We may be resigned to the fact that big concerts and festivals are not viable in the near future, but the biggest music promotion company in the world is planning to resume live music on a 'full scale' from next year.
Michael Rapino, CEO of Live Nation, made the comments in a call with the company's investors last week.
He said that the company - which merged with Ticketmaster in 2010 - were initially planning to test the waters with reduced-capacity concerts and drive-in gigs over the next six months, with a view to putting tickets on sale later this year for full-scale gigs in 2021.
"Whether it’s in Arkansas or [another] state that is safe, secure and politically fine to proceed in, we’re going to dabble in fan-less concerts with broadcasts and reduced-capacity shows, because we can make the math work,” he said.
“We think in the fall, if there are no second hotspots, you’ll see markets around the world [reopening]… And then our goal is really to be on sale in the third and fourth quarters for 2021 at full scale.”
Drive-in concerts, which have already been staged in some European countries like Denmark and Germany, are also on the agenda.
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“It’s important for us to keep doing drive-in concerts, which we’re going to test and roll out, which we’re having some success with, fanless concerts which have great broadcasting opportunities, reduced capacity festival concerts, which could be outdoors, could be in a theatre, could be in a large stadium floor where there’s enough room to be safe," Rapino said.
"We have all of these plans in place depending on the market and where that local city may sit in their reopening phases."
Although he may have specified the US in his plans, it will be interesting to see how this affects Ireland. Live Nation co-owns Ireland's biggest music promoter MCD and also operates festivals like Electric Picnic via Festival Republic.
Of course, it also depends how willing music fans are to attend a gig before a vaccine is found. Our recent poll suggested that the majority of people are erring on the side of caution on that front.
