venues
When hearing the term “national park,” most people probably don’t think of Trey Anastasio noodling a guitar solo or Nas performing “N.Y. State of Mind.” But at Wolf Trap National Park for the Performing Arts, both of those things, and much more, happened over the summer.
Located in the Washington, D.C., suburb of Vienna, Va., Wolf Trap is the only national park that’s also a performing arts center and exists solely to be a venue. The park’s centerpiece, the 7,000-capacity amphitheater Filene Center, hosts more than 70 musical performances each season, the 2024 edition of which ended last month with a two-night run by James Taylor.
This season, the park also unveiled a collection of new and updated facilities. Because it’s on designated federal land, this new construction was mandated to aesthetically merge with the park’s pre-existing structures and overall feel. Staff even meticulously documented the areas being refurbished to expand Wolf Trap’s historical record.
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“Everything we’re building is going to be owned by the American people,” says Wolf Trap president/CEO Arvind Manocha. “There’s a lot of checks and balances to make sure that what we’re doing is permanent and meets a standard that’s consistent with the ideals of the way federal land is managed.”
Construction of the public areas started the day after the 2023 season’s final show, with improvements to seating, picnic pavilions, artist areas and more. The centerpiece of the construction is Meadow Commons, a stately, wood-paneled facility that opened in May. Replacing a concessions stand as old as the 53-year-old park itself, the new facility features picnic terraces, expanded food options, modern bathrooms, meeting spaces and elevators that make that area of the park more accessible to guests with mobility issues. The team also used locally sourced timber, installed low-flow toilets, traded out plastic for bamboo serveware and paper straws, installed a wastewater management design that considers local waterways, and built around a pair of 100-year-old trees.
Designed by architectural firm Gensler, whose global projects include the refurbishment of Hollywood’s Egyptian Theater and the construction of Nevada’s Grand Sierra Resort Reno Arena, the Wolf Trap updates were started during the pandemic and done in an architectural style that compliments the Filene Center — which has a striking Brutalist design and is clad in douglas fir — and other pre-existing buildings. Some of these structures date back to when the land was not a venue or park, but a working farm. “I would say it’s contemporary with a rustic heart,” Manocha says of the overall design aesthetic.
Meadow Commons at Wolf Trap National Park for the Performing Arts
Courtesy of Wolf Trap National Park for the Performing Arts
Backstage, an earlier phase of construction revamped the artist area, which Monacha knew — from his time as COO of the LA Phil Association, which oversees the Hollywood Bowl and Disney Hall in Los Angeles — is something that artists notice. (To wit, when Bonnie Raitt came onstage during a June 2022 show, the first thing she said to the audience was, “You guys should see what they’ve done for us back there!”) Wood that previously covered the exterior of the Filene Center was upcycled to cover walls in artist dressing rooms, and a huge map shows performers the location of every National Park in the system. Manocha says artists are now arriving early on show days so they can hike before they play.
Funding for these updates was raised through a private philanthropy campaign orchestrated by Wolf Trap Foundation for the Performing Arts, a private 501(c)(3) that works with the National Park Service to manage Wolf Trap. The campaign raised $75 million for onsite improvements and the park’s endowment, which also funds an artist training program and an education program designed by Wolf Trap and taught in pre-K schools and childcare centers nationwide. On-site improvements like Meadow Commons are effectively a gift to the park, given that these assets are on federal land and therefore can’t be owned by the Foundation.
While pretty, the land on which Wolf Trap sits is not, on its own, exceptional. You won’t see red rock canyons, towering waterfalls or rolling dunes. Nor does the land possess intrinsic historic value to the creation of the United States, as the country’s roughly 200 other national parks and monuments do. Rather, music and art provide Wolf Trap’s reason for being.
“The Park Service’s remit is to be the stewards of the fabric of American culture,” says Manocha. “In creating a national park for the arts, what the founders said [is] that artistry and creativity is part of the fabric of American culture. It is something that defines us as a people.”
Filene Center at Wolf Trap National Park for the Performing Arts
Courtesy of Wolf Trap National Park for the Performing Arts
Wolf Trap’s origins date back to the mid-1960s and a woman named Catherine Shouse. Born in 1894 in Boston to the family that founded Filene’s Department Store, Shouse was the first woman to receive a master’s degree in education from Harvard. She later became a lauded woman’s rights activist and went on to work in various government sectors. President Calvin Coolidge appointed her to work on women’s prison reform, and she served with every administration thereafter on myriad projects. She also had a farm in Vienna, then a rural outpost of D.C.
When Dulles airport opened 12 miles from Vienna in 1962, the construction of the road connecting it with D.C. split Shouse’s farmland by eminent domain. So, in the mid-’60s, she approached then-President Lyndon Johnson and Secretary of the Interior Stewart Udall and told them she wanted to use the land for a public sanctuary that would blend art and nature. She requested this area be designated part of the National Park Service — which was founded in 1916 with the creation of Yellowstone in Wyoming — to ensure a high level of care and permanent protection.
Shouse’s requests were granted, and Wolf Trap National Park for the Performing Arts opened in the summer of 1971 with an inaugural performance by the New York City Opera. In the 53 years since, programming has diversified to include just about everything: The 2024 season included shows by Wilco, Robert Plant & Alison Krauss, Nas, Clint Black, TLC, Anastasio and many others.
“We’re programming the National Park for music, and the National Parks are owned by all Americans,” says Manocha. “So, we have an obligation that everyone in this region feels that Wolf Trap belongs to them. I want people to feel like, ‘There’s something here that speaks to me.’”
Filene Center at Wolf Trap National Park for the Performing Arts
Courtesy of Wolf Trap National Park for the Performing Arts
But given that Wolf Trap is a designated National Park, things also operate a bit differently than at a typical venue. Instead of police officers controlling traffic flow on show nights, the job is handled by Park Police and Rangers in the park system’s signature uniforms. The National Park Service also oversees maintenance of the grounds, which includes 120 acres of parkland, 90 acres of forest, trails and a large fishing pond. The Park Service is not involved in artist booking or other arts-related programming.
