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spk06: The bands are much more sophisticated, and they're now able to use tools to figure out how do I price it better, achieve some better economics, get some of the leakage of secondary, but still maintain an overall ticket price, leaving dollars on the table, but still finding that balance between the consumer demand, the brand, and the slippage of the economics to secondary they've been losing.
spk09: got it and sorry sorry brandon sorry brandon sorry just one comment i have to respond to your commentary about trickling out tickets that's not a practice that's not something that is the norm or something that we do i think that this the speed of ticketing has to do with just what's the pace at which some of them sell out with the theory being for some artists if they price a lot of tickets at market price they may not all sell out in the first hour um So it has nothing to do. Ticketmaster takes all the tickets it gets, puts them directly on sale. It does nothing to try to limit supply or anything in that manner. So I just want to make sure we're crystal clear on that.
spk05: Yeah, no, I wasn't. Yeah, great point. That would be your decision anyway.
spk06: Yeah, but I think we're just addressing because marketplace, the consumer obviously gets a little confused at times when at 10 o'clock there's lots of secondary tickets, right? So historically, the Bruce fan would have been sold out at 10 and had to go to a secondary to buy that good seat. So today we're sorting through that process where we can provide information to fans. But our job at Ticketmaster is put every sale, pick a sale, provide none to the secondary market, and provide all the data to the artist that he can adjust up and down as the market adjusts.
spk05: Got it. And then talking about dynamic pricing, if there was to be some kind of downturn in the next year or so that actually affected the live entertainment business, do you see kind of the same tools as flexibility to respond to market conditions in bringing ticket prices down as much as you bring them up in this demand environment?
spk09: Sure. Go ahead, Michael.
spk06: No, I said it before in our last call. I mean, we looked at the last recession. There was a single digit back in some ticket sales, but we were years ago not even in the same league of sophistication on pricing, nor did we have the tool. So, yeah, we look at data pricing now, dynamic pricing, look at all market data algorithms to figure out what is the price point that we'll sell through. And we do believe that because of the upside right now in the premium secondary side of our business, that if we had to pull back ticket sales and drop prices by five or 10% to match supply demand of inflation, we have so much flexibility in pricing to get that done and still sell through the house and lower price if that was needed for a band to sell through tickets. An artist, again, their number one goal is to sell every ticket. So they're always going to be in a variable of how do I price it to sell through? What do I got to reduce at the front end of the house? What do we need to do to sell through on a Tuesday night in Indianapolis? Let's adjust pricing.
spk09: The other part of the buffer, Brendan, is just the secondary market itself. and how big it is and its continued growth. I gave you the numbers. The secondary market for us grew 140% this quarter. So that tells you that even as some pricing is going up in the primary side, the secondary is growing up, going up even faster, both in terms of volume and price points. So our first line of defense is keeping our eye on secondary and using that buffer if there is any variations in demand.
spk05: Got it. And then finally, if you could just double click a little on 30 additional venues that you were, that you're talking about adding, are those, what venue types are those and how impactful do you see that to be in the future?
spk06: Well, I think in our investor conference, we wanted to kind of highlight, I think it's always been an under strong business, but we put more focus on it from an operational standpoint. design development. We've got over those 300 venues. We've been adding 20 to 30 a year over the last few years. As you know, Austin has been an incredible success in the region, which will provide a return. And those 30 that we have in the pipe, now we have another 75 behind of those. On a global basis, they're everything from clubs to arenas, depending on where the hole in the market may exist. And we see great platform there. And as we've said before, when we show in an operated venue that we have the sponsorship and the ticketing and the food and beverage and all the revenue streams, that's our highest return for us.
spk05: Great. Thanks for the time.
spk01: Your next question comes from Stephen Lasik with Goldman Sachs. Please proceed with your question.
spk00: Hey, great. Thanks for taking the questions. On fan growth for the year, maybe for Joe, I think you mentioned in your prepared remarks not extrapolating international growth or contribution on the US markets this year. Maybe unpack that for us a little bit and maybe touch on what portion of fan growth you expect will come from acquisitions versus organic growth in markets like the US or the UK this year.
spk09: Sure. I'll use as the basis the 100 or so million tickets that we've sold through July, because I think that gives the numbers the facts. And as I indicated within that, the U.S. is up about just over 30%, and international is up 40-odd percent. So you have strong organic growth across both North America and international. Our primary acquisition, of course, would be And that would be somewhat less than half of the international growth. So the international growth, even absent acquisitions, would be in the mid to high 20s. So again, this is not an acquisition-dependent growth. This is organic plus acquisitions.
