While consumers bear the strain of record-high ticket prices for live events, Live Nation Entertainment is continuing to show record earnings based off of those ticket prices, according to its latest earnings report, released Thursday. The entertainment giant showed more record profits in its Q3 report for 2022, including its ability to transfer over $550 million of “additional payments” to artists from price inflating “dynamic” ticketing practices alone.
“Live Nation delivered the biggest summer concert season in history and drove a record quarter,” the company’s earnings report says. “These results demonstrate the ongoing and increasing demand for live events globally, with attendance up at events of all sizes from clubs to stadiums.”
“Fans around the world continue prioritizing their spend on live events, particularly concerts,” it continued. “Despite varying economic headwinds including inflation, we have not seen any pullback in demand, as on-sales, on-site spending, advertising and all other operating metrics continue showing strong year-on-year growth.”
Revenue for the company was up more than 60% over the comparable pre-pandemic Q3 2019 numbers, with every division of the company up by at least 30%. Operating income was up closer to 100%.
Ticketmaster reportedly saw $6.7 billion of fee-generating gross sales and 71 million tickets sold, while its secondary market participation saw those transactions jump by 132% compared to 2019.
While its bottom line has arguably never looked better, Live Nation and Ticketmaster have seen no shortage of controversy over its pricing and business practices in recent months, from fan complaints about the very “dynamic pricing” practices driving the explosive profit to scrutiny from federal regulators, including President Joe Biden’s recent support of changes to how “junk” fees are displayed. The company addressed the latter point in its report.
Finally on Ticketmaster, a point on some recent press regarding ticketing fees. We will continue to advocate for fee transparency in live event ticketing. We advocated for the all-in pricing mandate passed in New York earlier this year, which requires face-value prices and fees to be shown upfront – and we support the FTC mandating this nationally. We operate ticketing marketplaces in more than 30 countries around the world and have seen all-in pricing adopted successfully in many countries when mandated across the board. This only works if all ticketing marketplaces adopt together, so that consumers truly can accurately compare as they shop for tickets.
The full earnings release is available at their website here.