Of course, Wolf Trap isn’t the only park to host concerts. Red Rocks Amphitheatre exists inside Red Rocks Park, which is owned and operated by the city of Denver. Lollapalooza is permitted to happen in Chicago’s Grant Park. The 2,500-capacity Blue Ridge Music Center amphitheater exists within Blue Ridge Parkway National Park. But Wolf Trap is an outlier in that concerts are literally its entire reason for being. “It’s not like we have to get permission to put on shows at this park, because we are the park,” says Manocha. “Without the concerts, there is no park here.”
Crypto.com Arena hosted the first game of the 2024-2025 NBA season on Tuesday night (Oct. 22), which saw the arena’s tenants, the Los Angeles Lakers, take on the Minnesota Timberwolves. The evening notably featured the first appearance of a father-son duo (LeBron James and son Bronny James) in NBA history — while the 25-year-old arena also showed off its new, nine-figure renovations.
A quarter of a century is a long time for any entertainment arena to remain culturally relevant, but Crypto.com Arena (formerly Staples Center) has completed its third round of multi-million-dollar renovations to keep up with technological advancements and a new era in fan enjoyment.
During the Oct. 22 game, the arena — at the center of the entertainment campus L.A. Live — unveiled its new outdoor space, refreshed food and beverage offerings and state-of-the-art technology designed to reduce wait times throughout the facility. The arena’s first outdoor space, the City View Terrace, offers concert and game attendees the option of enjoying food and drinks with downtown Los Angeles as the backdrop while still being able to view the game or concert taking place inside. The terrace features several food and beverage stops and is open to all ticket holders.
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For floor- or ice-seat ticketholders, the arena revamped its exclusive Chairman’s Club to become the Delta SKY360° Club. On Wednesday (Oct. 23), Crypto.com Arena senior vp of guest services and security Danielle Snyder took media on a tour of the reimagined space, which includes a private bar in a lounge setting that is only accessible to premium seat holders and friends and family of the team or act playing. For the first time in its history, Crypto.com Arena will also now offer VIP tours to the general public, allowing guests to access behind-the-scenes areas such as the Delta SKY360° Club.
Danielle Snyder, Crypto.com Arena Senior Vice President of Guest Services and Security
Courtesy of Crypto.com Arena
This season, founding partner Coca-Cola is also continuing to expand its presence with the newly unveiled Coke Studio, a 3,300-square-foot music-driven studio and event space at Crypto.com Arena that will host concerts, artist appearances, podcast recordings and more. Coca-Cola is supporting the arena’s sustainability initiatives, including the r.Cup program, which replaces single-use cups with reusable ones to help further the arena’s commitment to reducing waste. As part of this program, Coca-Cola products, along with other non-alcoholic beverages, will be served in r.Cup’s reusable vessels.
The arena’s new food offerings include chef and TV host David Chang’s spicy fried chicken concept fuku and chef and restaurateur Ludo Lefebvre’s two new concession stands: Mediterranean-focused Ludobab and Trois Familia, a fusion of Lefebvre’s French background with local Mexican cuisine. Elsewhere, Fresh Brothers will become the arena’s official pizza partner with a new concession stand (replacing Blaze Pizza), while Big Mozz is the arena’s newest official mozzarella stick partner.
Courtesy of Crypto.com Arena
A standout of the new offerings includes the first Doritos restaurant, Doritos After Dark. Located at the arena’s main Star Plaza entrance, Doritos After Dark serves up late-night favorites elevated with the flavor and crunch of Doritos for appetizers and entrees. Special items include Doritos Spicy Sweet Chili Ramen-Rito (a Dorito and ramen-filled burrito) and Doritos Nacho Cheese Crunchtastic Vanilla Cone (an ice cream cone with a chocolate shell covered in cheesy chips). On Nov. 15, for one night only, Doritos After Dark will step out of the arena and into a one-of-a-kind Doritos Night Market pop-up in a free, immersive, neon-filled atmosphere open to all from 4:30 to 7:30 p.m. at L.A. Live’s Peacock Place.
Courtesy of Crypto.com Arena
New technology has also been installed at the arena. This includes Evolv, a leader in AI-based security technology, which is enhancing fan safety with the rollout of its Evolv Express screening system at all entrances. This cutting-edge technology allows fans to move through security checkpoints more quickly and efficiently, differentiating between potential threats and most everyday metal items such as cell phones and keys. By streamlining entry, Evolv is designed to help fans spend less time waiting in line and more time enjoying the event.
Once inside, fans can also skip lines with Amazon’s Just Walk Out technology, which has been installed at multiple locations inside the arena, along with the brand-new Exo self-checkout at the Team LA Store, which also underwent a remodel. Now, all items at the Team LA Store include RFID technology, which allows fans to drop all their merchandise into a scanner that rings up everything instantaneously. The technology is currently only available at sporting events, as tour merchandise is not yet streamlined with RFID technology.
Crypto.com Arena is set to host programming tied to some of the biggest and highest-profile sporting events over the next decade. Among other events, it has been selected to host the 2025 Grammy Awards (the 22nd time the arena has hosted music’s biggest night), the 2027 NCAA Division I Men’s Basketball Regional, and the men’s and women’s gymnastics competitions for the 2028 Olympic and Paralympic Games.
Two assignments in three decades. Mexican businessman Alejandro Soberón Kuri, CEO of Mexican promoter OCESA, asked architect Pepe Moyao to build a venue on a simple soccer field on the east side of Mexico City to host a show for British legend Paul McCartney in 1993, which later became the iconic Foro Sol. Thirty years later, Moyao was tasked with the remodeling of the same venue for its transformation into the new Estadio GNP Seguros.
