Touring
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London’s O2 Academy Brixton has been permitted to reopen as a music venue so long as it meets “extensive and robust” new safety measures, following a fatal crowd crush last year.
The 5,000-capacity venue has been closed after two people died and several people were seriously injured during a crowd stampede outside a sold-out concert by Nigerian singer Asake on Dec. 15, 2022. A 21-year-old woman injured on the night remains in hospital in a critical condition.
In an announcement on Friday (Sept. 15), Lambeth Council said the venue would be allowed to host live music events again but “only once it is compliant” with 77 new safety conditions.
They include stronger doors, new crowd management systems, more detailed risk assessments, a new ticketing system, a new centralised control and command centre, as well as new security and management.
Responding to the council’s decision, which followed a two-day hearing, O2 Academy Brixton owner and operator Academy Music Group (AMG) said it was “committed to ensuring” the tragic events of Dec. 15 “can never be repeated.”
“Our heartfelt condolences remain with the family and friends of [victims] Rebecca Ikumelo and Gaby Hutchinson,” the London-based company said in a statement.
AMG said it will hold test events before reopening O2 Academy Brixton at an unspecified date.
Crowd management company Showsec has been brought in to look after security for the venue, replacing AP Security, which has been criticized for its operation at Brixton, including allegations that some staff regularly took bribes to let people into concerts without tickets.
When O2 Academy Brixton reopens, operators AMG will be subject to “rigorous independent scrutiny to ensure public safety,” said Lambeth Council’s licensing sub-committee.
“The robust, far-reaching and enforceable measures we have determined must be taken by the Academy, subject to independent oversight and scrutiny, will result in [it] being among the most highly regulated licensed venues in the country,” said the council committee in its 50-page report.
During the two-day hearing to determine whether O2 Academy Brixton should reopen, much of which was held in private, London’s Metropolitan Police said it didn’t have confidence in AMG — which runs 18 music venues across the U.K. — as the licensee, but didn’t want to see the building permanently closed.
The hearing saw several other people speak in favour of AMG’s application, including local businesses and music promoter Mazin Tappuni, who told the committee that the closure of O2 Academy Brixton was putting off some international artists from visiting the U.K. because of a shortage of similarly sized venues in the British capital.
More than 110,000 people signed an online petition to save the historic venue, which opened in 1929 as a cinema and began hosting live music gigs in the early 1980s. The Smiths, David Bowie, Madonna, Bob Dylan, Blur and the Clash are just a few of the famous acts to have played there.
“Brixton Academy has consistently held a special place in the hearts of music aficionados, and its cultural significance is immeasurable,” said Michael Kill, CEO of trade group The Night Time Industries Association (NTIA), in a statement welcoming the council’s decision.
Kill said the venue’s safe reopening would help ensure “its continued success as a hub for live music and entertainment.”
A police investigation into whether any criminal offences were committed on Dec. 15, 2022, is ongoing.
NSYNC thrilled fans Wednesday night at the MTV Video Music Awards when they came out to present Taylor Swift with the VMA for best pop video for “Anti-Hero.” The moment would turn out to be bittersweet for fans hoping for a reunion tour from the five-member group, however; Billboard has confirmed there are no such plans.
It turns out that *NSYNC star Justin Timberlake has touring plans of his own for 2024. Billboard has confirmed that Timberlake has holds on dates at arenas in North America for a major run, with sources saying the trek will be accompanied by a new album from the singer. As they say in the business, Timberlake is going back into cycle, which means there won’t be any full-fledged *NSYNC tour any time soon.
That leaves some serious money on the table for the group’s other four members. While not a boy band, the reunion of Blink-182 earlier this year shows that fans are willing to pay big bucks for nostalgia. An arena tour could gross for the five could easily generate $2.2 million to $2.4 million per night in ticket sales — equaling a take-home of $265,000 to $290,000 per night for each member of the group (assuming the profits were split evenly). That means a full 40-city North America tour could gross upwards of $95 million. Add in merch sales and other opportunities, and it could easily be a $120 million earner.