spk00: Great. That's helpful. And then maybe one for Michael. I was curious if you're seeing any unique trends develop in terms of fan behavior this year. For example, maybe are you seeing more first-time concert goers come out this year or fans set to attend events with greater frequency? I'd be curious if you're seeing any of those data points or think that any of these trends that you're seeing open portions of the market. up going forward that maybe you haven't seen come into the industry before? Thank you.
spk09: Yeah, I'll take this. Michael's having some audio problems here. I think that what we're seeing is a very broad-based, high priority of going to concerts against fans that are interested in going to concerts. So it's a bit of all of the above, where certainly we have people who haven't gone to concerts in a long time going. We have concerts that will go to one, now going to two. We have concerts, we have people that are going to many. So it's not, I don't think you could pull it apart as one factor. I think you're seeing a broad-based, high-demand return to shows, and when they're there, a broad-based spending pattern on site.
spk00: Great. Thanks for that, Joe.
spk01: Your next question comes from the line of Steven Glagolo with Cowen. Please proceed with your question.
spk02: Hi, thanks for the question. Concert ticket prices, I want to go back to that, being up 10% year-over-year versus 2019. Joe, can you just break out how much of this increase is being driven by market pricing versus set price ticketing increases at the on-sale? Thanks.
spk09: As Michael said, the dynamically priced tickets represent a very small percentage of the overall tickets. It's not going to be felt by most people. I don't have the exact numbers. I would guess that less than half of the impact is From that, and then there's a general increase. We can probably use the fact that the entry price of $33 is up about 5% from 2019 as a proxy for what's going on with the overall ticket pricing, and then maybe the remainder is driven by the more front-of-house activity.
spk02: That's very helpful. Thank you.
spk09: And again, those numbers are because there's a lot of attention on how much the overall ticket prices are up. If you look at the U.S. market, the U.S. is up between 12% and 13% in terms of inflation over the past three years as a comparative.
spk02: Yeah, thanks.
spk01: Your next question comes from David Katz with Jefferies. Please proceed with your question.
spk08: Hi. Afternoon, everyone. Thanks for taking my question. I wanted to just get a little more color, if we can, about international markets and international landscapes? And if, you know, we obviously are seeing a lot of strong demand, is it relatively even if we look at international markets relative to the U.S. or any that are stronger, weaker, et cetera?
spk06: Yeah, we're seeing no difference right now in demand across the globe. You know, you can look at, I guess, Springsteen just went on sale last week. global stadiums across Europe everywhere sold out just as fast in Europe as it did here, similar to Post Malone, Kendrick. So the tours that are selling here are selling just as fast in our international markets. Latin America, Mexico continue to see completely record demand in all those markets. We're also still seeing you know, walk up strong at our festivals and on-site as of last weekend, right? So that's kind of current data. They're still spending money. They're still buying tickets at high demand. So we have no pullback yet in Europe or any international market.
spk08: Great. And am I permitted to follow up, or would you prefer I went back in the queue? Sure.
spk09: Go ahead.
spk08: Okay. With respect to digital initiatives around ticketing, If you could just talk about kind of obviously exciting and productive, sort of what inning you'd say we're in and, you know, any observations surprising or otherwise so far.
spk09: Yeah, we're still in early innings. This is the first summer that we're really deploying at scale the data and the technology so that we can reach out to fans once they've bought the ticket, do upsells for people who are going to shows at our venues, connecting them with sponsors, seeing some very good increases in our upsell levels as we talk about some of our average per fan spending and the increase on premiums at our amphitheaters, for instance, more premium parking, more premium entry, VIP clubs. It's certainly enhanced by our ability to have a platform that can reach out and sell to those fans effectively. and you're not depending on them just figuring it out night out. So we're very happy with the early progress we're making.
spk08: Perfect.
spk01: Thanks very much. Your next question comes from Ryan Sunby with William Blair. Please proceed with your question.
spk07: Hey, guys. Thanks for the question. With age impact still limited this quarter, I was wondering if you could talk a little bit more about, one, how quickly that ramps from here And then maybe two, a little more on the long-term opportunity there following the recent acquisitions in Thailand and the Philippines, and I think plans in place to bring La Palooza to India next year. Any color on how that kind of comes together and how large that would be would be great.
