Live Nation has revealed their full 2022 financial results with a 44% increase in revenue including roughly $1 billion in sponsorship revenue.
2022 was a huge year for the live event giant as their revenue increased to $16.7 billion, up 44% since their benchmark of 2019. This is partly due to the 121 million fans that attended their over 44,000 concerts, shows, and festivals last year.
In a letter from Michael Rapino, president and Chief Executive Officer of Live Nation Entertainment, he revealed these statistics and addressed the controversy over their ticketing strategy with Ticketmaster, a company with which they merged in 2010. He said, “in ticketing, our strategy for success is simple: We focus on developing the leading software for venues.”
This includes their Verified Fan program intended to cut down on resale and helping to increase ticketing revenue to $2.2 billion, up 45% vs 2019.
New sponsors such as PayPal, GoPuff, Hulu, and Snap also helped to increase sponsorship revenue to $1 billion, a 64% increase since 2019 and 80% of their revenue growth.
Live Nation has recently come under fire due to the disaster that was Taylor Swift’s concert ticket sale. Ticketmaster crashed while hundreds of thousands of fans attempted to purchase, leaving many with long wait times or being forced to purchase resale tickets at over $22,000.
Many legislators and competitors also believe their merger with Ticketmaster created a ticket-selling monopoly, which Live Nation contests in the letter.
Live Nation also openly supported the FAIR Ticketing Act which would allow artists to decide resale rules, make selling speculative tickets illegal, expand the scope of the BOTS Act, and reinforce transparent pricing industry-wide.
Check out the five parts of Live Nation’s supported FAIR Ticketing Act below:
Featured image from Live Nation, photo credit Michael Drummond Photography