“Wouldn’t you like to see a permanent building here? Why don’t you do it? If it’s done, I’ll pay for it!” Moyao recalls Soberón saying when he invited him to create the original project.
Interestingly, it was not the ex Beatle who finally inaugurated the stadium in 1993 but Madonna, who at that time was touring with The Girlie Show to promote her album Erotica. Four years later, in 1997, it was named Foro Sol and its opening under that name was officiated with a concert by rock icon David Bowie. Since then, a myriad of international stars have performed at this place.
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But Moyao, who at that time was in his 30s and a decade earlier had won a youth architecture competition organized by UNESCO, not only built the most important music forum in Mexico, but also a place to hosts events beyond concerts.
“From the beginning, I thought it could fit a baseball stadium, which could also accommodate a racing track, so I thought of creating a multifunctional building, where the stage changes, is removed, moves,” explains the architect. “For six years, this place has been considered the best F1 circuit in the world.”
This year, after a six-month renovation, the renowned Estadio GNP Seguros opened its doors with three mega-concerts by American pop star Bruno Mars, held last August 8th, 10th, and 11th, with an attendance of 65,000 people each night, according to OCESA.
After this, a series of international stars including Metallica, Paul McCartney, The Killers, Eric Clapton, Twenty One Pilots, and Iron Maiden, as well as Latin stars like Feid and Natanael Cano, will perform at the stadium in the coming weeks and months. (For a list of concerts scheduled this year in Mexico, click here).
Below, five things you should know about Estadio GNP Seguros, told to Billboard Español by its creator, architect Pepe Moyao.
1. A Multifunctional Venue
Since its inception, when it was called Foro Sol, the place was designed as a multifunctional building that could adapt to the needs of the event, whether it be a mega rock concert or as the F1 home in Mexico.
“It is a multifunctional building where the stage changes, is removed, moves. It has been recognized six times as the best F1 circuit globally, and it is the only circuit where 30,000 people can watch the award ceremony up front, not done in the pits as in other countries,” Moyao says. “After the F1 ends, you can change it and produce a concert, it has that multi-functionality. It is a unique place in the world, a stadium designed exclusively for entertainment.”
2. Rainwater Reuse
With a capacity of up to 65,000 attendees, the stadium offers new benefits to provide greater comfort and services to fans, including a new 13,800 square meters (148,500 square feet) roof for sun protection and rainwater storage for subsequent reuse.
“The place had an expansion of more than 33,000 square meters of additional construction. From the top of the stands, we have a roof of over 13,000 square meters that will harvest rainwater, and what is captured will go to a cistern that will feed the bathrooms, be used for washing and watering planters, so we can reuse the water,” explains the architect.
3. Greater Comfort for the Viewer
The remodeled venue includes more comfortable seating for the audience, as well as new and improved spaces for the general audience and corporates.
“Previously, people sitting in the stands had to go down about 9 and a half meters to get to the bathrooms. Today, you go down 3 meters,” Moyao points out. “Let’s say that everything is focused on people’s greater comfort.”
4. Cutting Edge Technology
More than 280 state-of-the-art screens were installed in the venue to improve the visualization of the shows and provide more timely information to attendees. This is in addition to internal and peripheral stadium lighting for greater visibility and security.
“All installations, both electrical and hydraulic, are cutting edge, none of the old was preserved. There are LED lamps and low electricity consumption equipment,” said the architect.
5. 177 Days Construction & More Numbers
Although the renovation project of Estadio GNP Seguros lasted about two years, the remodeling took 177 actual days. Additionally, Moyao highlights over 710,000 man-hours went into this; the work of about 1,000 people; 15 companies working simultaneously. During that time, 24,436 shell-type seats were installed.
The creator of Ibiza clubbing institutions Hï and Ushuaïa has announced the opening a new nightclub on the island in 2025.
The space, called [UNVRS], has been dubbed a “hyperclub,” by The Night League, the group behind the new concept and the other two afrorementioned clubs.
While details are still scant regarding what a “hyperclub” is, what this space will look like or what kind of music it will program, Yann Pissenem, the owner, founder and CEO of The Night League tells Billboard that with the new space, “we’re taking everything we’ve learned from creating Ushuaïa and Hï Ibiza—venues ranked among the world’s best—and pushing the boundaries even further.
“A Hyperclub is the next evolution in global nightlife,” Pissenem continues. “Imagine seeing your favorite artists in a space that offers the best elements of a club, the infrastructure of an arena, and the best hospitality in the world.[UNVRS] is about attention to granular detail, from the finishes across the venue to the unique experiences our guests will never forget. It’s a space that retains the raw energy of a rave, connecting the present and future within the walls of stunning architecture.
The announcement of the club technically began on July 31, when many in Ibiza reported seeing a mysterious object in the sky near Es Vedra, a large rock formation just off the coast of the island’s west coast.
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Today (Aug. 19) that situation was revealed to be a marketing stunt, with none other than Will Smith (an original Man In Black, of course) posting a video of himself to Instagram saying he’d seen the “UFO sighting” and therefore “hit my boy Yann, and Yann is like the king of Ibiza,” with Pissenem then sending Smith a pinned location on the island, which lead Smith to the construction site of the new club. In the video, Smith meets Pissenem at the site, with Pissenem declaring “welcome to [UNVRS]” as the Men In Black them song plays.
With The Night League, Pissenem has made Ushuaïa and Hï destinations for many of the world’s biggest DJs, with this season’s Ushuaïa residents including Calvin Harris, David Guetta, Martin Garrix and Armin van Buuren and Hï hosting heavy hitters like Black Coffee, Eric Prydz, Fisher and many more. The company says that together, these clubs bring in 1.5 million attendees each season.
