State Champ Radio Touring
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Trending on Billboard The signing spree around Netflix’s surprise hit KPop Demon Hunters continues with news that United Talent Agency has signed Kevin Woo for worldwide representation in all areas. Woo is a recognized K-pop singer, songwriter, and actor who covered the singing parts for Mystery Saja of The Saja Boys – in KPop Demon Hunters. […]
Earlier this month, Chappell Roan wrapped a brief run of concerts in the United States, paired with a few European dates in August. The Visions of Damsels & Dangerous Other Things Tour complemented Roan’s ongoing sweep of dominant festival performances over the last year and a half, cementing her as one of her generation’s fastest-growing live acts. She finished her recent tour, her only headline shows for 2025, playing to crowds of 30,000 and more, marking an eye-openingly fast rise to the biggest venues in the world.
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According to figures reported to Billboard Boxscore, Roan’s 11 headline shows in 2025 grossed $28.3 million and sold 276,000 tickets. They split between three overseas and eight in the United States. Some of the shows were in arenas and amphitheaters: Zurich’s Hallenstadion (12,539 tickets) and New York’s Forest Hills Stadium, which despite its name, is significantly smaller than a typical football or baseball stadium (53,458 tickets, spread across four shows). The others escalated her reach in Edinburgh, Kansas City, and Los Angeles.
Two nights at Royal Highland Centre in Edinburgh, Scotland drew 60,000 fans, averaging 30,000 per show. Two dates at Kansas City’s Liberty Memorial Park sold 69,600 tickets, averaging 34,800. The final two concerts, at Brookside Park at The Rose Bowl in Pasadena, Calif., moved 80,000 tickets, eclipsing 40,000 each night.
These venues are flat parks that recreate the sprawling crowd shots of Roan’s famed festival performances, more so than a typical football stadium with its enclosed stadium-style seating. But the number of tickets sold is comparable to any baseball stadium in the United States and far exceeds – roughly doubles – the capacity of an arena show.
These stadium-sized Boxscore figures elevate Roan even beyond the startling heights of her 2024. Her North American headline shows from last year broke into three legs. She averaged 2,083 tickets per show while performing one-offs during her opening stint on Olivia Rodrigo’s GUTS World Tour (Feb. – April). In May and June, following the release of breakout hit “Good Luck, Babe!,” she paced 3,581 tickets. By October, she was up to 10,179. One year later, Roan sold 25,389 tickets per show, ranging from 13,365 in New York to 40,010 in Los Angeles.
All of that growth, and all of these fans, with just one album under her belt. Selling out stadiums is a career-capping accomplishment for any artist, but almost an unfathomable one just two years removed from the release of one’s debut LP. The umbrella of stadium acts has grown wider in the years since returning from the COVID-19 blackout, but Roan’s supercharged ascent is still quite notable.
Zach Bryan first elevated to stadiums in 2024, almost exactly two years after he cracked the Billboard 200 with American Heartbreak. But his discography expanded by the time he played Oakland’s RingCentral Coliseum, with two more top 10 albums and four other charting titles. Fellow country chart-topper Morgan Wallen played one such show in 2021, three years and two albums deep.
Global stadium schedules have also welcomed younger artists who don’t primarily perform in English, specifically Latin and Korean acts. Still, all of them had meatier discographies than Roan’s to fill out their stadium setlists: Bad Bunny released three albums in three years before his stadium debut. Karol G and SEVENTEEN each had four albums in seven years. TWICE had six entries on the Billboard 200, all between 2020-23, before reporting a stadium show. By the time Fred again.. announced similarly eye-popping stadium shows, he had a few albums to his name.
Closer to Roan stylistically, Lady Gaga hit Mexico City’s Foro Sol (now called Estadio GNP Seguros) in May 2011, ending The Monster Ball in stadiums a year and a half after beginning it in theaters. Still, she had two top 10 albums and was weeks away from releasing her third. The year before, Taylor Swift also capped her debut headline tour at a stadium, but she was supporting her sophomore set Fearless, which won the Grammy for album of the year months prior.
Perhaps Peso Pluma comes closest to mirroring Roan’s timeline to stadiums. He played Monterrey, Mexico’s Estadio Mobil Super in November 2023, about 15 months after his first Billboard chart appearance. Even so, Genesis, his breakthrough album from 2023, was his third. J-Hope, JIN, and SUGA each hit at least one stadium on their first tours, but their history as part of BTS surely added depth to their respective ticket-buying bases.
