fiefdoms — in which Bill Graham Presents and its Bay Area competitors competed for, say, a U2 date — but as a central entity in which SFX booked U2’s entire U.S. tour. In 2000, SFX was to promote 30 tours, from Tina Turner to Britney Spears to Ozzfest, “light years beyond what any other company has ever attempted,” Billboard reported at the time. “It has become nearly impossible for a major act to tour without SFX being involved in some way.”
“What [Sillerman] accomplished revolutionized the business. It was probably the biggest impact in the industry since the Beatles,” recalls Dennis Arfa, longtime agent for Billy Joel and others, who sold his talent agency to SFX and worked there for several years. “Bob took the business from a millionaire’s game to a billionaire’s game. From the street to Wall Street.” (Sillerman died in 2019.)
Sillerman’s sale to Clear Channel offered an even more tantalizing promise for the concert business: linking hundreds of top radio stations with top promoters and venues — “taking advantage of the natural relationship between radio and live music events,” Lowry Mays, Clear Channel’s chairman and CEO, said at the time of the sale.
But the venture ultimately failed. Many of the SFX promoters never felt they fit in at San Antonio-based Clear Channel. “We knew we were dealing with a very conservative family out of Texas — that was people’s main concern,” recalls Pamela Fallon, who’d worked with Boston promoter Don Law when SFX bought his company, then became a Clear Channel senior vp of communications. “We were pretty footloose and fancy-free in the concert business.”
Clear Channel’s meetings-heavy corporate culture reflected Mays, a former Texas petroleum engineer who, by 2000, had expanded the company from a single station in the early 1970s to a media giant with 867 radio stations and 19 TV stations, a robust billboard business and a weekly consumer base of 120 million. Along the way, Mays helped build conservative talk radio, using Clear Channel-owned syndicate Premiere Radio Networks to expand the reach of Rush Limbaugh, Laura Schlessinger and other right-wing hosts.
In 2001, writing in Salon, former Billboard reporter Eric Boehlert, later a progressive media critic, called Clear Channel “radio’s big bully.” In 2003, U.S. Senators questioned Mays about Clear Channel’s business practices during a committee hearing on media consolidation; the Eagles’ Don Henley showed up to accuse Clear Channel of strong-arming artists to work with the company, as opposed to its competitors. John Scher, a New York promoter who did not sell to SFX, Clear Channel or Live Nation, adds today: “The merger with Clear Channel, in some markets, was the death knell to local promoters: Sell to Clear Channel, or not be able to do any significant marketing with their radio stations.”
But the Clear Channel vision of combining radio with concerts had a fundamental flaw: It may have violated antitrust laws, as a rival Denver promoter claimed in a 2001 lawsuit, alleging the company blacked out radio airplay for artists who booked tours with Clear Channel rivals. (The parties settled in 2004.)
Other flaws in the “mega-merger,” as Billboard referred to it in a March 2000 front-page headline, were less public. In every market, according to Angie Diehl, a longtime marketing exec for promoters, who worked for both SFX and Clear Channel at the time, there were multiple competing radio stations that could present a concert. There were also multiple competing rival concert promoters. Clear Channel aimed to lock down all of these entities in one city so the company could control all the marketing, advertising and promotion of, say, U2.
“But there’s only one U2,” Diehl says. “The artist still dictates what they want. If you want U2 to play for you, and U2 says, ‘Well, we want KROQ to present the show,’ that’s who’s going to present the show.” Arfa adds that the combined company “never quite lived up to its synergistic ambitions.”
Perhaps recognizing this reality, Clear Channel spun off its concert division in 2005 — which would come to be known as Live Nation, led by Michael Rapino, a Canadian promoter who’d also sold his company to SFX. At first, despite emerging as the world’s biggest promoter, Live Nation struggled with hundreds of millions of dollars in debt — $367 million from the initial Clear Channel spin-off, growing to $800 million due to venue-maintenance fees over the next few years. But Rapino steered the promoter into a merger with ticket-selling giant Ticketmaster in 2008, providing crucial cashflow for years to come. “Until the Ticketmaster merger, I don’t think it made any money,” Scher says, adding that he used to book 30 to 40 New York arena shows per year, but industry dominance among Live Nation and top rival AEG has forced him to downsize to three or four. “They are formidable adversaries.”
