Ray Waddell, Billboard’s Executive Director of Content and Programming for Touring and Live Entertainment, is scheduled to present the welcome address at Ticket Summit 2009 Vegas, running from July 15-17 at the Venetian Resort Hotel Casino in Las Vegas. Waddell’s talk will be the main event of the Summit’s opening day, Wednesday, July 15, and will kick off the activities of the trade show and conference.
Waddell recently discussed plans for his upcoming talk with TicketNews. “What I want to talk about is the…sanity that seems to be coming to the secondary market, the further legitimizing of this market.” He notes that he has interviewed executives in the live entertainment business for many years and “up until the last couple of years, when I’ve talked about the secondary market, they’ve spoken of it in unflattering terms. Now, for any tour, you really have to see how the secondary market behaves. It’s become a barometer of how the tour is going. It’s something you must consider when you’re talking about any tour, a piece of the puzzle, it can’t be ignored or hidden or stopped in any way.”
He also plans to discuss the prospect of regulation in the market and the need for “more cooperation and transparency at all levels. There needs to be some regulation in the secondary market. It cannot be the wild wild west it always was. And if [the market doesn’t] do it, the federal government will do it for you. The better you can police yourself, the better you can avoid problems with the federal government.”
Waddell comes to Ticket Summit with more than two decades of experience in the world of live entertainment media. A graduate of the University of Tennessee at Knoxville, Waddell spent years as a Touring writer for Billboard, learning all there is to know about live entertainment and the concert industry. In 2007 he co-authored This Business of Concert Promotion and Touring: A Practical Guide to Creating, Selling, Organizing, and Staging Concerts , a book detailing the how-to’s in managing the many aspects of concert production and marketing. He is a frequently sought-after source for print and online media as a knowledgeable music media professional.
Currently Waddell works out of Billboard’s Nashville office, contributing articles and news coverage to the media giant’s many outlets, including Billboard.com, Billboard Bulletin and industry site Billboard.biz. He writes a regular column for Billboard entitled On the Road and also collaborates with Billboard EVENTS to produce the annual Billboard Touring Conference and Awards, with the sixth annual event to be held on November 4-5, 2009 at the Roosevelt Hotel in New York City.