“Ibiza has always been the epicenter of global club culture, and we feel a responsibility to elevate it again, ensuring it remains at the forefront of the nightlife scene,” Pissenem continues to Billboard. “With [UNVRS], we’re not just preserving Ibiza’s prestige; we’re redefining what’s possible in club culture.”
Southern California’s newest arena is pulling out all the stops to stand out in the crowded market. On Friday (July 19), Intuit Dome (home of the NBA’s Los Angeles Clippers) unveiled its advanced center-hung board, which spans nearly a full acre. The flexible board will be utilized for basketball games, concerts and special events held at the Inglewood venue.
The Halo Board, as it has been dubbed, is one of the largest double-sided halo displays in an arena setting, curving around the top of the dome at 38,375 sq. ft. It is the equivalent of nearly 3,600 60-inch TV screens with 233 million LEDs.
Clippers owner Steve Ballmer told the media at a press conference on Friday (July 19) that he traveled around the globe looking at various scoreboards to develop his vision for the Dome’s Halo Board. He admired the board at AT&T Stadium in Dallas and told Halo Spots & Entertainment CEO Gillian Zucker to “make it bigger.”
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With a video board, “you could say, ‘Hey, it’s just a thing that’s supposed to be there to be impressive’ – almost like some artwork,” said Ballmer. “But I didn’t want that and wanted to make sure that thing was totally functional, that it really added to the game.”
Ballmer, the former CEO of Microsoft, explained that he wanted the board to be functional for every fan. In order to reach every seat in the house, Zucker explained, “We actually had to map every single pixel and every single seat.” The Halo Board hangs high above the basketball court, leaving enough space between itself and the floor to avoid obstructing sightlines for any seat in the 17,700-seat arena. Every seat in the house will be able to see both exterior and interior screens on the board, allowing for a wide range of visible content.
The Halo Board will display gameplay, statistics, instant replays and audience moments for sporting events, and fans can interact with it via a light-up, four-button controller situated on their armrests.
Intuit Dome’s Halo Board
Courtesy of LA Clippers
The Halo board can also be utilized for concerts at the venue; artists can use the entire board or fold up the ends on either side to enhance sight lines.
“It is available for artists to use if they want. We have some standard software [where we] tried to make it easy for them to put their content up,” said Ballmer. “We think some artists will use it and some artists may well not use it because it doesn’t fit the way they think about things. But we wanted to have some extra area for acts to be able to enhance their concert experiences.”
Prior to the Clippers’ home opener, Intuit Dome will host more than 20 concerts. The venue’s grand opening will feature a two-night residency from Bruno Mars on Aug. 15 and 16. That will be followed by comedian Sebastian Maniscalco, Marc Antonio Solis and two nights of Olivia Rodrigo. Peso Pluma, Twenty One Pilots, and Future and Metro Boomin will close out the month of August.
Looking ahead, NCT DREAM, Slipknot, Grupo Frontera, Bujo Banton, Usher, Weezer, Billy Joel and Ana Gabriel are also scheduled to appear at the new arena.
Intuit Dome’s Halo Board
Courtesy of LA Clippers
Last week, the Apollo theater in Harlem was selected as the first venue to receive a Kennedy Center Honor. The Apollo will receive a special award as an iconic American institution, right alongside the four individuals who are being honored — Bonnie Raitt; Grateful Dead; jazz trumpeter, pianist, and composer Arturo Sandoval; and filmmaker Francis Ford Coppola.
The prestigious honors will be presented on Dec. 8 at a ceremony at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C. CBS will broadcast the two-hour program on Dec. 23.
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“The Apollo, one of the most consequential, influential institutions in history, has elevated the voices of Black entertainment in New York City, nationally, and around the world, and launched the careers of legions of artists,” Kennedy Center chairman David M. Rubenstein said in a statement announcing the surprise selection.
This is a rare occasion that the Kennedy Center Honors has veered from its usual practice of honoring individuals. Six years ago, the program honored four key creators of the Broadway sensation Hamilton: An American Musical (Lin-Manuel Miranda, Thomas Kail, Alex Lacamoire, and Andy Blankenbuehler). Five years ago, it honored the legendary children’s TV program Sesame Street (the award was presented to the show’s creators, Lloyd Morrisett and Joan Ganz Cooney).
It’s easy to see why the Kennedy Center chose the Apollo to receive this honor. For 90 years, The Apollo has been a beacon of the Harlem community; a platform for artists from the worlds of jazz, swing, bebop, R&B, gospel, blues, soul, and hip-hop. Artists who have played The Apollo’s famed Amateur Night include Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughan, Billie Holiday, James Brown, Stevie Wonder, Gladys Knight, Luther Vandross, H.E.R., D’Angelo, Lauryn Hill and Miri Ben-Ari.
Now that The Apollo has gotten the nod, what other venues would you like the Kennedy Center Honors to consider for recognition? Here are 20 choices, in alphabetical order:
Which venue should the Kennedy Center Honors consider for recognition next?
At the beginning of 2013, Mike Luba says he dragged Mumford & Sons’ Ben Lovett to Forest Hills Stadium in Queens on a sort of vision quest. He was working with the band on its Gentlemen of the Road Tour and knew that Lovett had grown up in the tennis town of Wimbledon, England. An avid tennis fan and player himself, Luba wanted to sell the band on “playing a gig at the Wimbledon of New York.”
Built in the 1920s, the stadium, which adjoins and is owned by the West Side Tennis Club (WSTC), had been the site of the U.S. Open for six decades and, in the ’60s and ’70s, hosted a series of landmark concerts by The Beatles, Simon & Garfunkel, Barbra Streisand, Jimi Hendrix and Bob Dylan, to name a few. But those days had long since passed when Luba says Lovett “took two steps into the site, which at that point had trees growing out of compost piles in the bowl and hadn’t been touched in decades. Ben looked at me and said, ‘This is nothing like Wimbledon. It’s a total fucking train wreck. But we can do a proper rock show here.’
