This week In the Hot Seat with Larry LeBlanc: Jacob Smid, Managing Director, MRG Live.
The MRG Group is one of the largest entertainment and hospitality companies in Canada.
Founded in 2008, led by its president/owner Matt Gibbons, The MRG Group owns and operates: The Vogue Theatre, The Yale Saloon, Dublin Calling, The Imperial, The Biltmore Cabaret, and the (soon to open) Par-Tee Putt in Vancouver; The Capital Ballroom in Victoria; Rock ‘N’ Horse Saloon, The Porch, Dublin Calling, Par-Tee Putt, and Adelaide Hall in Toronto; and the Prescott, and Par-Tee Putt in Ottawa.
MRG Live, a division of The MRG Group, is a leading independent concert, and entertainment promotion company, mostly operating in Canada via its parent properties.
Charged with spearheading MRG Live’s ambitious international expansion is New York-based Jacob Smid, who joined as managing director in 2020.
Born in Prague in the Czech Republic, Smid brought with him unbridled energy, and a focus supported by two decades of high-level, intense global event production, promotion, and marketing experience.
He’s been around the live music block.
While in high school in Montreal, Smid founded Emerge Entertainment, and moving to Toronto when he was 18, began ambitiously operating the company full-time at 19, and oversaw the first three Virgin Festivals in Canada and shows by Adele, the Killers, Daft Punk, and Katy Perry.
In 2008, Live Nation acquired Emerge, and Smid became Live Nation Canada’s VP of Talent & Marketing.
In 2013, Smid relocated to New York as managing dir. of SFX, leading the U.S. festival expansion of Tomorrowland, Mysteryland, and Electric Zoo.
Prior to MRG Live, Smid spent two and a half years at IMG Events leading its Global Music & Festival division.
Smid is also a founding partner in Fource Entertainment, a principal independent promoter in the Czech Republic and Poland.
The MRG Group owns and operates 13, about to be 14, choice properties.
MRG also has a lease at the Queen Elizabeth Theatre in Toronto and retained the services of Bruno Sinopoli, the prior owner of the business. We lease the building from Exhibition Place. MRG also books The Fremont in San Luis Obispo, California, and we recently announced our booking arrangement with The Angeles in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.
MRG has 100 employees?
Full time, I would say that is right. Around 100 full-time, and over 350 hourly team members across all of our properties.
Where does MRG have full offices?
New York, Toronto, Montreal. Calgary, Vancouver, and Victoria.
The MRG Group was founded in 2008 and has undergone several transformations. When you and a few others came in 2020, the focus then seemed to shift more toward a focus on live music. Am I reading this correctly?
I think that you are. The company has been around for nearly 15 years now. We are just a few months short of our 15th anniversary. Initially, it was known as a venue operator starting with The Vogue, and then working into hospitality with some of our bar and club operations like The Yale, and Dublin Calling. Starting from a brick and motor perspective at some point (president and owner) Matt (Gibbons) and the team said, “Let’s fill the rooms with our own content.”
When I started, with having a background as an independent promoter in Canada—building a promoter business while doing it also in the Czech Republic and Poland with my partnership with Anthony in Fource (Entertainment)–I looked at the opportunity, and said, “This is a great opportunity for us to build an independent promoter that happens to own, and operate some venues across the country.”
MRG Live had an office in Miami.
We still have a person there. We just changed our relationship with Eric Fuller who leads the office there. We just announced that we are booking a venue in Fort Lauderdale. A great 500-capacity venue The Angeles which is in a church. So we are moving a little bit up the coast. We started booking there, and currently it’s an electronic venue. We are going flip it, and expand its base. So we are now in that market. I certainly believe that you need to be able to go to a show, see the crowd, see the venue, and the market. So for us doing things in these locations, we want to be connected to them.
What’s happened with MRG Live booking The Atlantic in Brooklyn?
The Atlantic opened in New York City right before the summer time which is a tough time in New York, even under normal circumstances, but then add the COVID challenges. We were helping my friend (The Atlantic’s owner) Patrick Watson. It was not a MRG venue. We just booked it. Unfortunately, he made a tough decision to close the venue. We were responsible for booking the touring acts there. The venue opened in a city I would say that is still quite cautious about the pandemic with some demographics. In terms of being open 7 nights a week, and getting people through the door for his business—outside of the touring artist business—unfortunately, there were a lot of challenges for him, and Patrick made the tough decision to close the venue. He always expected the touring acts to be a small percentage of the shows that were there. We did a bunch of shows.
