Touring

LONDON — As international president of Oak View Group (OVG), Jessica Koravos has a clear vision of how she wants the U.S.-based facility management and development firm to grow its already rapidly expanding global business. 
“We’re trying to be the best venue operators, offering the best entertainment experiences in the world,” she says confidently. “That’s what our goal is.” 

Just over six months ago, OVG’s long-planned pivot to international markets took an embarrassing stumble with the repeatedly delayed launch of Co-op Live – the United Kingdom’s biggest indoor music venue and the firm’s first major project outside the United States. 

When the official opening for the 23,500-capacity arena, located in Manchester, was pushed back by three weeks following a series of highly publicized delays — including part of a ventilation system falling from the roof just prior to a show by rapper A Boogie wit da Hoodie – Co-op Live became the butt of jokes on social media and generated a slew of negative headlines.  

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“It looked worse in the media than it felt on the ground,” reflects Koravos, half a year on from the venue’s troubled launch. “In the grand scheme of things, when you have been working on a project for five years, spent £400 million ($505 million) on it and it’s three weeks late, there’s a long-term perspective that says: ‘This is not the end of the world.’ When you look at it in the context of other big infrastructure projects in the U.K. I don’t think it’s going to go down in history anywhere on the list of problematic deliveries.”

Co-op Live eventually opened its doors May 8 with a headline show by local rock group Elbow. Since then, the venue has quickly become established as a key destination in the European touring circuit, selling over one million tickets and staging over 60 shows to date, including stopovers by Pearl Jam, Nicki Minaj, Liam Gallagher, Keane, Janet Jackson, Charli XCX and the Eagles‘ five-night sellout run – the group’s only U.K. dates on its farewell tour. 

A general view of the Co-op Live arena as Elbow performs the inaugural live show at Co-op Live on May 14, 2024 in Manchester, England.

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In November, Co-op Live hosted the MTV European Music Awards (EMAs), featuring performances from Benson Boone, Teddy Swims, Tyla and Busta Rhymes, which had a global digital reach (excluding broadcast) of over 7 billion, according to the venue’s post-event analysis. Upcoming shows at the arena include Paul McCartney, Slipknot, Cyndi Lauper and Sabrina Carpenter.   

Co-op Live is one of seven new arenas that OVG has built and opened in the last two years, including the Climate Pledge Arena in Seattle, UBS Arena in New York and Acrisure Arena in Palm Springs, Calif. The fast-growing firm, co-founded in 2015 by former AEG CEO Tim Leiweke and ex-Live Nation chairman Irving Azoff, which operates more than 400 buildings globally, also has arenas under development in Nigeria, Canada and Wales, and is “actively looking” for opportunities to further expand its global footprint, says Koravos. 

This fall saw the launch of a new division, OVG Stadia, headed by Chris Wright, dedicated to growing the company’s global stadium business. Its remit includes identifying international markets to develop and build new multi-purpose stadiums, as well as expanding OVG’s roster of stadium clients, which includes London’s Wembley Stadium, Scotland’s Murrayfield Stadium, Snapdragon Stadium in San Diego and the historic Cotton Bowl Stadium in Dallas. The company is additionally pursuing arena development and partnership opportunities in the U.K., Europe, Asia and the Middle East.

“That showcase of Co-op Live is very helpful and we have a lot of other cities [around the world] now saying, ‘Can we have one of those?’” says London-based Koravos, who served as president of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Really Useful Group and formerly held senior roles at AEG Live and AEG Europe before joining OVG. 

Ballooning construction costs means “it’s easier said than done,” she cautions, “but we’ll find a way.” 

Koravos declines to discuss Leiweke’s publicly stated aim of building a new music arena in London, saying only that there are “announcements to come in the U.K. and continental Europe.” 

In the meantime, Oak View Group is looking to grow its share of the live music business by making its full suite of venue services, including hospitality, management, booking, marketing, facility development and sponsorship sales, available to non-OVG affiliated venue owners and third-party operators in Europe, like it already does in the U.S.  

To support the rollout, OVG International has bulked up its executive team with recent appointments including former Co-op Live interim general manager Rebecca Kane Burton as executive vice president of venue management and Michalis Fragkiadakis as vice president of hospitality strategy, responsible for driving forward OVG’s food and beverage business following last year’s acquisition of U.K.-based hospitality provider Rhubarb Hospitality Collection. They will be supported by Sam Piccione, international president of sales, Alex Reese, commercial and brand strategy director, and Gary Hutchinson, vice president of booking and commercial partnerships. 

“We take pride in the fact that we think about third party business in the same way that we think about our own,” says Koravos. She points to OVG completing “$5 billion worth of naming rights and sponsorship [deals] in the last three years” as evidence of the “industry-leading expertise” that it is offering to venues and live music businesses. Current venue service clients outside North America include football clubs Birmingham City FC, Real Betis and AS Roma, Manchester-based arts venue Aviva Studios and Lloyd Webber Theatres. 

“There are lots of facilities, arenas and stadiums all around Europe who would like to host concerts and that’s something that we’re trying to help to see if we can open up more markets for music internationally,” says Koravos. “Our goal is not to win all the contracts and to be everywhere. It’s to be with the right partners that share our values.”