Clearly, Roan has built a large, dedicated fan base from just one album. After first debuting on the Billboard 200 and Billboard Hot 100 in April 2024, she jumped from clubs to theaters to festivals, and then to solo headline stadium-sized engagements, all in the span of less than 18 months. Her recent tour was brief but mighty, leaving little to the imagination as to her potential box office success whenever her next shows are announced, whichever venues she decides to play.
Billboard‘s Live Music Summit will be held in Los Angeles on Nov. 3. For tickets and more information, click here.
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Fresh off the release of his new single “Changes,” Charlie Puth is ready to be part of the change in protecting the Amazon rainforest by joining the lineup of Global Citizen Festival: Amazônia, taking place next weekend in Brazil, Billboard can exclusively reveal.
Puth will join previously announced performers Anitta, Seu Jorge, Gilberto Gil, Gaby Amarantos, Chris Martin of Coldplay, Eric Terena, Kaê Guajajara and Djuena Tikunal. It’s all going down Saturday, Nov. 1, at Belém’s Estádio Olímpico, also known as Mangueirão, in Pará, Brazil.
“I’m thrilled to be coming to Belém for the first Global Citizen Festival in Latin America,” Puth said in a press release announcing his addition. “As a Global Citizen ambassador, I’m honored to be part of such an important cause for our planet and can’t wait to see you on November 1st.”
Also announced Thursday (Oct. 23): Brazilian singer Vivi Batidão will perform during the festival’s pre-show, and Alane Dias, Ricardinho and Luiza Zveiter have joined the lineup of presenters. The festival will be co-hosted by Regina Casé, Mel Fronckowiak, Hugo Gloss and Isabelle Nogueira, with appearances by Rodrigo Santoro and Estêvão Ciavatta.
Any fans not attending in person can visit globalcitizen.watch to tune in live on Nov. 1 at 6 p.m. ET, and the fest will also broadcast on Globo across Brazil.
The event will focus on amplifying the voices of indigenous peoples and local communities in the Amazon rainforest and aim to raise $1 billion to protect, restore and rewild the Amazon rainforest. Global Citizen Festival: Amazônia will be a zero carbon footprint festival, in alignment with Global Citizen’s campaign to Protect the Amazon rainforest; find the full details of the Protect the Amazon campaign here.
Puth will likely perform some of his newest music at the festival, after announcing his fourth studio album, Whatever’s Clever!, last week and dropping the lead single “Changes” alongside a music video that doubled as a pregnancy announcement for him and his wife Brooke. Puth just wrapped a 16-show residency at Blue Note Jazz Club in New York and Los Angeles, where he also live-debuted “Beat Yourself Up” from the new project, due March 6 via Atlantic Records.
Billboard’s Live Music Summit will be held in Los Angeles on Nov. 3. Find details about tickets and more information here.
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Women In CTRL, a non-profit advocacy group, announced Thursday (Oct. 23) that more than a dozen British live music organizations have signed a pledge designed to strengthen inclusion targets across the industry.
The Seat at the Table Inclusion Pledge, the first of its kind in the U.K., is centered around a new sector-wide commitment to achieving gender-balanced leadership by 2030.
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Signees of the pledge include ATC Live and Ginger Owl, and companies including AEG and The O2. All 15 LIVE (Live Music Industry Venues & Entertainment) organisations have also signed up, including the Association of Independent Festivals, Featured Artists Coalition and Music Managers Forum.
As supporters of the pledge, industry allies will contribute to case studies, share learning across the sector, and participate in future roundtables and peer learning sessions. Women In CTRL says this collaboration will be key to strengthening accountability across the live music ecosystem.
Signatories will also be required to commit to submitting an annual check-in to show progression across key focus areas, such as strengthening governance and board diversity through reviews or term limits.
In April, Women In CTRL and LIVE released a landmark report titled Seat at the Table: LIVE Edition. Its findings highlighted progress in some areas — including the finding that 61% of the Music Venue Trust board identifies as women or non-binary — while also revealing disparities in wider leadership representation.
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Forty-one percent of board members across LIVE and its 15 member organisations are women or non-binary people, the report stated. LIVE has since released its 2030 inclusion targets, which include 50% women and non-binary representation and 16% women from global majority backgrounds in senior leadership roles.