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“That was early 2013,” Luba recalls. “They played that August. That’s how fast I did that.”
Almost 11 years after that first concert, Forest Hills Stadium has evolved into the Chateau Marmont of outdoor venues. Luba and his team have restored much of its ’20s vintage vibe and rehabbed a dozen or so funkily decorated speakeasy-style rooms that ring the stadium floor. (One is entered through a port-a-potty; another, a phone booth.)
A self-described “hippie punk-rock dude,” Luba says the stadium, which has a capacity of about 13,000, will stage “30-ish” events this season in a hypercompetitive market for venues. Neil Young and Crazy Horse, The National, The War on Drugs, Khruangbin, Tiësto, King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard and Pitbull are among those that have played or will play this season. And in early June, Hozier sold out four nights — a first in the stadium’s 101-year history.
Box office results have grown accordingly. In 2019, the stadium grossed $6.7 million; in 2023, it took in $22.1 million and finished at No. 17 for the year among venues with capacities between 10,001 and 15,000, according to Billboard Boxscore. Along with that success, however, came an ongoing legal battle with the local homeowners association, the Forest Hills Gardens Corporation (FHGC), over alleged noise levels and unruly crowds.
Luba had much to say about the contretemps during this conversation with Billboard, which took place in the small hut where he works on the stadium grounds. He also discussed his unique employment arrangement. Luba is a partner in Tiebreaker Productions — which holds a long-term lease to the stadium — with his previous full-time employer, AEG, and its subsidiary The Bowery Presents, as well as some overachiever friends from his high school tennis team. Since last July, he is also Live Nation’s executive vp of strategy. (It’s his second turn at the company: He worked with then-chairman Michael Cohl in the early 2000s.) Given the rivalry between the two live-industry giants, his dual roles can be a tightrope walk.
Eleven years later, how has the stadium evolved?
We realized early on that the place itself was inherently magical. So we just leaned into making it feel like when you come here it’s in its 1920s state, but we are using 2024 technology. So much of the credit for that goes to [stadium GM] Jason Brandt and the work that was done. For years, every penny we made got poured back into it. The food and beverage program has totally been elevated. I’m personally most proud of the fact that we now have real bathrooms that are plumbed into the main sewer system of the city. We’re tied into the power grid instead of having to bring in generators. We’ve put in tons of points of sale for bars so there’s no lines. The load-in went from being three days to four hours. You can pull your trucks right up to the stage. It has really reduced the impact on trucks coming in and out of the neighborhood.
“The first time John McEnroe [second from left] came to see a show, he confirmed an urban legend that in 1977, the last year of the U.S. Open here, someone was shot in the shin. I said, ‘That’s crazy.’ He said, ‘There’s something even crazier. I once played tennis with Carlos Santana [left], Vitas Gerulaitis [second from right, who was once a member of the tennis club’s ground crew] and Meat Loaf [right].’ When I showed him this photo, he tried to take it off the wall. I literally had to wrestle it away from him.”
Nina Westervelt
How did you build your season lineup from a few shows to around 30?
The second year we did five. That was right when I started at AEG. I did a walkaround with [chairman/CEO] Jay Marciano — he had previously run the Garden — who told me, “You will never book more than six shows here. The competition is too much.” I said, “Jay, if it was just me, you’re probably right, but my partner Don Sullivan is one of the great promoters of all time. There’s no way we’re not going to be able to book six fucking shows here.” Sure enough, the second year we got five — and the fifth one was a major favor. The first three seasons — 2013, 2014 and 2015 — were all bands that I’d either slept on their couch or they had slept on my couch. I had been their agent or their manager, and Jay and I were cashing in 30 years’ worth of chips. Zero income.
What did you do to turn that around?
It was really word-of-mouth. The bands told other bands. The crews told other crews. And then people who came to shows told other people. Our original ticketing system was Ticketfly, so we had no mailing list. There was no institutional way to market.
When did your battle with the Forest Hills Gardens Corporation begin?
This was the first master-planned neighborhood ever in America, and it happened to include the tennis club and the stadium. The governing body is the Forest Hills Gardens Corporation, with whom we had an incredible relationship for a decade — multiple presidents, multiple boards. It’s an all-volunteer board, and it changes every couple of years. We did everything in consultation with them, we paid them, and at the end of every season, we would sit down and have a postmortem of what was good, what was bad and give them a check.
They had an election, and a new president [Anthony Oprisiu] comes in. It turns out he has a serious grudge against the tennis club. There are all sorts of rumors about what it is. Whatever it is, there’s no rational anything. It doesn’t make any sense. [Editor’s note: A spokesman for the FHGC denies this, saying, “The FHGC board — made up of 15 members — voted unanimously to commence litigation because of the WSTC and Tiebreaker’s unacceptable behavior.”]
So this beef is more about the tennis club than the concerts?
Yeah, but we’re the easy target. The tropes are so prevalent: rock’n’roll, people creating garbage, pissing everywhere, puking everywhere. And it’s just not true. However, to the general public, it all sounds reasonable. This guy and like three to five board members are like the Matt Gaetzes, Marjorie Taylor Greenes — the Freedom Caucus of Forest Hills. They are willing to destroy it for the 600 people who work here on every show and the more than 375,000 people who come here to enjoy the music.
Haven’t you also addressed their complaints about sound levels?
The first year we got here, the conventional wisdom was that in the old days, the sound was blowing up over the top of the stadium. So, we did a full acoustical study, and the engineer was like, look, in the ‘60s you were basically plopping giant speakers on the stages and blasting it. The PAs now are so sophisticated with the line arrays that we can control the direction of it. He said, we can get it so that there’s no sound going over the top, but it will go down the stairwells. If you cover the stairwells, you’ll trap 98% of it. Then, he said, “What step do you want the earmuffs to go on?” I’m like, “Man, I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.” He said, if you tell me step six, when you hit step six going up to the seats, it will feel like earmuffs get put on your head. Then when you get six steps from the top, you’ll feel like they come off.
