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Touring

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The world’s largest automotive trade show is launching a music festival next month, bringing together live entertainment and car culture in Las Vegas.
The Specialty Equipment Market Association (SEMA) — a 60-year-old trade organization representing after-market auto part manufacturers and sellers — is launching the first-ever SEMA Fest at the Las Vegas festival grounds Nov. 3-4 with performances by acts including Imagine Dragons, Incubus, Wiz Khalifa, AJR, Third Eye Blind, Bush and Walk the Moon. The festival takes place during the annual SEMA trade show at the Las Vegas Convention Center, which will open to the general public for the first time. Besides music, the festival will also include a full slate of immersive automotive lifestyle events, a consumer marketplace, world-class drifting, motorsports competitions and freestyle motocross.

“What we’ve noticed over the last 10 years is that the connection between a manufacturer and an end-user is getting closer and closer,” says Tom Gattuso, vp of events at SEMA.

“We decided as an association a couple years ago to open a membership category to an enthusiast or a consumer,” he added, noting that prior to 2023, the SEMA trade show was only open to wholesalers and retailers.

“And as soon as we opened it up, the consumer wanted to know how they could be part of the event,” Gattusto continued. “So we started to think how we could really engage consumers and have this complete distribution cycle where you’ve got manufacturing, distribution, and end-user all in one place. So we created SEMA Fest with an eye on automotive activation tying in another passion — live music — that would help our industry with growth.”

Tickets for the two-day festival start at $179, while tickets to both the Friday tradeshow and the weekend festival start at $299.

“Everybody remembers the first time they drove their car all by themselves — it was all about driving in the car, but also what you were listening to on the radio,” says Gattuso, who hired California talent buyer Roger LeBlanc to book the festival. “We really got positive response from both the industry and the public at large and we’re excited to see it all come together in November.”

SEMA Fest will be spread out over two stages, with the lineup of 21 artists also including The Struts, Ludacris and Dead Sara. There will also be three activation areas for Formula Drift, Hooligan off-road racing and Nitro Circus freestyle motocross.

“There will always be something to do as fans make their way through the festival grounds, either exploring something that may be new to them or exploring something that’s a deep passion for them and really interacting together in that space,” Gattuso says.

Click here to learn more about SEMA Fest.

Dope Shows co-founders Stephen Piner and Jamir Shaw have a vision for elevating hip-hop in Philadelphia and they’re ready to share that vision with the rest of the music industry.
Since launching in 2017, the Philadelphia concert promotion duo have sold over 200,000 tickets for shows including Lil Baby, Lil Durk, A Boogie Wit Da Hoodie, and more. They’ve become one of the most powerful independent concert promotion companies in the U.S., known for having an authentic love of music and a pound-the-pavement street team approach.

That includes hand-selling tickets for one of Lil Baby’s first headlining shows in Philadelphia years ago and promoting Rylo Rodriguez’s first show in the city on Sept. 29, also his first headlining performance there. In 2022, Dope Shows signed a partnership with Live Nation to bring shows to the company’s Philly venues like the Fillmore, the Met and Brooklyn Bowl Philadelphia, as well as partnering on arena shows at venues like Wells Fargo Arena and the TD Garden Arena in Boston.

“Since day one, our slogan has been, ’Ain’t no shows like Dope Shows,’” Shaw says, attributing Dope Shows success to the authentic synergy at their concerts. Each concert is preceded by sets from local rappers and area DJs, and when it comes to the main event, the sets are often longer.

“We want Dope Shows to be a badge of honor for us and Philadelphia,” Piner says. “We want it to live forever.”

Shaw grew up in West Philly listening to Beanie Sigel and Freeway; his cousins were members of Philly’s Most Wanted. While he remembers trying his hand at rap, he soon found his calling as a party promoter. Traveling between his mother’s house in West Philly and his dad’s neighborhood in South Philly as a 12-year-old, he would hit up all the parties he could go to. There was only one problem: they usually ended in a fight.

His mom suggested throwing a party in his basement and after earning $70 from the concert, his career began. In 2016, he linked up with Piner, an all-city high school football halfback and together they promoted their first concert, Fabolous and Jadakiss’ Freddy vs. Jason at The Fillmore, which sold out. From there, they landed Rick Ross before booking Fab and Jada again at Boston’s House of Blues.

What were once conversations and vague aspirations became more sold out venues.

In February of last year, they hosted their fifth annual Birthday Bash featuring Gunna, Lil Durk, Lil Baby and G Herbo at the Wells Fargo Center. In total, Dope Shows has sold 200,000 tickets with 90 percent of tickets sold out for its events.