spk06: Thanks. Yeah, most of that I think was an Asia reference. We're currently in 40 countries, hundreds of offices in 40 countries. Varying degree of market share from the U.S. to Cape Town or South Africa. So we've got a global platform. That was always our first priority. So we can say to any artist, we can put you on the road in any market, market it, sponsorship, make it happen. Then when we get kind of our flag in the ground, we start to maybe launch or build festivals, operate venues, build up our ticketing, sponsorship, and the model and the flywheel start to work. You can kind of look at our business across the globe. Different markets were in varying degrees of that growth. Latin America, we were very, very undeveloped in all markets. Obviously now with OSESA, we've got that flywheel in Mexico. We bought festivals in Latin America with Rock in Rio and then Bringing Lala. Bought a couple promoters. We're going to get some venues going. So the flywheel is starting to work in Brazil and Columbia and Argentina, but we're kind of go from zero market share to big opportunity there. So that'll continue to be a big focus for us. Western Europe, there's still some markets we're undeveloped in, whether it be Portugal or Spain, certain markets, we don't have the full flywheel and you'll see us continually add a festival or a promoter or a venue to those markets. Asia, we have a good platform. We have people in the ground. We've got a really strong business in Australia and New Zealand. But as we moved up to Pacific Rim, we've been slowly building the flywheel in all those markets. Japan's probably the one market that's the best and biggest in that market. We've got to do more work on that. But we look at Asia as really undeveloped territory, low market share, huge opportunity over the next while. Like everyone else in the world, we look at Asia, we look at Latin America, and we're looking to the Middle East and Eastern Europe as areas where we have no real market share, but that consumer now on TikTok knows that Drake dropped a video last night, whether they live in Singapore, India, Cape Town. So we've got a global product, and we've got lots of opportunity to keep growing.
spk07: Great, thanks. Take care.
spk01: Your next question comes from Matthew Harrigan with Benchmark. Please proceed with your question.
spk03: Thank you. Recognizing that you can alter the weather or nature and there's an amphitheater season and all that, you're really inducing a lot of serial correlation, I think, activity among concert goers. I mean, people are going back and even when people, I think, go to movie theaters, there's a hit movie and there tends to be a lot of repeat behavior. Do you think that all the initiatives you're undertaking are going to alter the seasonality in your business somewhat and maybe make Q4 a lot more active even on a relative basis than it's historically been? Because it feels like there are a lot of things pushing in that direction if you take out concerns with weather and all that. Thanks.
spk09: Yeah, this is Joe. I gave you some numbers that in our amphitheaters we do expect to have about a million people more fans attending shows than we had in 2019. So we're certainly seeing an extension of the amphitheater outdoor season, particularly through the more southern states. Theaters and clubs have always been very active in Q4. Arenas tend not to be quite as big just because the routing gets interrupted by more of the holidays. So we'll see a bit. I don't think it'll dramatically change.
spk06: But it will be why we look at our business as global. In the U.S., you know, the arenas, NBA, NHL, and NFL clog up the venues in the fall into the winter. But that's why we take a lot of these artists now and say, let's go tour in Asia, Pacific Rim, and Latin America. Let's get off-cycle of America and go to those markets. as those open up. So there is a big 12-month-a-year business on a global basis. This industry is focused too much on the U.S., Western Europe, summer business. But you are right. As the business expands in a lot of those markets, you have a 12-month strong market where you can put a sellout show in other markets while you're waiting for a summer business here.
spk03: Makes sense. Thank you.
spk01: Your next question comes from Paul Golding with Macquarie Capital. Please proceed with your question.
spk04: Thanks so much, and Michael and Joe, congrats on the quarter. I just wanted to ask, given the strong demand that we're seeing across the board here and what I presume is some overflow in terms of demand that isn't able to get a seat, where does streaming fit into the medium-term strategy now? I know it was more of a focal point, of course, during the pandemic, but just seeing the opportunity for sponsorship or advertising through that. How much incremental focus will there be on that going forward or sort of walking back from that a bit? Just help us think about monetization there or investment if it's still a strategic point for you. Thanks.
spk06: Thank you. I think we were clear even in COVID. We were not spooked by these pieces that might have been there for a moment that are live. be duplicated and digital. We've always said that this is a magic two hours you have to physically experience, and that's why we love this industry. It's a very unique space. It can't be duplicatable. We've always said that we have all these shows, and most of the festivals, especially, and dedicated fans, that you can expand that show. And there's an audience that wants to watch their favorite artist, or this weekend we had a incredible broadcasts on Hulu for three days, high-quality filming and broadcasting live. It was a festival. It was fabulous. So we've always thought the screen is an extension. It's great for our sponsorship business, where we have 900 sponsors looking always to be part of the show, both on and off. So we love VEEX. We love the opportunity to do thousands of shows. And we think it's an ancillary business that helps our overall sponsorship business as well as our committed festival business. Our business is so big now, I wouldn't say it's a material piece on its own. We never thought it would be, but it's another service we provide to both the artist, festival, and sponsor, and it's something you have to be in.
spk04: Thanks so much.
spk01: Ladies and gentlemen, we have reached the end of the question and answer session. And I'd like to turn the call back to Michael Rapinoe for closing remarks.
spk06: Thank you, everybody. Have a great summer, and we'll talk in the fall.
spk01: This concludes today's conference. You may disconnect your lines at this time. Thank you all for your participation.
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