Elsewhere, the report revealed that women’s representation on U.K. music trade association boards rose from 32% in 2020 to 52% in 2024.
Gaby Cartwright, head of partnerships at LIVE, said in a press release at the time the report was released, “As an industry, it’s clear that we must do more to improve gender representation at the highest levels… Reaching this goal will require collective effort, accountability, and meaningful action — but momentum is building. This report provides crucial insight into the challenges we face, and the concrete steps needed to drive lasting change.”
Nadia Khan, founder of Women In CTRL, added at the time, “We know from experience that what gets measured, gets done. This report is an essential first step; by setting a clear benchmark, we are providing the industry with a roadmap for action, not simply reflection.”To read the full Seat at the Table: LIVE Edition report, visit the Women In CTRL website here.
Trending on Billboard EJAE, the powerhouse vocalist and songwriter behind KPop Demon Hunters’ chart-topping single “Golden,” has signed with WME for worldwide representation across all areas of her music career. A breakout voice from Netflix’s record-smashing animated musical film, EJAE is the singing voice of Rumi, the lead vocalist of the fictional girl group HUNTR/X. […]
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The nonprofit Bye Bye Plastic Foundation, founded by DJ/producer Blond:ish, has announced a landmark partnership with the booking-and-tour-management platform Gigwell, opening access for artists, managers and booking agents to integrate the new Eco-Rider 2.0 sustainability toolkit into their touring plans. The move is part of a larger push to make eco-conscious touring mainstream.
The original Eco-Rider, introduced in 2019, has already been adopted by more than 1,500 DJs and performers worldwide, helping prevent more than 325,000 single-use plastic bottles and 425,000 cups from entering circulation, according to the Bye Bye Plastic Foundation. With the roll-out of Eco-Rider 2.0 via Gigwell’s platform, artists will now be able to opt in to a full-scale sustainability rider during the booking process. By doing so, they will force promoters and venues will be to shift toward greener hospitality, eliminate plastics backstage and front-of-house and embed eco-requirements contractually.
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“When I started using the eco rider, 100 percent of my events were using plastic,” said Blond:ish in a statement. “Now I’m down to 20 percent. And not even just in the DJ booth, but the actual entire event is single-use plastic-free.”
Gigwell’s CEO, Jeremie Habib, said his platform was uniquely poised to scale this change thanks to its integrated tour-booking tools, venue-database routing software and e-signature contract flows that help eliminate paper waste in the artist-agent-venue ecosystem.
The Eco-Rider 2.0 includes a full toolkit of resources, including educational content, networking spaces for artists and tour teams, and backend integration so that sustainability requirements become a seamless part of the booking workflow. Support for the initiative now includes artists such as Sam Feldt, Madame Gandhi, Yulia Niko and Mia Moretti, along with agencies like EMPIRE, Dirtybird and Protocol Agency.
The official launch of Eco-Rider 2.0 will take place at the Amsterdam Dance Event (ADE 2025) on Wednesday (Oct. 22), where Bye Bye Plastic and Gigwell will host a panel to open up dialogue and showcase how the toolkit can scale globally. From that date forward, the toolkit will be available to artists and agencies worldwide.
Learn more at gigwell.com.
Billboard‘s Live Music Summit will be held in Los Angeles on Nov. 3. For tickets and more information, visit https://www.billboardlivemusicsummit.com/2025/home-launch.
06/21/2025
The 90,000-capacity venue hosted the capital’s biggest party as the pop star upgraded to a stadium-sized performance with ease.
06/21/2025
On June 13, the rain was coming down on the farm in Manchester, Tenn., where Bonnaroo is held — and things weren’t looking great for the 2025 edition of the festival.
Hours after sending out an evacuation order to its tens of thousands of attendees, Bonnaroo canceled the rest of its 2025 edition entirely due to a weather forecast that — as the festival said in its announcement — called for “significant and steady precipitation that will produce deteriorating camping and egress conditions in the coming days.”
It was a heartbreaking situation for all involved, from the event’s producers — who in their announcement said they were “beyond gutted” — to the fans who’d trekked to Tennessee to the many artists who were slated to play.