Sure as shit, it totally works. We built these bass traps over what used to be kind of dodgy and scary stairwells up into the bowl and after the first show people were freaking out because they’d go into the stairwell and it’s like a sensory deprivation thing. So, we put up signs that say, “You’re standing in a bass trap,” and something like, “These walls were designed specifically to keep the music from reaching our neighbors who are right across the street.” Working hand-in-hand with the DEP, we’ve now built the same sort of enclosures over the ground-floor exits. Outside of putting a roof on it, every hole is blocked. We had Primus ripping on Saturday and there was a moment when I was in the concourse, and I was like, shouldn’t they be on?
“Bob Dylan played air guitar to ‘Tangled Up in Blue’ on this racket his first time back at the stadium,” Luba says.
Nina Westervelt
You gave the corporation a check at the end of each season, and they wanted more?
They wanted $100,000 a show instead of the $5,000 we were paying them. If we wanted to book 20 or more shows, it went to $200,000 a show.
How did they arrive at those numbers?
They made some calculation based on gross ticket sales and attendance, with zero knowledge of our costs. Basically, the only way we survive is selling beer. We have no parking. The bands take all the money, and we’re competing with [Madison Square] Garden, Barclays Center, Central Park, Prospect Park, UBS Arena, Jones Beach and on and on. No one is cutting anyone a deal. [Editor’s note: According to the FHGC spokesman, due to its “decadeslong relationship” with the stadium, it did not charge the market price it charges other entities for closing its streets. He adds, “In light of the stadium’s unwillingness to work in partnership with the FHGC, the FHGC is no longer willing to subsidize the operational costs of the stadium.”]
Where do things stand now?
We got an injunction, which remains in place while this is being litigated. Most of the lawsuit is to make us follow the law and pull the proper permits, which we’ve always done and will continue to do. The judge granted their request to have an independent sound monitor here for every show. We had suggested that the [Department of Environmental Protection] be the independent monitor. They’ve dinged us when we’ve been out of code. They’re a city agency. They have no horse in the race. They’ve dinged us when we’ve been out of code. But after the judge granted their request, they realized they would have to pay for the independent monitor — because it was their request — and they freaked out. Then they wrote a letter withdrawing the one thing that they won because when they won it, they went out to the neighborhood saying they had a triumphant, majestic win in court, and the neighbors were like, whoa, we’re paying for it?
What does the tennis club make of this?
This tennis club is the largest member of the Forest Hills Gardens Corporation. They pay more dues than anyone else. They sued the board for breach of candor and breach of their fiduciary duty because essentially the club is going to be funding the lawsuit against itself. [Editor’s note: In a statement, Oprisiu said, “FHGC remains open to a compromise that respects our community and historic norms of behavior at the club. To date, [the WSTC] and Tiebreaker have yet to share a meaningful proposal for our community to consider. Instead, they have recently tripled the number of events and focused on personal attacks on the board with offensive innuendos and gossip. We’re confident in our legal standing as recently supported by the court’s ruling.”]
You actually own a piece of Forest Hills, right?
The entity is called Tiebreaker Productions. Don Sullivan and I, my high school tennis team, and the guys at MTheory, JT Myers and Nat Pastor, put up the original bread. Then, the MTheory guys said, we don’t want to be in the venue business, and they sold their share to AEG. Then, when AEG acquired Bowery Presents, they got that share.
You’re serious about the high school tennis team?
Dead serious. I have these five friends who have stayed friends since kindergarten. We all went to Wheatley High School in Old Westbury, Long Island. Some of us went to college together. At least once a year we try to get together, and it happened to be the night after I did the walkthrough here. By far, I’m the black sheep of this highly overachieving group. One guy was an incredible high school tennis player. He was considering turning pro but ended up going to Yale and was the best Ivy League tennis player. a freshman. When I explained that I wanted to keep Forest Hills Stadium independent and not sell it to AEG, he looked at me and said, “I love tennis. I love music. Let’s try it.” We were all blotto at that point. I said, “Okay man, tonight go home, take $2 million, put it in a suitcase, go out into your backyard and just torch it. If you can stomach that then welcome to the music business. He called me the next day and said his wife wouldn’t let him do the suitcase thing, but he still wanted to try it.
How did you come to work for Live Nation?
When my deal was potentially coming up at AEG, [Live Nation chief strategy officer] Jordan Zachary called. I was ready to move on. It finally all worked out, and Live Nation gave me this incredible opportunity. I get to work on tours with artists that I love and care about. I get to help them on [business development] when they do new building projects or any kind of venue stuff, and I get to participate a little bit on the big-picture strategy.
Nina Westervelt
How does Forest Hills fit in with your Live Nation work?
From day one, Forest Hills was an open room, like the Garden or the Staples Center. When AEG [took a stake in Tiebreaker], they became the promoter partner, but if there was a band that wanted Live Nation to promote their tour, they would come in. This year, half of the shows we do will be Live Nation and half will be Bowery. When I started back at Live Nation, we began to educate the industry that the idea of playing Jones Beach and Forest Hills is now possible. You look on a map and they’re 27 or so miles apart, but for those who live here, they might as well be Mars and Jupiter. There’s an ecosystem now where Pitbull can play Jones Beach and Forest Hills, as he will, and both will sell out.
How do you balance the Live Nation-AEG equation?