In the long run, Live Nation solved a problem that the short-lived, SFX-infused Clear Channel Communications never quite figured out. (Clear Channel Communications renamed its radio operation iHeartMedia in 2014; Mays died in 2022.) So despite the promise — and the fears — that Clear Channel would take over the concert business and shut out competition, it was actually what came before and after the $4.4 billion acquisition that proved far more significant. Before the acquisition, SFX was the entity that expanded concert promotion from regional to national; after the acquisition, Live Nation made the concert industry more profitable than ever.
The promise of Clear Channel “synergy,” during its concert-industry excursion from 2000 to 2005, never fully paid off. “The idea was they were going to be able to promote all our concerts over their radio stations,” recalls Danny Zelisko, a Phoenix promoter who sold his company, Evening Star Productions, to SFX. “But at Clear Channel, [promoters] were the stepchild in the backseat. We were almost a dirty word. There was never anything about bringing the radio and the concerts together. It just wasn’t meant to be.”
Gracie Abrams has canceled two more shows as she continues to fight off an illness, the singer announced Sunday (March 2). In another handwritten note posted to her Instagram Story, Abrams told fans that she would no longer be performing March 3 in Nottingham or March 4 in Leeds. “I hate that I have to […]
Shakira called off her concert in Santiago, Chile, tonight (Sunday, March 2), just hours before the show at Estadio Nacional was scheduled to go on.
“I am heartbroken that I cannot sing for you today for reasons beyond my control,” the Colombian superstar wrote in a statement posted on social media. In her note, she explained that there were safety concerns regarding her stage production at the stadium, which is located in Santiago’s Ñuñoa district. Shakira was expected to perform at Estadio Nacional for two nights, both of which were sold out.
It’s the second Latin American city to be postponed citing local production issues on Shakira’s Las Mujeres Ya No Lloran Tour, following the cancellation of her Feb. 24 show in Medellín, Colombia — and the third total that she’s had to reschedule since bringing her world tour to the region in February. On doctor’s orders, Shakira couldn’t perform in Lima, Peru, on Feb. 16, as she was hospitalized with an abdominal condition.
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“To my fans,” Shakira wrote in her Sunday update, “you who have been with me for more than 30 years know more than anyone else my professional ethics and how much I strive to always give you the best. For a year I have worked tirelessly, night and day, on the smallest details to achieve an unforgettable experience for my fans as they deserve and as we have been able to enjoy together during the concerts I have been performing.”
The star expressed that connecting with fans every night on tour “is a big part of what makes me wake up every day wanting to celebrate life,” then broke the news that her performance in Chile must be postponed:
“You can imagine how painful it is for me as an artist to see that after so many efforts to come to this country that I love so much, my show in Chile on this occasion must be rescheduled due to circumstances beyond my control or that of my production.
“When an artist travels to a country, their production and team become directly dependent on the local producers. My staff and I trusted at all times that the production company hired by the local promoter would follow to the letter the specifications that were diligently provided by us so that a show of the magnitude of this one could take place.
“The Las Mujeres Ya No Lloran Tour, which I wanted to start in my home, Latin America, is the biggest tour of my career and currently one of the biggest productions in the world. With a stage that weighs 62 tons, unfortunately we have found that the floor of the place where my stage would go is uneven and is not properly stabilized to ensure the safety of my band, dancers, my fans and myself.
“There are two things I would never compromise and that is the safety of my team and my fans, and I would never offer you a show below the quality standards you deserve.”
Shakira intends to return to Chile as soon as possible — even if she has to “inspect the floor and every last screw in the structure that supports my stage” herself, she says.
On the event’s ticketing page, Fenix Entertainment shared the same information in a statement on Sunday: “We regret to inform you that during the assembly process of the show scheduled for today (March 2) at the Estadio Nacional de Santiago de Chile, we have encountered technical problems beyond the control of the artist and their production that prevent the correct development of the concert, since the floor where the stage would be located is uneven.”
The next city on Shakira’s Las Mujeres Ya No Lloran Tour itinerary is Buenos Aires, Argentina, where she’s set to perform at Campo Argentino de Polo on March 7-8.
See her full note about the Chile concert postponement here.
Janet Jackson is taking immersive audio to new heights with her new Las Vegas residency at Resorts World Theatre in Las Vegas.
The two-hour show runs through 43 of Jackson’s biggest hits, including tracks “What Have You Done For Me Lately,” “Nasty” and “When I Think of You,” the single from her 1986 Control album that became her first No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100. Powering the show is L-Acoustics’ most advanced loudspeaker deployment to date, with 242 speakers spread out across the stage and proscenium to evenly deliver high-quality sound to each of Resorts World Theater’s 5,000 seats.