On the bright side, if *NSYNC does decide to return to the road sometime in the future, the road map to successful boy band reunification has been charted by their contemporaries –notably New Kids on the Block, who reunited in 2008 more than 14 years after the end of the band’s Face the Music tour in 1994.
“There really wasn’t a proven runway for pop bands of any kind to reunite and feel like it was going to be a financial success,” says talent manager Jared Paul, the group’s manager and architect of its 2008 reunion and tour.
“It has to start with the music — that’s what turned the idea of ‘maybe someday’ into a reality for New Kids when some music fell into their laps that really inspired them,” explains Paul. “The real challenge though was, it was so unproven, we had to make so many decisions that we’re just betting on ourselves.”
Today, Paul runs Faculty Inc., a full-service entertainment company, tour producer and partner with Live Nation. Besides managing New Kids on the Block (who have now been reunited longer than they were broken up), Faculty Inc. also owns the touring rights for Dancing with the Stars and So You Think You Can Dance and manages the recently reunited boy band Big Time Rush.
Paul says he’s rooting for an *NYSNC reunion one day and says pulling off a boy band reunion is the ultimate moon shot — where everything has to align perfectly for there to be even a chance of success.
“You have to align your schedules, but more importantly, you have to align your creative vision,” says Paul. “You have to be willing, if you’ve gone off on your own or shifted your focus on your family, to essentially agree on your time commitment, what you are going to sing, where you’re going to tour, what you’re going to wear and, if there is new music involved, which direction the album is going to lean.”
There’s also the challenge of rebuilding the *NSYNC business, but much of that work has already been done thanks to licensing deals with merch companies like Epic Rights, which manages some of the group’s rights. That can significantly reduce the window of time it will take to reunite.
There are also murmurs that the group could reunite without Timberlake. The band has fielded offers for a four-man reunion in the past, following its appearance at Coachella in 2019. But a source with knowledge of the group’s thinking says it was never seriously considered, noting that anything short of a five-person comeback is off the table.
Olivia Rodrigo is proving that artists don’t need expensive technology or a sprawling staff to make sure their lowest-priced tickets end up in the hands of fans — and not scalpers.
Ticket brokers were crawling around Rodrigo’s website on Wednesday (Sept. 13), assessing their odds of scoring tickets for the superstar’s freshly announced Guts World Tour, which kicks off in February at Acrisure Arena in Palm Springs, Calif. An early spring tour headlined by Rodrigo is a pretty good bet for ticket resellers based on the singer’s continued chart success: “Vampire,” the first single from her new album, Guts, is currently enjoying its 10th week on the Hot 100, while the set’s second single, “Bad Idea Right?”, debuted in the top 10 last month. Meanwhile, the album itself earned more than 126 million on-demand streams in its first four days of release. More importantly, her 2022 Sour trek was an underplay first run tour — Rodrigo had kept her ticket prices reasonable, averaging about $75 a ticket — that saw demand far exceed supply and drove prices into the stratosphere.
For Guts, Rodrigo is taking a simple, innovative step to protect what she is calling “Silver Star tickets,” a two-seat package she’s selling for $40 a pop to individuals her team can verify as fans.
Needless to say, scalpers will want to get in on that. A $20 ticket to a high-demand concert can generate a big markup and quick profits, especially compared to tickets priced between $50 to $200 — the price range for the Live Nation-booked tour. Tickets in the $50 to $200 range, meanwhile, will leave some room for markup on resale sites but make profitability less certain, especially on top-tier tickets.
To pull this off, like a game of cat and mouse, Rodrigo’s team must keep the Silver Star tickets out of scalper’s hands for the program to be a success. Few details about how this will work have been made public, but Rodrigo’s registration site hints that the singer’s team will directly select fans to participate. The real innovation, however, is a requirement that fans pick up their $20 tickets at will call on the night of the show; only then will they learn where their seats are located.
