When SXSW was canceled,
Kelly Ostrander’s packed
schedule started to empty.
Now the freelancer is
looking for a different kind
of work entirely.People started canceling small
business conferences about two
weeks before South by Southwest
was officially canceled. It hap-
pened really slowly at first — in
the Facebook groups, people
were kind of making fun of it,
making jokes. Then there was the
first post: “Hey, a gig got canceled
over coronavirus, this is kind of
crazy.” Over the next three days,
that’s all you saw anyone post:
“My gig got canceled.” It [started
to] happen so quick. It was a joke
three days before; we had our
own stagehand memes about it.
Now it’s real.
[SXSW] was going to be 10
days of work and $450 per day
for me some days, $250 for oth-
ers — that’s a decent chunk of
income. Probably a fifth of my
audiovisual income for the year
comes from this week. Unless
you work directly with a produc-
tion crew, you don’t get a sched-
ule. So whenever an event comes
through, we’ll get contacted by
text usually. But a week ago I
stopped getting texts, and I don’t
think I’m going to get texts until
the summer. It’s kind of scary —
when you only have a week or
two booked into the future, at
the most, and then this happens?
It’s upsetting.
[After SXSW] I had one job
left standing — a nightclub gig
two nights a week for $400
per week, which was the only
thing keeping me alive, really.
Now that has been shut down
indefinitely. I feel like I live in a
movie now, and it hurts because
I’m losing something I love. I had
a dream job. Now I’m applying
at Walmart.
—AS TOLD TO NATHAN MATTISEmean fewer potential bidders for tal-
ent. That means the concert industry
that does return will be both even
more consolidated and competitive
than it is now.E
VERY DAY AFTER
April 1 that Live Nation
can’t put on concerts,
it misses $30.3 million
in revenue, based on
2019 second-quarter
financial results.
Already, the company’s stock price
has dropped by half, wiping out
$9 billion in market value.
It’s harder to know how AEG is
faring, since it’s a private company.
In 2019, AEG reported $550 million
in ticket sales to Billboard Boxscore,
but that doesn’t include revenue
from venues it owns outright, such
as the O2 Arena in London and
Staples Center in Los Angeles (which
grossed $159.1 million and $57.3 mil-
lion, respectively, in a 12-month
period, according to Billboard’s 2019
Arena Power List) or ASM, its joint
venture with SMG that manages 300
stadiums, arenas and other venues.
Still, both Live Nation and AEG
should emerge from the shutdown
with their market share intact.
AEG has a steady venue business,
and deep-pocketed owners in the
form of The Anschutz Corpora-
tion, which owns sports teams andevents in addition to venues. Live
Nation is coming off its best year
ever: Its 2019 revenue was up 7% to
$11.5 billion, with operating income
up 19% to $325 million. It also
holds $2 billion in cash reserves,
another $950 million in accounts
receivable and owns Ticketmaster,
which is sitting on hundreds of
millions of dollars in future ticket
sales for shows that are slated to be
rescheduled and thus haven’t been
refunded. In addition, the company
has a variety of revenue sources,
since it operates on the “Flywheel
Model,” where concerts, ticket-
ing, management, sponsorships
and other ventures all strengthen
one another, while each generates
revenue on its own.
That gives Live Nation an enor-
mous number of levers with which
to exercise power. It is already trying
to negotiate no-advance “door deals,”
in which artists don’t get a guarantee
but rather a share of ticket revenue
— usually 80%, with the company
taking 20%. That reduces Live Na-
tion’s risk while still allowing it to
make money in its other businesses,
from ticketing to concessions. It
would also mean that agencies and
artists wouldn’t get paid until after
a show takes place. “Nothing is set
yet,” says a Live Nation executive
who requested anonymity, adding
that the company and AEG have
formed a task force with the heads ofCAA, WME, Paradigm and UTA to
develop “a few ideas to help all.” That
coalition is credited with helping
to orchestrate the Coachella music
festival’s planned move from April
to October, but indie promoters are
skeptical of the group’s intentions.
Agency sources also say that Live
Nation and AEG are postponing
shows, rather than canceling them,
because that allows them to keep
ticket revenue instead of refunding
it to consumers. It also creates the
possibility they’ll pressure agencies
to renegotiate deals.
Live Nation and AEG are the
only promoters that own their own
ticketing operations (Ticketmaster
and AXS, respectively), which gives
them more control over the flow of
revenue. Generally, ticketing compa-
nies pay promoters when tickets are
sold, before a show takes place, on
the condition that the money is re-
funded if an event is canceled. Pro-
moters, in turn, rely on that revenue
to finance these shows and future
bookings. But the postponement and
cancellation of so many concerts
at once has led ticket companies to
freeze those funds.
On March 12, Julia Hartz, CEO
of event management and ticket-
ing website Eventbrite, emailed
the hundreds of indie promoters it
does business with to tell them that
“to ensure your funds are readily
available in the event you need toWe got through about
one week of the Dan +
Shay tour and had flown
to Philadelphia in antici-
pation for weekend two.
Dan + Shay took a night
flight, but the band and
crew got in in the middle
of the day on Wednesday
[March 11] for the show
the following night.
We were playing at the
[Wells Fargo Center],
and they had very gra-
ciously offered us a suite
for the 76ers’ game that
night. Me and the band
and a few of our tour
guys went to the game,
and immediately after it
ended ESPN put out an
announcement sayingthe entire NBA season
was suspended.
We thought, “We’re
playing in NBA arenas all
year, there’s no way our
tour is going to happen.”
As I was at that game,
they pulled the plug on
the South American tour
with Kacey Mugraves I
was going to shoot for.
They pulled the plug on
[the Dan + Shay tour] by
the next morning, and we
all just sat on the bus for a
16-hour ride home. Slowly
but surely, everything was
getting canceled. I’m on a
gig-to-gig basis — if there’s
no show, I don’t get paid.
That’s how most of us are.
By that Friday [March 13],I started reaching out
to artists and my team
and some friends who
I had shot who are in
music or entertainment in
some capacity. I said, “I
know everyone is taking
a hit right now. Here is
something I am trying to
do to support myself. If
you are cool with it, can I
sell photos of your face?”
Everyone has pretty much
said yes. So on March 17,
I launched a limited print
store that I’m keeping
open until April 25, which
would have been the end
of my eight-week touring
cycle that turned into a
one-week touring cycle.
—AS TOLD TO T.M.THE LIGHTING DESIGNER
THE TOUR PHOTOGRAPHER
A week into touring season,
Catherine Powell’s annual
spring arena run was cut
down to nothing.40 BILLBOARD • MARCH 28, 20207fea_coverstory_coronavirus_lo [P]_27818876.indd 40 3/25/20 12:46 AM