Your Local Awful Outdoor Concert Venue May Go The Way Of Ozzfest’s Ticket Revenues

If you haven’t purchased your ten-dollar lawn tickets for the Family Values tour, featuring Korn and whoever is in Evanescence these days, you might want to grab some before the 20,000-seat amphitheater is a thing of the past. The giant outdoor pavilions on the outskirts of larger cities are becoming less and less useful to concert promoters, and they’re being replaced by venues less than half their size. With concert megapromoter Live Nation selling off venues near cities like Nashville, Indianapolis, and Columbus, will the boomer-oriented package tour (this year’s models include a package with Styx and Foreigner opening for Def Leppard) soon be a thing of the past?

With fewer and fewer big draws touring the country these days (especially considering that pavilion mainstay Ozzfest has shifted to a free-ticket model to stay afloat), promoters are looking to a more “long tail” view of finding shows to bring to town:

“We started thinking about this three years ago, when we were watching what appeared to be the trend of lots of niche categories – in cable TV stations, satellite radio, Internet and all these media options – that meet a specific consumer need,” [Cincinnati 4,100 seat venue] Riverbend director Mike Smith says.

“Now, connect that to large arenas and amphitheaters, and the careers of superstars, people who are capable of filling these places, like Dave Matthews and Jimmy Buffett and Kenny Chesney and a dozen or so others. There just aren’t as many of them anymore.”

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The new, smaller pavilion “sounds like a smart move,” says Gary Bongiovanni, editor-in-chief of the concert trade magazine Pollstar.

“The brutal truth is that most amphitheater shows don’t sell out.

“And the tickets that don’t sell are out on the lawn.”

The good news is that the consumer will have a comfortable place to sit, and better sound quality when they buy a ticket to see, say, Norah Jones. The bad news, not surprisingly, will be the ticket itself:

Smaller performing venues are more attractive to artists as well as presenters, says Bongiovanni, because all seats are reserved. In 1994, touring groups including the Rolling Stones shifted to “tiered pricing,” charging a premium for the best seats. But in the amphitheater world, the largest capacity is the lawn, which are the cheapest tickets.

“The artists will tend to demand that the presenters pay them a lot for that lawn capacity, whether they sell it or not,” Bongiovanni says. “But if you only have 6,000 reserved seats, it’s a safer bet. And artists generally like to play venues they can fill. No one likes to play to an empty or half-empty facility.”

Next summer, if this trend continues, the summer concertgoer is more likely to get a sunburn–and he might feel some added tenderness in the wallet area.

Huge Venues Are Vanishing [Cincinnati Enquirer]