My real job is at Live Nation, and my partners here are Bowery and AEG. The companies clearly don’t like each other, so it’s a little tricky. There’s real-life proprietary shit that I’m dead serious about, and I keep it very, very separate. That’s why I sit out here by myself. I’ll go into the Live Nation office once in a while, but I try to stay out of all the drama. I’m really thankful that both AEG and Live Nation let me exist in this space. And it’s important to me that Live Nation understands that I’m on the Live Nation team. It’s a testament to Rapino and Jordan and that team being open-minded. I mean, I hated Live Nation.
That’s right, you manage The String Cheese Incident, and they sued Ticketmaster for allegedly denying them their direct-to-fan ticket allotment. [The suit was settled.]
Yeah, we sued them under the antitrust act and we probably would have won. But now I see it from the other side that company is full of people who really love music, take real pride in their job, work really hard, and do it at a really high level.
We’ve reported on how Gen Z is not consuming as much alcohol as previous generations. Would you consider selling pot in the way, for instance, that Outside Lands has Grasslands?
I will consider as soon as it’s legal. There’s no reason not to. For me, alcohol is way more dangerous than marijuana. At least in New York State it’s a really gray area. I’m by no means an expert on this, but I think it’s mostly because it’s not federally legal, so there’s no way for the banks — no one knows how to deal with the money part of it. Until there’s some way to actually transact on it, I don’t think we can legally do it anywhere. It’s coming, though, for sure.
What are the most pressing issues facing the live business right now?
Climate change is making it very hard to do outdoor events. I’m worried that at some point they become uninsurable. Every morning, I wake up and multiple shows are canceled in places that have never had [weather issues], like 80-mile-an-hour winds shutting down Lovers & Friends in Las Vegas. And that happens over and over. It’s also become excruciatingly expensive. The supply chain issues are real, labor is real. Five years ago, you could get a bus for $5,000 a week. They’re now $13,000 a week. It’s really hard for bands to tour.
“This is a bobblehead of the master electrician at the stadium, Tommy Sellers. He has been here for basically every show that has been at the stadium, and he’s the spiritual leader for the crew.”
Nina Westervelt
AEG Presents and independent Portland, Ore., promoter Monqui Presents are bringing a brand-new music venue to the city that will be located in the Lloyd District at the former Nordstrom building site on NE Multnomah Street.
Developed and operated by the two entities, the 68,000 sq. ft. venue will offer flexible seating for 2,000 to 4,250 attendees and feature a movable stage for dynamic event configurations. The strategic partnership will be led by AEG Presents’ president of Rocky Mountains and the Pacific Northwest Don Strasburg and Monqui Presents co-owner Mike Quinn.
“This is a project we’ve been working on with Don and the AEG Presents team for about ten years now — we have a great site, excellent design, and most importantly a shared vision in making the audience and artist experience a truly great one,” said Quinn in a press release. “We are extremely fortunate and excited about this partnership and thrilled to bring this venue to Portland.”
Trending on Billboard
The release details the new venue’s location as “prime” given its placement within the Lloyd Entertainment District boundaries with “its extensive surface and adjacent parking facilities, coupled with easy access to light rail, streetcar lines, and the recently completed north-south bike and pedestrian bridge, ensures unparalleled convenience for attendees.”
AEG Presents and Monqui Presents Partner to open new venue in Portland, Oregon.
Courtesy W.PA
“Mike and the whole Monqui team represent the fabric of Portland,” added Strasburg. “We worked together to find the perfect site and designed the perfect venue — we are excited to deliver the city of Portland the concert experience it so deserves.”
According to the release, the venue will boast state-of-the-art acoustics and sightlines optimized for every patron while accommodating a wide range of musical genres and special events, from intimate acoustic performances to extravagant EDM sets.
Portland-based firm Works Progress Architecture, which also designed Mission Ballroom in Denver, has been entrusted with designing the new venue.
“We’ve had an incredible 25+ year relationship promoting shows with Mike Quinn and Monqui and look forward to many more years of putting on historical shows together,” said regional vp of AEG Presents Pacific Northwest Chad Queirolo.
One of the country’s busiest nightclub markets is getting an addition, with a new club called Substance set to open in Las Vegas on July 12.
The venue will be booked by Las Vegas-based entertainment promotion/production company Rvltn Events, which is partnering with dance behemoth Insomniac Events and the Latin-focused Altura for artist bookings.
The space opens July 12 with a set from house duo Walker & Royce. The summer calendar also includes dance producers Kshmr, Boombox Cartel and Crankdat, with additional artist announcements forthcoming. Saturday nights at the club will focus on Latin music, with the venue also set to feature genres including regional Mexican, rock, R&B, reggae and more.
A single-story, 18,000-square foot venue on Fremont Street in downtown Las Vegas, Substance is located inside the Neonopolis entertainment complex. The space will have an industrial aesthetic, a large-scale LED installation and graffiti and other art by visual artist Gear Duran.
Rvltn is operated by partners Marcel Correa and Joe Borusiewicz, who are also the owners of Substance. The Rvltn Events family also includes Altura Presents, the house and techno-focused Elation and the New Year’s Eve event Jackpot.
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“Growing up in Las Vegas, we’ve always loved our great city and its incredible potential to become a thriving local music scene,” Correa and Borusiewicz said in a joint statement. “We’ve attended countless shows, festivals and events here, and our passion has always been about serving our fellow locals.
“As promoters, working with various venues throughout the city has given us deep insight into what works and what doesn’t — from guest experience and operations to overall strategy. No one enjoys paying $30 for parking or navigating a casino just to attend an event. People dislike strict dress codes, long lines for drinks and bathrooms, poor sound quality and gouging fees. At Substance, our goal is to create an entertainment destination that addresses these issues, incorporating everything we’d want as event producers and local music fans. We can’t wait to unveil our most exciting venture to date.”