That’s not too different from how box offices used to use will call-only pick up to fight scalping, but where that strategy would typically aim to protect the most expensive tickets this time it’s being used on the cheapest. The limited number of tickets involved here will also help keep from overwhelming staff, whereas previously such a strategies became an unmanageable burden. Meanwhile, not knowing the section or row of a ticket makes it very difficult to sell it on secondary sales websites like StubHub, which requires scalpers to list tickets in the general vicinity of where they are located.
The plan isn’t fool-proof — when it comes to resellers, nothing is — but it places enough hurdles in front of scalpers that most will hopefully be deterred from taking advantage of a program that’s meant to get discount tickets into the hands of fans who otherwise wouldn’t be able to afford to see Rodrigo in concert. And if the strategy is successful, it’s easy to see it being duplicated by other artists, whose biggest frustration with ticketing tends not to be that their best seats are landing on the secondary market, but that seats affordable to their younger and less economically advantaged fans are ending up there too.
MELBOURNE, Australia — Concert promotion great Paul Dainty is appointed Officer of the Order of Australia (AO), one of the country’s highest honors, recognizing an individual having made a significant impact in society.
Dainty was saluted during a ceremony Wednesday (Sept. 13) at Melbourne’s Government House.
The U.K.-born live music veteran was feted for his “distinguished service to the community” — specifically, his efforts in organizing the 2020 Fire Fight all-star concert in Sydney, which raised more than A$10 million for bushfire relief efforts.
Dainty has forged an impressive career in his adopted homeland, producing tours and concerts with the world’s leading rock and pop artists, and selling more than 50 million tickets along the way.
The Melbourne-based executive established the Dainty Group/Dainty Corporation in the early 1970s, and got on a roll early on.
First-up tours included the Bee Gees, Diana Ross, Cat Stevens and the Jackson Five. Dainty produced the Rolling Stones’ tour of 1973, a visit that would set up the success that followed.
It was Dainty who produced ABBA’s 1977 tour of Australia, a visit that remains the stuff of legend. Through the friendships made on that trek, ABBA’s Benny Andersson and Bjorn Ulvaeus entrusted Dainty to tour Mamma Mia! 25 years later. Dainty has the option to produce the hugely-popular ABBA: Voyage in Australia. “We’re looking at it closely,” he tells Billboard. “It’s probably one of the most exciting entertainment events I’ve ever seen.”
Dainty has also produced tours for the likes of Paul McCartney, U2, Guns N’ Roses, Eminem, David Bowie, George Michael, Prince and Britney Spears, and in recent years has expanded the business into international markets, including tours for Eminem and Lionel Richie in South Africa and South East Asia, and pan-Asian dates for Michael Buble.
Today, he’s president and CEO of TEG Dainty, which, since 2016, has been a part of the TEG Group of Companies. The following year, he was appointed a Member of the Order of Australia (AM).
This week, organizers with Playa Luna Presents announced the Dead Ahead Festival, an all-inclusive musical experience at the Moon Palace Resort in Riviera Cancún, Mexico, from Jan. 12-15, 2024, celebrating the Grateful Dead songbook with two nights of curated collaborations. Dead Ahead Festival includes Grateful Dead alumni Bobby Weir and Mickey Hart, as well as […]
Gary Gersh, president of global touring at AEG Presents, is leaving the concert promotion giant after eight years at the company, chairman Jay Marciano announced in a staff letter on Wednesday (Sept. 13). Rich Schaefer, currently the company’s senior vp of global touring, will step into Gersh’s role as president. “Gary played a vital role […]
Definitely not a bad idea, right? Olivia Rodrigo announced the Guts World Tour on Wednesday (Sept. 13) in support of her sophomore album — and she’s hitting arenas for the first time. “Soooo excited to announce the GUTS world tour!!!!” the pop star captioned an Instagram post with the tour dates, which are set for […]
For more than four decades, Country Music Hall of Famer George Strait has proven himself as one of country music’s most dependable, elite entertainers. In 2023, Strait’s stadium shows — featuring Chris Stapleton and Little Big Town — have set new attendance records in several stadiums, including ones in Seattle, Milwaukee and Columbus, OH.