The brains of L-Acoustics’ loudspeaker systems is L-ISA, the pioneering immersive audio platform that utilizes patented acoustic algorithms and proprietary technology to create ultra-high-resolution spatial audio with precise sound placement. By utilizing L-ISA, Jackson’s audio team was able to develop a carefully detailed soundscape for the show that’s designed to reinforce the artist-audience connection.
Started in 1984 by French physicist and Pink Floyd fan Christian Heil, L-Acoustics is best known for creating the modern speaker line array, a configuration for evenly distributed amplified sound that came to replace the stacked sound configuration rock bands relied on during the 1980s. L-ISA is an extension of that technology, equipping sound engineers with tools to sonically place any of the show’s 99 channels into specific locations throughout the theater. In using L-ISA for Jackson’s show, sound engineer Caram Costanzo was able to sonically space out instruments for better sound clarity, send other sounds in loops around the audience and enable Jackson’s vocals to follow her across the stage — with her voice even rising in height for one scene in which she utilizes a lift to hoist her atop the stage.
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“Whether you’re seated right in the middle or on the right or the left, the sound draws the audience in and creates greater intimacy,” says Scott Sugden, director of project management at L-Acoustics. “And as an artist on stage, [they] notice the audience is more captivated and engaged and it leads to a better experience for both the artist and the fan.”
This is far from the first time L-Acoustics has had a presence in Las Vegas. Adele used the company for her Weekends with Adele residency at the Colosseum at Caesars Palace, as did fellow Resorts World alums Katy Perry, Carrie Underwood and Luke Bryan for their respective residencies at the hotel and casino. But Jackson’s show represents the company’s most advanced deployment on the strip to date.
Resorts World Theater — named the world’s highest-grossing venue with a capacity of less than 5,000 on Billboard’s annual Top Grossing Venues list for 2023 — boasts the first fixed install of L-ISA in Las Vegas, powered by seven line arrays across the front of the stage, each outfitted with 14 of the company’s k2 loudspeakers and complemented with a complex mix of out-fill and center hung arrays, subs, coaxials and processors.
“This theater is very unique in terms of sound design,” says L-Acoustics CEO Laurent Vaissié, noting the intimate interior design by Quebec theatrical architecture firm Scéno Plus at the venue, where the furthest seat from the stage is just 150 feet away. However, he adds, “It’s L-ISA that creates the show’s unique soundscape and brings it into three dimensions.”
Sugden says that while many audio aficionados have described the L-ISA system as immersive audio because of its ability to fully immerse the listener with sound, he prefers the term “hyperreal” because it “enhances the reality of the show.”
“It’s localizing her voice and making sure that it’s really intelligible and separated from the rest of the instruments we can localize on stage,” he said. “It’s much more than just surround sound; it’s the ability to position sound and the artist’s voice in ways that make the most sense. We have this canvas which allows the engineer and the artist to paint sound in three dimensions, and what they do with that is completely a creative choice.”
Janet Jackson: Las Vegas runs through May 31 at Resorts World Theater. For more information, visit rwlasvegas.com.
While the group waits to find out whether or not it will be inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, Maná announced on Thursday (Feb. 27) a summer tour of festivals in Spain. The iconic Mexican band will visit six cities between June and July, where fans will be able to enjoy their […]
Sabrina Carpenter‘s tour just got less short and a lot sweeter. On Thursday (Feb. 27), the pop star announced that she’s circling back to North America for a slew of extra dates on her ongoing Short n’ Sweet trek, kicking off this fall. In an Instagram post sharing the new shows, Carpenter wrote, “you asked […]
Drake postponed the remaining handful of dates on his Anita Max Wynn Tour slated to run through Australia and New Zealand in March. And now, fans are reacting to the unexpected news. It all started after rep for Drake confirmed Tuesday (Feb. 25) that the trek was delayed due to a “scheduling conflict” in a […]
Coldplay has long established itself as a global touring force. By the end of 2024, The Music of the Spheres World Tour had become the most attended tour in history, via 11 legs of international concerts in five continents. Now, the band rules January’s Boxscore recap by breaking new ground with its first shows in India.
Over nine shows between Jan. 9-26, Coldplay grossed $56.6 million and sold 590,000 tickets in January, according to figures reported to Billboard Boxscore. It’s the sixth time that the British quartet has ruled the monthly Top Tours ranking, continuing a cat-and-mouse chase to the record books.