Steve Sayer recently celebrated his 10th anniversary at The O2, the AEG Europe-owned and operated London arena that consistently ranks among the world’s top-grossing concert venues. In 2023, the 21,000-capacity building grossed $220 million from 188 shows, placing it second only to Madison Square Garden (MSG), which grossed $223 million, on Billboard’s Top Venues chart (15,001-plus capacity). In terms of total attendance, The O2 is a global leader, welcoming a record 2.4 million people through its doors last year (600,000 more than MSG), according to figures reported to Billboard Boxscore, justifying its claim to the title of “world’s most popular music venue.”
This year looks to be just as busy, with The O2 recently hosting sellout shows by Bring Me the Horizon, Take That, Depeche Mode and The 1975 as well as the three-day Country 2 Country (C2C) festival and 2024 Brit Awards. Upcoming bookings include J Balvin, Doja Cat, Justin Timberlake, Janet Jackson, four shows by Liam Gallagher and six shows by The Killers.
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“We’re grossing huge sums for the artists, selling an incredible number of tickets and we continue to invest and innovate to make sure the fans are having an amazing time,” says Sayer, who joined The O2 in 2014 as commercial director before being promoted to VP/GM of the arena four years later.
In addition to overseeing the day-to-day management of the venue, which first opened in 2007, Sayer is responsible for operations at the wider O2 complex, which also contains a second 2,800-capacity venue, a 210,000 square-foot designer shopping outlet, a 19-screen cinema and more than 30 bars and restaurants. “We’re certainly not resting on our laurels,” says Sayer. “We want to continue to be the front runner.”
Here, Sayer discusses dynamic ticketing, the rapidly-increasing costs of putting on shows, his opposition to a proposed Sphere venue in London and more.
Steve Sayer
Courtesy Photo
This year marks your 10th anniversary at The O2. What have been some of the biggest highlights and challenges in that time?
There have been so many highlights and quite a few challenges. It sounds cliched now, but a global pandemic and the shutting down of the live industry for 18 months was an incredible challenge for everybody. We’ve got nearly 200 [staff] that I’m responsible for and I guess what I’m most proud of is leading the team through that period, minimizing a very small number of redundancies and probably coming out stronger at the other end than we’ve ever been.
How has the pandemic changed the live and arena business?
Ticket-buying behavior has definitely changed in terms of late buying. There’s also been a definite shift in the number of shows that are getting booked within weeks and months of the show playing out. Pre-pandemic we would have really good visibility 12 to 18 months [ahead] in terms of what’s in the diary. We still have that to a large degree, but 20% of our shows are now short lead and that’s been a real shift.
What do you regard as some of the biggest issues facing the live music business?
One of them is sustainability. We’re acutely aware of our responsibilities and we collaborate with all our stakeholders right across the industry and we’re pushing hard on that. It would be remiss of me not to mention general cost inflation, which is impacting every part of the live ecosystem. Our energy costs are significantly higher than they were four years ago, and they are only going one way. Wage inflation has gone through the roof: double-digit growth in the last couple of years. The cost of putting on shows and running venues is significantly higher than it has ever been and that is a challenge to try and manage and mitigate that. Another challenge is the [health of] the broader live music ecosystem. While The O2 is having incredible success, we know the U.K. grassroots sector is having a tougher time. We’re cognizant of the importance of a vibrant live ecosystem that fuels sustained success for all of us.
Last month, a Parliamentary committee called for a new voluntary tax to be added to arena and stadium tickets sold in the United Kingdom to support struggling grassroots music venues. Is that something The O2 supports?
It’s something we’ve been talking within the industry about. One thing that we have got to understand as far as a levy [is concerned] is just what is legally permissible when you start thinking about competition rules and unilaterally adding levies to the price of a ticket. But it is certainly something that we’re actively exploring and it’s something that we’re talking about within our own business.
Unlike in the United States, the U.K. live music market has so far been generally resistant to the introduction of dynamic ticketing, whereby prices are set according to demand. Can you see that changing?
My sense is that you are going to see more dynamic pricing in the U.K. It will be an interesting challenge. It’s well understood in Europe that in travel and hotels, you pay a different price based on demand. We haven’t had that in the [U.K.] entertainment or the live sector or even really in sport, but obviously, it is commonplace in the U.S. and North America. My sense is that on certain shows and certain artists, it will start to come in. It’s just a question of over what time period and to what extent. Are we talking about a relatively small number of ringfenced tickets? Or are we talking about the entire manifest? That’s the big question.
AEG strongly opposed proposals by MSG to build a Sphere concert arena in East London, not far from where The O2 is based. Madison Square Garden Entertainment (MSGE), which is owned by James Dolan, withdrew those plans in January following opposition from London Mayor Sadiq Khan. Was that a big win for The O2?
The thing with the Sphere that we’ve always been quite open about is — it’s not about competition. Competition is healthy. We are constantly looking at what other venues, festivals and other industries are doing and what we can learn. There was a lot of local opposition to the Sphere [in London]. Local residents didn’t want the light pollution. Las Vegas is a very different city and a completely different environment to East London. All along we said, “We don’t oppose competition in the live music industry.” But that was the wrong scheme in the wrong location in our view and that was what the [London] Mayor also concluded.
Are there lessons to be learned from the high-profile teething problems at the Oak View Group-owned Co-op Live Arena in Manchester, the U.K.’s biggest concert venue, which finally opened last month after a series of costly delays and cancellations? And what impact do you think the arrival of a major new U.K. arena will have on the wider business?
Building and opening any venue of scale presents various challenges and only underpins the importance of meticulous planning, thorough preparation and engagement with key stakeholders throughout the process, right up to opening day. There’s lots that we can always learn from new venues but we’re not resting on our laurels. We’re going to continue to invest in The O2. This year we’re upgrading our Wi-Fi. We’re starting a two-year program to renovate all our backstage. We’re continuing to look at what we can do on the sustainability front, so back-of-house we’re operating as efficiently as we can be. It’s a good time to be in the industry because while there are challenges, undoubtedly the market forecasts are strong.