In studying The MRG Group, I first wondered if was I looking at a live music company or a hospitality company, or a growing real estate corporation due to it having a high number of choice Canadian real estate properties. Why offices in each of these Canadian markets?
Obviously, as a promoter, it’s a distinct advantage owning or having strong contractual binding leases on multiple venues.
Absolutely, our business has changed over the years, where having these venues is an asset and an important part of our strategy. The other thing is you asking what our focus is. Why have these offices? We want to lean into where we have people and where we have venues. That’s been a strategic focus of ours.
Still, you have to ensure there aren’t dark nights. Do you rent the venues out to competitor promoters?
All of our venues are open to most third-party promoters with the exception of The Vogue. That one we either promote or co-promote. But Live Nation does live shows at The Capital Ballroom (in Victoria). The Collective does shows at the QET (Queen Elizabeth Theatre) in Toronto. We are pragmatic venue operators.
It’s tough breaking into the U.S. market as an indie promoter.
It seems as if MRG Live has locked down Canada, and you know what you are doing, and you even might expand there. But, in the U.S., you are still dipping your feet, trying to figure out potential markets. You are doing so, I wouldn’t say slowly, but strategically.
Yeah, for sure. For Canada, we have a very clear plan, and we are on our way with the right people doing the right things. We are year one or two into a three-year plan. I am pretty confident with that trajectory. In general, we want to hire live professionals so that we can train the next generation of leaders. Guiding someone else is my ultimate goal.
In terms of the U.S., you are right. But it also comes down to identifying opportunities. The opportunities can either be people like we’ve connected to Taylor Stevens (as head of MRG Live, U.S. West Coast) who brought with him (in 2021) a strategic partnership with The CLCTV, and Country Roots on the West Coast, and Electric Palms in Hawaii, and we really gelled. He had some relationships that we were able to make part of the business, and then do shows in California thanks to that partnership.
The other places we are looking at dipping our toe or being strategic, are venues where we can build relationships with artists, and build the market. That is what we’ve done with The Angeles in Fort Lauderdale. The partner in that project (David Cardaci of Knallhart Management Group) owns other venues (Holly Blue, Rhythm + Vine, and Roxanne’s). He has a presence in the market, and he’s an amazing operator. We will continue to look for either properties or people who own properties or properties where we can rely on paying something to operate. We are definitely in the building business. We don’t need to be in L.A., and we don’t need to in New York. We just want to be in the right place with the right opportunities with the right people.
Live Nation and AEG Presents can’t control all of the live music sector in America. Nevertheless, with aggressive expansion, partnerships, and slew of acquisitions the two control enough.
At the same time in the U.S., there are owners of theatres and clubs that even before the pandemic had been hurt by rising costs of just turning on the lights; by risings talent costs; and by a considerable demographic shift of older adults leaving the live music market behind them.
With the pandemic, venue owners had to keep a close eye on vaccination rates, and infection trends to see if they would even be allowed to open with significant capacity. So many of them are hurting even more today and might welcome an outside partner.
It’s a matter of finding which owners and properties are stretched to their limits.
They (Live Nation and AEG Presents) both use their resources very well, but I think if we can find a venue where we can add value to what they are doing, and there’s sound geographics where we can tour acts, that is where we want to be. We know that we need to parlay our relationships with the artists, with the agents, and with the managers. Doing the hardest things in a challenging market adds a lot of value to some of those relationships. People appreciate that, and I’ve been part of that for 20-plus years.
Is the live music industry fully back in North America? While there are an impressive number of shows and tours, there are also substantial cancellations for varied reasons. Are we back?
We are back. We are doing things, but I don’t think that we have figured out yet what the new normal is.
MRG Live promoted 1,000 shows in 2019. How many shows for this year?
We will probably be at 60% of where we were in 2019. Obviously, we still had restrictions in place at the beginning of the year, and we had some cancellations. I was at a meeting at an agency recently and I was told, “We are still taking down shows, and taking down tours.”
Like you said, it’s for a new variety of reasons.
I’m aware that there are artists that are still concerned with their own safety, and the audiences’ safety. But there are also artists that can’t find tour buses to tour, and there’s artists who can’t find a crew to tour. There are artists that don’t have big bank accounts that want to find a better time period to tour. There’s records that are late. There are records that came out two years ago.