In November, Coldplay scored its fifth win, pulling out of a three-way tie with Beyoncé and Trans-Siberian Orchestra. Then, TSO caught up in December with its own fifth victory. Now, Coldplay inches to six. With a packed schedule between April and September, the band is in a better position to match Elton John and Bad Bunny’s record seven before TSO begins its annual holiday run in November.
Coldplay’s January run began with four shows at Abu Dhabi’s Zayed Sports City Stadium between Jan. 9-14. Those dates earned $28 million and sold 203,000 tickets, securing No. 1 on Top Boxscores. The band’s last trip to the United Arab Emirates was a one-night engagement on New Year’s Eve of 2016, raking in $4.3 million from 31,300 tickets during the A Head Full of Dreams Tour. The 2025 shows averaged $7 million and 50,800 tickets, marking improvements of 63% and 62%. But considering the expansion to four nights, Coldplay was able to sextuple its prior stop.
Then, the band went to India for the first time in its career, playing three shows in Mumbai on Jan. 18 and 20-21, grossing $12.8 million from 164,000 tickets. Finally, there were two shows at Ahmedabad’s Narrenda Modi Stadium. Those grossed $15.7 million and sold 224,000 tickets.
At more than 110,000 for each night, Coldplay broke the record for the largest stadium shows of the 21st century. The Ahmedabad shows sold 111,581 tickets on Jan. 25 and 111,989 on Jan. 26, narrowly bypassing George Strait’s 110,905 at Kyle Field at Texas A&M last June. Strait’s date remains the bestselling U.S. stadium show ever.
This is Coldplay’s second leg of shows in Asia during the Music of the Spheres World Tour. Between November 2023 and February 2024, it grossed $129.4 million and sold 884,000 tickets from dates in Japan, Malaysia, Taiwan and more. Altogether, the entire continent has generated $186 million in grosses for the record-breaking tour, with more shows scheduled in April in Hong Kong and South Korea.
After that, the Music of the Spheres World Tour will continue with 17 shows in the U.S. and Canada, plus 12 in the United Kingdom, scheduled to wrap the trek with 10 hometown shows at London’s Wembley Stadium. Since its 2022 launch, the tour has sold 10.9 million tickets and grossed just under $1.2 billion, making it the best-selling and second highest-grossing tour in Boxscore history.
Coldplay nearly doubles its closest competition, with Luke Combs and SEVENTEEN at Nos. 2-3 with $30.3 million and $28.8 million, respectively. Only three more acts grossed more than $10 million, as the Eagles, Justin Timberlake and ATEEZ follow.
January was a particularly strong month for K-pop groups, with ENHYPEN as the third Korean act in the top 10, at No. 8 with $7.7 million from just two shows. SEVENTEEN and ENHYPEN score with shows in Asia – the former in the Philippines and Singapore and the latter in Japan. ATEEZ had a string of European dates, peaking with more than 22,000 tickets over two nights at London’s O2 Arena.
As is becoming increasingly common since its 2023 opening, Sphere is No. 1 on Top Venues (15,001+ capacity). Both acts who played shows there in January are among the top 10 touring acts, headed by the Eagles at No. 4. Two weekends of dates combined to $18.7 million and 65,600 tickets, pushing the band’s residency to $98 million and 327,000 tickets since its Sept. 20 kickoff. With four February shows still to be reported and more scheduled in March and April, those totals will likely soar beyond $150 million and half a million tickets.
At No. 9, Anyma posts $7.5 million and 52,300 tickets from three shows at the Las Vegas arena. Combined with its five shows in December, the Italian American DJ drove $21 million and 137,000 tickets, marking a successful close to the venue’s first electronic residency.
January is historically a dry month, with Western stadium tours on pause for cold weather. It makes sense then that Asia and Oceania make up nine of the month’s top 10 stadiums, powered by Coldplay and the K-pop acts mentioned earlier, plus Luke Combs with shows in Brisbane and Sydney. They leave room for Mexico City’s Estadio GNP Seguros at No. 8, with $8.9 million from Kygo ($3.3 million on Jan. 25) and Linkin Park ($5.6 million on Jan. 31).
Even indoors, January calendars were light. In November and December, seven arenas eclipsed $10 million in each month, while Sphere is January’s only entry on Top Venues (15,001+ capacity) to gross eight figures.
Radio City Music Hall lores over the Top Venues (5,001-10k capacity) chart with $13.2 million – nearly five times the $2.7 million of Sydney’s Hordern Pavilion at No. 2. The New York theater benefits from the final shows of its Christmas Spectacular, with engagements later in the month from Dave Chappelle, The Giggly Squad, and Hugh Jackman.