“Our goal is to continue building on our staples,” says Piner, including the company’s annual Birthday Bash and its Dope Fest event. “We have a couple concepts that we want to add, as well as merch and content ideas. We also want to do a national tour with an artist and grow Dope Shows in that direction.”

Dope Shows are setting their sights on the label side of the industry, launching Dope Records last year. Their first signee, artist and fellow West Philly native Toure, saw his All I Wanted Was Everything project on Dope Records earn close to a million streams in less than a week

“He’s an artist that we’re real passionate about,” Piner say. “He’s a great performing artist and sold out his first show a month ago and did an hour-and-a-half set. For a young artist, that’s a feat.”

Lainey Wilson, who currently has a three-week No. 1 Billboard Country Airplay hit with “Watermelon Moonshine,” has revealed her headlining trek for 2024. Wilson’s Country’s Cool Again Tour will launch in Nashville on May 31 at Ascend Amphitheater. Joining her for the 35-plus shows are openers Zach Top, “Don’t Come Lookin’” singer-songwriter Jackson Dean and […]

Veteran touring specialist Rich Schaefer has been officially promoted to president of global touring at AEG Presents. Schaefer takes over the role from Gary Gersh, who announced he would be stepping down last month. In his new role, Schaefer will oversee all aspects of the concert promotion company’s worldwide touring deals, operations and talent relations. […]

CAA has nabbed British musician YUNGBLUD for worldwide representation. The singer, songwriter and actor (born Dominic Richard Harrison) recently concluded the North American leg of his YUNGBLUD – The World Tour this summer. He was formerly represented by UTA in North and South America. YUNGBLUD began his musical career with a 2018 self-titled EP and […]

Just six days after unleashing his new studio album, Nadie Sabe Lo Que Va a Pasar Mañana, Bad Bunny has announced he’s hitting the road in 2024 in support of the set. Explore Explore See latest videos, charts and news See latest videos, charts and news In a short clip posted on his Instagram Thursday […]

In the wake of the deadliest terrorist attack in Israel’s history, as well as the prospect of a deadly, drawn-out war against Hamas in Gaza, the country’s fast-growing concert business has hardly been at the top of anyone’s mind.

So far, the only big show to be cancelled was the sold-out Bruno Mars concert scheduled for Oct. 7 in Tel Aviv. But concerts and festivals now face a pause as Israel mourns its dead, including the more than 250 people who died at the Supernova Sukkot festival in the Oct. 7 attack. For however long the war in Gaza takes, it is unlikely that many major international acts will play Tel Aviv out of security concerns, worries about the optics of taking a side on a controversial issue, and the fact that so many potential concertgoers will be fighting or working in the military. However, the country’s entertainment market is expected to make a quick recovery once hostilities end thanks to companies like Bluestone Entertainment, which has made considerable progress modernizing Israel’s concert industry over the past six years.

Up until the Oct. 7 attack, security issues didn’t even make the top five challenges facing the Israeli concert business, sources tell Billboard. Bigger issues include a lack of touring infrastructure, geographic isolation, routing difficulties, limits on potential artist earnings and the Boycott Divest, Sanction (BDS) movement that pushes artists not to play in the Jewish state.

Until 2017, the only modern ticketing platform in Israel was the German company CTS Eventim, which dominates Europe but isn’t as well known to U.S. touring artists and managers. Israel also lacks a major venue for large acts, meaning most touring artists have to rely on 5,000-7,000 capacity amphitheaters — which can make it difficult to make money due to the high travel costs required to visit the country. Travel also complicates logistics, since it’s easy to fly into Israel but, until 2020, it was hard to fly on from there. Since then, flights have been added to Dubai in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), the next major concert market, as well as an international flight hub.

The 2014 formation of Bluestone Entertainment, as well as its 2017 purchase by Live Nation, modernized the country’s touring infrastructure and earned it a stamp of approval from the concert giant as one of 29 markets where Live Nation maintains offices and on-the-ground staff. Leading the company today is CEO Guy Besar, a 46-year-old native of Israel’s Rishon Lezion who got his start working at student events for the city’s College of Management Academic Studies, along with co-founders Shay Mor Yosef and Gadi Veinrib. Music manager Guy Oseary, whose clients include Madonna and, until recently, U2, is the fourth co-founder of Bluestone.

Bluestone has been successful in pushing back against BDS activist groups like the Palestinian Campaign for Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI) and artists like Roger Waters, who convinced Elvis Costello, Devendra Banhart and Gorillaz to cancel planned visits to the country in 2010. Oseary has worked with artist managers to develop a communications and messaging strategy before announcing shows in the country.