We are back, and we are doing things, and there’s a lot of volume out there. From an industry perspective, and most importantly from an audience perspective, I don’t know if we have a new normal or a new flow to the business. Every day we have a pleasant surprise, and every day we have a negative surprise. Where something we thought definitely would work and sell and it doesn’t. Then we have amazing things that do surprise us as well. I think we are back. People are working. People are buying tickets. But it’s hard to draw a general assumption right now in terms of what is happening in consumer behavior, and pricing. Never mind macroeconomics.
Do you still feel a chill having the lights go down at an arena or festival show with people awaiting for the musicians to appear? Then the lights come up for the artist or band. Do you still get that buzz as when you were first promoting events?
Absolutely. I will never forget a show with Kirk Sommer (Partner and Global co-Head of Music) at WME who has been a great supporter over all of the years. The Killers were the first act where we followed the band all the way to the arena show, and literally the last 90 seconds that you are describing, the last 45 seconds before the house lights went down, and then the first 45 seconds of the show, I can feel the same hair on the back of my neck stand up as I did at that show as I do at every show.
Recently we hired a new CTO (Chief Technology Officer), Oz Alvarez, (formerly of Scotiabank) at MRG Live, and he asked me what was the most important show we had done recently. I said it was the show that we had just did (June. 7th) at Adelaide Hall. It was Marty Diamond’s client Almost Monday. And he said, “That was the most important show?” And I said, “Yeah, it was. It was the show that we had in Toronto for an important agent, and we believe in the act.” I was excited to be there. For me, it doesn‘t have to be at a stadium. It doesn’t have to be at an arena. I went to Saskatchewan to cover our Spoon shows in Regina (at Conexus Arts Centre on July 19th) and Saskatoon (at Coors Event Centre on July 20th), and it was great.
I’m very lucky to do what I do for so long.
Going to a music concert or a comedy show, any kind of live experience is one of my favorite things. But the fact that you realize you helped make it happen, and “helped” being the key word in that you aren’t the reason it happened. I am very aware I’m not the reason people bought tickets. Nobody cares that I am there, but the fact that I was able to help or be involved that for me is why I started doing this. That is why I left school with an opportunity to work at a venue. I loved the product, and I loved being part of it even more is what I found out. It allows you to do the best job possible if you are passionate about it. That is when you prove you care more, if you really do care more. You are not just phoning it in or signing the checks or telling somebody to do something else.
There’s great sensitivity today about ticket pricing. Concerns that the live music industry may just be catering to a wealthy segment of the audience that can afford tickets, especially for superstar shows, and it is excluding those who can’t afford such shows. And a concern that some of those people may turn away from live shows in general.
At the same time with smaller shows with less popular acts, all promoters are able still to offer shows at more affordable pricing.
The conversation is super complex for a variety of reasons. The two goal posts of that conversation are the first part that you mentioned. Is this pricing only reaching a certain audience demographic? That only certain people can afford to have the great experience of a show is one of the concerns for me because from that perspective if you can’t have a great seat at an arena, and that is one of the first live music experiences you see with great production and whatever else. My concern right now is that between the pandemic, and lack of affordability—or let’s call it competition for the dollar and high prices—that the people who used to buy 4, 6, or 8 tickets a year in the $50 to the $70 range, I think that audience has been the most impacted by all of these factors, the pandemic and pricing. Maybe now they only buy one ticket to see an act at $300 because they can have a good seat. So that takes money out of their pocket. Then on the other side is that some of them are conscious about their health (with the pandemic), and whatever else it is.
I’m very concerned about what pricing is doing in terms of changing audience habits. That pricing and Live Nation, especially with its Ticketmaster relationship, and with AEG with AXS, the question becomes at what point are you a ticketing company first, and a promoter second because that’s where the money is? And, it’s tough to compete with that.
I understand artists’ concerns when they see a $100 ticket for one of their shows selling through secondary ticketers for $400 or more, and they aren’t capturing any of that revenue. Someone unconnected with their show is making more money on the ticket than they are. I understand artists’ anger.
I do as well. Platinum or Dynamic Pricing are good tools, and I believe in them, and we are trying to get better at pricing shows. There’s a balance to it. The tricky part is you don’t want to have a ticket go on sale for $40, and then 10 minutes later, it’s being sold for $300, and all that money goes into the secondary space.
