‘It’s about making the system fairer’: We speak to ABC’s Avani Dias after Four Corners’ Live Nation investigation
Four Corners ran a report on multinational music conglomerate Live Nation on Monday evening, levelling a range of accusations at the company, whose market dominance and vertical business model the ABC claims is harming the local music industry and “squeezing out local competition”.
UPDATE: Live Nation respond to ‘inaccuracies aired’ on Four Corners
The report, headed up by journalist Avani Dias, takes aim at a number of Live Nation’s practices in Australia — as well as in the US and the UK — including the litany of hidden fees added to its ticket prices, dynamic pricing for popular shows, and an aggressive takeover plan that sees it buying up venues, ticketing companies, booking agencies, having “expanded its reach to every part of the Australian music industry” over the past decade.
But, as the report also points out, Live Nation are hardly the only big, international fish in the Australian music pool.
Promoter TEG, is backed by US private equity firm Silver Lake, and owns Ticketek, Sydney’s Qudos Bank Arena, and the popular Laneway Festival.
Frontier Touring is owned by global promoter, AEG, and the Mushroom Group – who have been accused of similar tactics regarding its ownership model since the 1980s.
So, why Live Nation – and why now?
The company struck out at the report before it aired, telling Mumbrella last week: “The economics of our business follow the same industry models as these other players,” referring to AEG and TEG, pointing out that Live Nation operates less than 1% of music venues in the country – six out of the approximately 2,700 venues.
Both are good points.
When insurance premiums, pandemics, streaming services, commercial radio caps, alcohol taxes, poker machines, and numerous other elements have all contributed to the troubles of the Australian music industry, why take aim at one of three major players in the live music landscape – and why now?
Mumbrella spoke to Avani Dias on Tuesday morning, following the airing of the Music For Sale investigation.
She told us how Live Nation first entered the show’s cross hairs, and the lengths they went to include the company in their report – only to be allegedly shut down at every turn.
Avani Dias
Congratulations on the report. How long did it take to get together? When did you start looking into this?
Thank you so much. We have been looking into this for the last few months, so about two to three months in total, and we have been researching extensively; we spoke to almost 100 people in the music industry in Australia just to get an understanding of how people feel about live music and the industry as it stands at the moment.
And then Live Nation came up as quite a repetitive concern that people had in the industry about where things were going and what they believed needed to change. So there was a real focus on Live Nation because of that, and there’s been a Federal Government inquiry into live music sector and why things are struggling, and the company has come up in that inquiry as well.
So, yeah, it’s been quite a long-term investigation that we’ve been working on.
So, the focus wasn’t originally on Live Nation? It was more broad?
Well, we knew that from the federal inquiry that Live Nation was an issue that people had brought up already. Quite a few artists, quite a few people in the industry had raised concerns around the company. We knew that it was something that the US government was looking into, and we knew that the company had been building its kind of ownership of different independent music businesses in Australia as well.
So that was something that we definitely wanted to look into, but obviously there’s been a whole range of other issues in the live music industry that we did touch on in the story last night as well.
Live Nation came out fairly strongly against this report before seeing it. How early did you engage them?
We engaged them for over a month. So, we spoke to the company – we first engaged with their media team. We put in an interview request.
We really wanted the company to be a part of our program and went to great lengths to make sure that they had a guide of what would be in the program, which is standard practice. We had several calls with them. We had a lengthy Zoom briefing with the company’s media team discussing what was going to be in the program and what Live Nation’s feelings were about some of those issues.
The company then promised to sort of send us further reports following that briefing, which never eventuated. But we waited several weeks and pushed them a lot to get an interview.
We offered to fly anywhere and speak to them at any time to do an interview.
And eventually we were told, in early October, that we would not be getting an interview. And we sent detailed questions, 35 questions, to the Live Nation media team for a response. And the company chose to answer 15 of those.
So we went to a great extent to really try to get Live Nation to speak to us for this story.
You mentioned in the story — and they also mentioned — that there are other big companies operating here, like AEG and TEG. What is it about Live Nation that made them, I suppose, the ‘villains’ of the piece, as opposed to these other companies that seem to operate in the same vertical model where they own bits and pieces everywhere?
Yeah, as you say, there are two other big companies in Australia. But what you would have seen in our story on Four Corners is that Live Nation is the only live music business in Australia to have a financial stake in every part of the live music supply chain, whether it is booking agencies, merchandise and so on. Obviously TEG owns Ticketek, which is the largest ticketing company.
It also owns some festivals. It owns one venue from what we can find. Frontier obviously has a ticketing company, but it doesn’t seem to operate here in Australia at all – or very extensively, from what we can find.
And so Live Nation is the only one that really has a stake in every single part of the live music pie. And that’s really what a true vertical integrated model is. And that is the concern that many in the industry have about the company over the other two big players.
Obviously TEG is probably the closest to Live Nation in terms of that vertical model. And Live Nation said to us quite a few times in its response that its business model is the same as those other companies. But it is that sort of stake in each part of the pie that people really raise with us as a concern.
And so, what do you think the solution is? Do you think the ACCC needs to get involved? What was the consensus?
There are many different people who have opinions on what needs to be done. But overwhelmingly everyone we spoke to said there needs to be government intervention.
It’s not about getting rid of Live Nation as a company here. It’s about making the system fairer for an even playing field, and for some of those smaller grassroots businesses where artists really develop their craft to have support for them to really flourish and be able to do their job. Some people raised actually making those venues, for example, that are much smaller, that are really hard to be profitable, not-for-profits and actually making them supported by the government in that way.
But, ultimately, there were unanimous calls for government regulation, especially when it comes to ticketing, which is the real profit driver for Live Nation, as well as, of course, TEG. And those hidden fees that consumers are slapped with, they’re completely legal. Live Nation also said that they’re not doing anything wrong by charging some of those fees. And that’s correct.
The ACCC, the consumer watchdog, told us the same thing. The Arts Minister said the same thing. So what people in the industry are saying is that the system needs to be regulated and become fairer not just for artists, but also for punters who support them.
Excellent. And finally, it’s Tuesday morning after 9am. Have you heard from any lawyers, any Live Nation feedback, and government feedback since it aired last night?
Look, we’ve seen [Live Nation Australasia CEO] Michael Coppel go on The Project [ahead of the Four Corners broadcast] obviously he spoke out there.
And, you know, we’ve seen there are many now calls for actual action. There’s a call from Senator Hanson-Young for an ACCC investigation into Live Nation. There is a push now and an investigation into launching a class action on behalf of music fans against Live Nation. So there is meaningful change that is being pushed for today, the day after the story. And that’s sort of the extent of what we’ve heard.
Mumbrella has contacted Live Nation for comment.
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It was astonishing how little the 4 Corners team knew and understood about how the music industry actually works, and has worked for many decades now. There are many real challenges with live music events at the moment (as Nathan touched on in the article above). If the real broader issues which all events are facing – and were glossed over by the program – aren’t addressed little will change.