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Among the latter group was Remi Wolf, who had been selected to perform at Bonnaroo’s fabled Superjam — an annual set that brings a fleet of artists together on stage. (Past Superjam leads include Preservation Hall Jazz Band and Skrillex.) Wolf had spent nearly a year preparing for the Saturday night show, formally titled “Remi Wolf’s Insanely Fire 1970s Pool Party Superjam,” recruiting fellow artists including Paramore’s Hayley Williams and Mt. Joy.
With the festival canceled, Wolf and her team were committed to making the show happen elsewhere. So on the night of June 13, Josh Mulder, the director of A&R at talent agency TBA, which represents Wolf, jumped into action, getting on the phone to secure another venue for the concert. After many phone calls, Mulder and the team locked in Nashville’s Brooklyn Bowl, where Wolf performed the following day alongside Williams and a host of other guests, performing songs like Chaka Khan’s “Sweet Thing” and “Tell Me Something Good” with Rufus, Bonnie Raitt’s “I Can’t Make You Love Me” and Hall and Oates’ “Rich Girl.”
Here, Mulder talks about pivoting from the farm to the Bowl.
When did it become clear that the Superjam at Bonnaroo wasn’t going to happen?
Looking at the weather all week going into the festival, we all knew we were in for a wet weekend. All day Friday, we were in close contact with [AC Entertainment’s] Steve Greene and his team on what was happening. He called me while I was at dinner in Nashville on Friday night, saying the show was coming down and explained the situation. I then spent the next hour outside of the restaurant on the phone gathering information and updating our teams to make our next moves.Did you and the team even make it on-site? If so, how was it looking?
Remi and her band made their way through rehearsal in Manchester with the guests on the show on Friday. TBA had people on the ground at the festival on Thursday and Friday, sending constant reports that it was absolutely dumping rain on site, and it wasn’t looking great. We were actively working through an initial wave of weather-related cancellations on Friday afternoon, with the Live Nation team trying to figure out the best course of action for those artists to make the most of their time in Tennessee for the fans.What do you recall about the moment the festival was canceled and how you and the team responded? Was it immediately obvious that a relocation would be possible?
My first call was to Remi’s management team. The word was getting out, and the consensus from us and directly from Remi out of the gate was that we had an obligation to save the Superjam. It was an important moment for Remi, but equally such an important moment for the guests who we have been working with for months. It was a tornado of information being shared as quickly as possible regarding what was happening on site and how the fans were affected as well, which informed how we responded.How did you pivot to Brooklyn Bowl? What calls had to be made, and was it the first venue you sought out?
Immediately on one of those first calls, we started exploring options to relocate the show in Nashville. Through that conversation, we asked about a handful of rooms, and after clicking through a few options, we all came to the conclusion that Brooklyn Bowl was the best space available. Before pushing the go button and officially confirming the venue, we needed to figure out how many of our guests were actually able to join, so we knew if we had a show or not. Hats off to Josh Roth from the Bonnaroo team, as well as Remi’s management. It was a tag team effort to circle the wagons and reconfirm these amazing artists to round out the show with Remi.
Remi Wolf
Patrick Maciel
How did ticketing work? Do you have any sense of how many attendees were people who’d had to leave Bonnaroo?
Right from the start, we were all aligned on making this an affordable option for fans and realized the level of devastation that everyone was feeling, given the news of the festival canceling. We landed on a $35 ticket, which just felt right given the scenario. We announced the show with no guests around 11 p.m. on Friday night, with an on-sale time of Saturday morning at 9 a.m. The show sold out in about one minute, which we anticipated happening but was also a big relief.
From my understanding, there were many fans who were able to make it off the site before the show and ended up coming to Brooklyn Bowl. The crowd was electric and brought that Bonnaroo flair with them to the room. All night long, the conversation was about how amazing it was to see their spirit continue there, which was complete with many pool floaties and more usual ‘roo style.
Did all of the special guests slated for Bonnaroo make it to the Nashville show?
Naturally, given the situation, we were prepared for a few acts to not be able to make it. But we held most of the lineup together with Hayley Williams, Mt. Joy, Gigi Perez, Grace Bowers and Brian Robert Jones. Then we were able to add Grouplove and Medium Build at the last minute, which of course ended up being incredible moments in the show.
What were the highlights of the event for you?
Anyone who knows me knows I am personally such a huge Paramore fan, so I’d have to say Hayley Williams. Seeing Remi and Hayley on stage brought some tears of joy to my eyes. Just such a special moment.