Largely due to high prices I have gone to only one hockey game in a decade. My daughter, who is in her 30s, has never gone to a hockey game. It’s even tough to watch sports on regular television because most hockey, soccer, basketball, and baseball games are on subscription sports channels. Many people say, “I have computer games and other things. I don’t need to see a sports game.” That could happen with live music too. It won’t happen with the young kids because they may still go to club shows or festivals. Someone 30 or 40 with a couple of kids, they are going to pass.
Yes. As long as you try to keep it an even playing field, where there is a little bit of elasticity between the primary market pricing to make sure that it (the ticket) is priced appropriately. To me, that is what it comes down to because being priced appropriately so that people are able to become live experience fans, and it’s not a once every two years thing, because it is so expensive. Maybe in the long term that will bring down prices. People buying fewer tickets. Right now what we are struggling with is the fact that we need people to have more live experiences in person. Anytime somebody reads in the media or looks at a seat map, and sees extremely high ticket prices, it doesn’t only turn them off of the one show. My theory is it’s worse to see a seat map when it’s $600 or $800 P1 ticket than it is to see a sold out show seat map. That’s my theory.
Quite impressive is the diversity of MRG Live’s bookings with upcoming shows coming with Mexican American Spotify sensation Cuco as well as James Boy, Melt, Ibrahim Maalouf, Hanson, Faye Webster, and Aitch.
Does Chandy Kilburn, your GM/senior talent buyer on the West Coast confer with your Toronto talent buyers Matt Williams and Joe Clark to co-ordinate bookings that absolutely acknowledge that immigration to Canada from India, Africa, the Caribbean, and Hong Kong have so impacted the cultural worlds of Toronto and Vancouver?
We definitely try to. We are an experienced company. We want to connect people to things that they are passionate about in terms of live events. It’s (bookings) all over, you know. We don’t want to be a singular genre promoter or a company that is focused on a specific niche.
As of 2021, there were more than 8 million immigrants with permanent residence living in Canada—roughly 21.5% of the total Canadian population. Currently, immigration in Canada amounts to around 300,000 new immigrants annually.
As a result, the number of Canadians who currently speak a language other than English and French has grown significantly. In 2021, one in four Canadians have a mother tongue other than English or French.
Mandarin and Punjabi are spoken at home by half a million Canadians. South Punjabi and Hindi are growing at the fastest rate in Canada.
In the past decade, numerous Bollywood stars have sold out the Air Canada Centre in Toronto (19,800 capacity).
Today, bookings of Indian, African, Chinese, Korean, Caribbean, Vietnamese, and Latin performers are frequent throughout Canada.
MRG Live, for example, will be presenting one of the most popular comedians in India, Biswa Kalyan Rath, co-host of “Pretentious Movie Reviews”—the hysterically funny YouTube series—for two shows. He is slated to perform at the Vogue Theatre in Vancouver (Nov. 26th), and The Queen Elizabeth Theatre in Toronto (Nov. 27th).
Obviously, MRG Live is a major player in expanding the market in Canada for international non-English acts.
Part of the credit goes to having an open mind. I don’t know if there was the realization through the K-Pop wave or what is happening in the Afrobeat space now, but all of the major agencies are a lot more international. Look at Eurovision (The Eurovision Song Contest). People care a lot more about Eurovision in 2022 for a variety of reasons than they did in 1999.
We understand all of that.
The other thing is that we know to be successful with certain artists with certain cultural groups we need to be connected to them. We are actually looking for promoter partners. People that are active in live music, and who are doing those shows at Rogers Centre or even smaller shows at QET or wherever it is. How can we help those people grow with their artists, and their audiences? And how do we understand it? We did a couple of really successful shows during the pandemic with Whindersson Nunes, the Brazilian comedian (and singer), and we made sure that we invested in taking the time, the energy, and the investment in dollars to market him to that audience. It’s not just putting it (the show) on sale and watch it sell. The show is in Portuguese, and it is an audience that consumes different TV and marketing beyond the digital space.
His shows sold out.
Finding those types of opportunities is exciting, and also finding people who want to grow those artists that are close to those communities, and understand the audience, is something that is important to be successful. There are certain markets where you find that right partner, and then you get the appropriate thought leaders, and the influencers in those communities all across the country to support the shows from the bottom up. If you are not there and don’t partner with the right people, you won’t be successful. You can’t be successful in any scene if you are barely connected to it, directly or indirectly.