Bluestone also played a key role in bringing Ticketmaster to Israel as part of its 2017 joint venture with Live Nation and has focused its efforts on modernizing and bringing shows to HaYarkon Park in Tel Aviv, an urban park and summer concert destination that can host concerts for up to 70,000 attendees per night. That led to a $6.7 million gross for Guns N’ Roses‘ June 5 concert at HaYarkon, $6.6 million for Imagine Dragons on Aug. 29 and a whopping $11.7 million for two Maroon 5 concerts in May 2022.

Those seven-and-eight-figure grosses have helped offset the expenses associated with performing in Israel, while a 2020 agreement with the UAE and Bahrain known as the Abraham Accords has led to the normalization of relations between the three countries. The treaty, negotiated by the Trump administration, also allows air travel between the three countries via Saudi Arabian airspace. That means that once in the UAE, touring shows can easily fly to markets like Malaysia, Singapore and much of Southeast Asia.

Bluestone was reportedly on track to generate $75 million in 2023, a number that will likely drop following the cancellation of Mars’ Oct. 7 concert. But it will likely still be up nearly 50% percent from 2022 when the company brought in $46 million. As for the security threat that caused the cancellation, sources say that despite the surprising nature of the Oct. 7 attacks, Israel deploys significant resources to securing events and large crowds and note that concert promoters in the country feel extremely confident in their ability to secure A-list artists and visitors for concerts.

Blake Shelton‘s Back to the Honky Tonk Tour will return in 2024, when it launches in Feb. 22 at the GIANT Center in Hershey, Penn.
The 17-show trek will include stops in the United States and Canada, including shows at Moody Center in Austin, Texas; Little Caesars Arena in Detroit; and three shows in Canada, slated for Saskatoon, Saskatchewan; Edmonton, Alberta; and Calgary, Alberta, before wrapping March 29 in Wichita, Kan.

Joining Shelton on the 17-show trek in the United States and Canada are Dustin Lynch and Emily Ann Roberts. Lynch recently issued his latest album, Killed the Cowboy, and his current radio single, “Stars Like Confetti,” is currently in the top 10 on Billboard‘s Country Airplay chart. Roberts, known for her time competing on NBC’s The Voice, recently released the album Can’t Hide Country, which includes not only her song “Walkin’ Shoes,” but “Still Searching,” a collaboration with Vince Gill and Ricky Skaggs.

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The tour’s first run began earlier this year, and featured Carly Pearce and Jackson Dean as openers.

Tickets for all markets, with the exception of Glendale, Ariz., will be available through an exclusive fan presale launching Tuesday, Oct. 24, at 10 a.m. local time and running through Thursday, Oct. 26, at 10 p.m. local time. General onsale will begin Friday, Oct. 27, at 10 a.m. local time. Tickets for Glendale will be available via an exclusive fan presale beginning Tuesday, Oct. 31, at 10 a.m. local time through Thursday, Nov. 2, at 10 p.m. local time. The general onsale for Glendale will start on Friday, Nov. 3, at 10 a.m. local time.

See the full lineup of dates for Shelton’s Back to the Honky Tonk Tour, presented by Kubota, below:

Feb. 22: Hershey, PA @ GIANT Center

Feb. 23: Detroit, MI @ Little Caesars Arena

Feb. 24: Milwaukee, WI @ Fiserv Forum

Feb. 29: Lafayette, LA @ CAJUNDOME

March 1: Austin, TX @ Moody Center

March 2: Bossier City, LA @ Brookshire Grocery Arena

March 7: Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, CAN @ SaskTel Centre

March 8: Edmonton, Alberta, CAN @ Rogers Place

March 9: Calgary, Alberta, CAN @ Scotiabank Saddledome

March 14: Spokane, WA @ Spokane Arena

March 15: Tacoma, WA @ Tacoma Dome

March 16: Portland, OR @ Moda Center

March 21: Fresno, CA @ Save Mart Center

March 22: Palm Springs, CA @ Acrisure Arena

March 23: Glendale, AZ @ Desert Diamond Arena

March 27: Moline, IL @ Vibrant Arena at The MARK

March 29: Wichita, KS @ INTRUST Bank Arena

P!nk has postponed two shows on her just-launched Trustfall Tour due to “family medical issues,” the singer announced Monday (Oct. 16). The two shows affected are Tuesday and Wednesday’s concerts in Tacoma, Washington. “I am so sorry to inform the Tacoma ticket holders that the two shows October 17 and October 18 (tomorrow and Wednesday) […]

At opening night of her Celebration Tour on Saturday night in London, Madonna proved that she still has all her life to live and all her love to give by covering Gloria Gaynor‘s disco classic “I Will Survive.” Madonna took a moment during her first show to talk about the serious health scare that postponed […]