How did you and the team celebrate after it was finished?
There were many hugs and beverages shared in the green room after the show. Spirits were very high, and it was just such a special moment to share with everyone there.
TOMORROW X TOGETHER is getting ready to blow your mind! The K-pop group announced on Friday (June 20) that it is set to embark on its fourth world tour. The trek, titled ACT : TOMORROW, will kick off with two shows at Gocheok Sky Dome in Seoul, South Korea, on Aug. 22 and 23. The […]
A New York hedge fund manager linked to the SFX bankruptcy has been quietly co-managing Avant Gardner and the temporarily closed Brooklyn Mirage nightclub since late last year and leading unsuccessful efforts trying to get it reopened, Billboard has learned.
Andrew Axelrod’s Axar Capital has been a secured creditor of Avant Gardner — the Brooklyn nightclub company that books and manages the Brooklyn Mirage, Kings Hall and the Great Hall — since late 2023, sources close to the company have confirmed.
A year prior, former Avant Gardner CEO Billy Bildstein had negotiated the purchase of the Electric Zoo festival from Axelrod, whose Axar Capital was the senior creditor to media mogul Bob Sillerman’s one-time EDM conglomerate SFX — of which Electric Zoo’s parent company, Made Events, was a part. When SFX went bankrupt in 2015, Axar Capital led a takeover of the company, rebranding it LiveStyle and hiring music executive Randy Phillips to lead a selloff of its assets, which included U.S. promoters like Disco Donnie Presents and Life in Color; Europe’s ID&T, the Dutch promoter behind Tomorrowland; and EDM tech startups like Denver-based electronic music platform Beatport. The last asset to sell, in 2022, was Made Events. Axelrod wanted $15 million for the company and structured the deal so that Avant Gardner could pay Axar Capital using the proceeds from the Electric Zoo festival.
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Avant Gardner successfully ran the Electric Zoo festival in 2022 but was sidelined by multiple fiascos the following year including permit denials, gate crashers, the cancellation of the festival’s opening day and accusations of overselling the closing day by 7,000 fans. Due to the disastrous 2023 run, Avant Gardner has faced multiple lawsuits from both fans and unpaid vendors and was condemned by a one-time ally, New York Mayor Eric Adams, who had previously supported the popular Brooklyn Mirage and sided with Bildstein during his high-profile battle with the State Liquor Authority.
Sources tell Billboard that the demise of the festival, and Avant Gardner’s inability to pay Axar the reported $15 million price tag for Electric Zoo, are what led to Axar becoming a senior creditor to Avant Gardner. Terms of the Electric Zoo sale are not public, but a previous agreement between Axar and publicly traded streaming service LiveOne, which purchased Chicago’s Spring Awakening festival — another SFX asset — shows how Axelrod liked to structure some of those deals.
In that agreement, Axelrod sold Spring Awakening to LiveOne for $2.5 million in convertible loans that Axelrod could turn into equity. The deal allowed LiveOne to take over the festival immediately and pay Axelrod back over two years. There was even an option for Axelrod to accept LiveOne stock instead of cash if shares of the company hit certain price targets, but they never did. A month after the deal closed, COVID-19 hit, and Spring Awakening 2020 was canceled. After LiveOne lost $3.5 million on the 2021 event, Axelrod agreed to accept $2.4 million worth of LiveOne stock. But five months later, the value of LiveOne’s stock had fallen 70%, dropping the value of Axelrod’s LiveOne shares to approximately $700,000.
Avant Gardner is a private company, so it’s unclear how the agreement with Axar was structured. Sources tell Billboard that Axelrod made additional investments into the Brooklyn Mirage, which recently underwent extensive renovations and is now attempting to navigate New York’s Department of Buildings to secure a permit to open.
On May 22, Avant Gardner parted ways with Josh Wyatt, a hospitality executive Axelrod had hired to run the company and guide it through renovations that saw the club close for construction. The Brooklyn Mirage was supposed to open May 1 with a concert by Sara Landry, but building inspectors declined to grant the facility a permit to open. A month and a half later, the club has been forced to cancel and relocate more than a dozen shows as its permit problems persist.
Gary Richards, a promoter, touring artist and former CEO of Livestyle for Axar Capital, is now running Avant Gardner and managing day-to-day operations. Billboard reached out to Richards and Axar but was told that neither planned to comment for this story.
