4 Takeaways from the Live Nation Earnings Call Q1 2025
Live Nation and its Ticketmaster subsidiary missed forecasts, reporting an overall revenue decrease of 11% in Q1 2025. But the concert giant predicted a record year ahead based on advance ticket sales and tour volume.
ALSO: Live Nation predicts a record 2025: ‘No pullback’ in demand
Four Takeaways from the Live Nation Earnings Call Q1 2025
Why Revenue Was Down
Joe Berchtold – Live Nation Entertainment President and CFO “Other promoters were down 2%. And then overall, concerts were up 4%, but other categories, sports, arts, family, were down 9%. Then on the deferred side, yes, we have deferred for Ticketmaster up 13% for the quarter.”
“… we’re seeing is a bit later on sales timing with more concerts activity in H2 than last year… and we expect probably two-thirds of the Live Nation concert fan growth to be in the second half this year in terms of when the events actually take place and that fan growth happens.
No Slowdown (Yet)
Michael Rapino – Live Nation Entertainment CEO: “It’s a question every CEO gets asked, are you feeling the consumer pullback at all? We haven’t felt it at all yet…
We put a lot of shows on sale in the month of April. Chris Brown sold 1,000,000 tickets this month, Monfort and Sons three hundred, Suicide Bond, Lady Gaga sold out, up 18% year over year. So any data we have right now up until last week, whether it’s a festival on sale or a new tour or a show that went on sale, complete sell through and strong demand and beating last year’s numbers.
So we haven’t seen a consumer pullback in any genre, pub, theater, stadium, amphitheater. We haven’t seen it all happen yet.
(On) sponsorship, we’re up we’ve got over 80% of our business contracted this year so far. We’re up over last year. Again, because we deal on more longer term relationships, we don’t feel it. We don’t have a weekly digital buy that can be canceled. Ours is the longer term commitments.”
DoJ Trial Is Moving Forward
Berchtold: “On the regulatory front, we’re still mid process We continue to have early March twenty twenty six date for the timing of the court case. This is a period where you’re spending these months discovery, depositions, working through.
…And we’re still hoping that when the timing is right, we’ll have an opportunity to get into some real discussions with them. But that hasn’t happened yet.”
Secondary Ticketing
During the call, Live Nation reiterated support for enforcement of the BOTS Act and passage of the TICKET Act. The later just passed the House, though most live independents oppose in its current form.
The company also denied any involvement in the common practice of putting some tickets on sale with secondary ticketers as well as to move unsold inventory.
Berchtold: “We don’t have anything where tickets would go off of our platform and directly into secondary. That doesn’t exist. So that’s not part of our business model nor is it part of what we or any of the artists are doing these days.”
“In terms of secondary market… We consider this to be a feature as opposed to a stand alone business….
So but for us, it’s a low teens percentage of our GTV (gross transaction value) over the course of the year. We’ll continue to offer it. We’ll continue to advocate for reforms to make the industry as safe and positive experience for fans as possible. We don’t see this as a growth driver…
We’d love to see it decline because it means we’re doing a better job working with the artist pricing their tickets appropriately.”