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Now, Strait, eight-time Grammy winner Stapleton and special guests Little Big Town are extending their record-setting slate of stadium shows into 2024, adding nine new dates.
The new shows are set for May, June, July and December of next year and will visit cities including Indianapolis, Detroit and Chicago, in addition to setting the 37th installment of the Strait to Vegas show, with a Dec. 7 gig booked at Las Vegas’ Allegiant Stadium.
“I’ve always said we have the best fans in the world, and to see so many of them show up for these shows just makes us want to keep bringing them more,” Strait said in a statement. “I’ve also missed performing in Las Vegas during NFR, so I’m happy to see that show come together in 2024. See you soon!”
Tickets to most shows go on sale on Sept. 22 at 10 a.m. local time via GeorgeStrait.com, with tickets to the Jacksonville show on sale on Oct. 20 at 10 a.m. local time. American Express® Card Members can purchase tickets before the general public beginning Friday (Sept. 15) at 10 a.m. local time through Sept. 21 at 10 p.m. local time.
See the full list of stadium shows below:
May 4 — Indianapolis, IN @ Lucas Oil Stadium
May 11 — Jacksonville, FL @ EverBank Stadium
May 25 — Ames, IA @ Jack Trice Stadium
June 1 — Charlotte, N.C. @ Bank of America Stadium
June 8 — East Rutherford, N.J. @ MetLife Stadium
June 29 — Salt Lake City, UT @ Rice Eccles Stadium
July 13 — Detroit, MI @ Ford Field
July 20 — Chicago, IL @ Soldier Field
Dec. 7 — Las Vegas, NV @ Allegiant Stadium
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Billy Joel is ready to party like it’s 2024 with a special New Year’s Eve concert happening Dec. 31 at the UBS Arena in Elmont, N.Y. This will not only mark the “Piano Man” singer’s debut performance at the arena, but will be his first show back on Long Island since 2018.
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Get ready to say goodbye to 2023 with songs such as “Vienna,” “Only the Good Die Young,” “Uptown Girl” and more with the concert starting at 9:30 p.m. ET. You won’t want to miss out on this event, especially if you’re looking for some tours and festivals to add to your calendar before the end of the year. The show will be a one-night only affair before the Rock and Roll Hall of Famer continues on with his almost sold-out tour.
The singer’s official Instagram account made the announcement on Thursday (Sept. 7) with a photo of the outside of the arena followed by the show date.
“Kicking off the New Year with a bang! 🎉 Long Island’s very own Billy Joel is returning to his roots for an unforgettable New Year’s Eve at UBS Arena at Belmont Park on December 31, 2023! 🎹,” the caption said.
Whether you’re looking for cheap concert tickets or just want to know how to score a ticket to this once in a lifetime performance, we’ve got all the details below.
Where to Buy Tickets to Billy Joel’s NYE Concert
Tickets from Ticketmaster will go on general sale Friday (Sept. 15), but there are a few ways you can snag one or more tickets before then including Vivid Seats, StubHub and Seat Geek.
Tickets at Vivid Seats start at around $123 and include 100% Buyer Guarantee protection to help keep you and your purchases safe. To make sure you get the type of tickets you want, the site allows you to sort tickets by price or seating area in the arena.
Vivid Seats $From $123
StubHub is currently offering tickets to the Billy Joel performance for as little as $131 with the ability to customize tickets based on recommended ones from the site, price or you can click on the interactive map to select exactly where you want to sit. The site also comes with the FanProtect Guarantee, which you can read more about here.
StubHub $131
Another option is Seat Geek, which has tickets starting at $111 and ranks each ticket on a scale of 1-10, labeling 10 as the best deal and one as the worst. You can include fees when looking at ticket prices and even sign up to get notified if ticket sales drop in cost.
Seat Geek $From $111
Travis Barker is back on the road with Blink-182. The band resumed its tour overseas on Friday (Sept. 8) in Antwerp, Belgium, after the drummer raced home to be with wife Kourtney Kardashian earlier in the month. Blink had postponed three shows, saying only that Barker had to leave the tour for an “urgent family […]