The popularity of Latin music continues to grow and sold-out tours around the world have become a profitable expansion opportunity for Live Nation. So much so that it launched a Latin division in 2017 headed by Hans Schafer.
Last month, Live Nation hired Ricardo Taco to lead a Latin music strategy for the company’s concerts division in Canada.
An independent promoter Ricardo Taco has worked with and marketed such artists as Wisin y Yandel, Ozuna, Maluma, J Balvin, Farruko, Arcangel, Jerry Rivera, Rosalia, J Quiles, Juanes, Grupo Niche, among others.
Toronto and Montreal have shown to be strong markets for Latin entertainment.
Loud and Live (an entertainment, sports, marketing, and content company) out of Miami is making a lot of noise.
I know of Loud and Live. Their content arm Loud and Live Studios, produces livestream events, podcasts, short and long-form content, music specials, documentaries, and branded content. It has produced livestream concerts of Argentine-Venezuelan singer Ricardo Montaner, Argentine rocker Fito Paez, and Latin superstar Marc Anthony.
With this Latin world, there’s a crossover phenomenon happening as well. It is almost like the early days of country music in Canada. Nobody knew that there was an audience in Canada. At the time, if you could sell 1,000 tickets in Canada, you were probably selling 5,000 or 7,000 tickets in the Southern U.S. to the core country market. To get country acts to come, and invest time on Canada was a tough challenge.
That has all changed.
Yes, with what Troy Vollhoffer is doing with Country Thunder, and his other festivals, and with the Boots and Hearts Music Festival, it’s a different world now.
But it’s the same challenges that we see in the Latin space.
They (Latin artists) have to come and meet that (Canadian) audience, if they want to be here. Obviously, there will always be superstars. But, in building a community people who will go to Massey Hall (in Toronto), and see the next Bad Bunny or the next Farruko or whoever, it that is going to be important to be in Canada. That’s why we are trying to see if we can work with Live and Loud, who have the institutional knowledge, and the cultural connections. They are the experts. How can we be a logistical marketing and financial partner? We aren’t going to be any better than what they have in Miami and the shows that they do across North America.
Border crossings between Canada and the U.S. for artists have always been an issue, particularly after 9/11, but it had been mostly surmountable until lately. With COVID, and the chaos with air flights now, has it become more difficult getting performers across the Canadian/U.S. border?
We definitely see, especially with air travel, the challenges that are affecting anyone that is flying commercial. The same thing goes for border issues in general. What has been a big impact as well are people (Canadians) waiting for passports. My wife has been waiting for her passport from Canada since May. So adding to the complexities of long lines at the border, generally add air travel chaos, add staff shortages.
There was a tour we did recently where the truck driver freighting the equipment it was his first time working in music. He had been driving livestock. A lot of logistical suppliers are not as experienced with the industry, and with all of the institutional knowledge of the crews. and the vendors. That is something that I definitely hear about quite a bit. There have always been thunderstorms in New York in August, and tour managers have been able to deal with that for a long time. But when it’s your first tour, and you don’t know what to do, you don’t plan accordingly, and all of those things add up.
Like I said earlier, I feel we are back but there is no new normal right now. It is not just what is happening on the artist side. It is what’s happening everywhere, from the start to the finish life cycle of an event.
Is bringing overseas performers to Canada to perform a greater challenge today?
Yeah, absolutely. We just did (Nigerian fusion icon) Burna Boy in Edmonton (Edmonton Convention Centre on Aug. 2nd) and Vancouver (at the PNE Amphitheatre on Aug. 4th), and part of the traveling party were holding Nigerian passports, and there were some minor travel issues that needed to be resolved. Getting hold of government officials, at the best of times, is challenging. But that goes to being adequately prepared, and informing our artist partners of what to expect, making sure that we also have as good a relationships as possible with as many people as we can on the government side, and having legal resources; the lawyers we recommend that people use and that they are able to support artists through this. The backlog, and the labor are getting a little bit better, but it’s still a challenging time as it relates to that for sure. And for a Canadian artist coming through the U.S., it’s a different challenge.
A common issue with Canadian artists and crews touring America in recent years is tightening security measures by the Department of Homeland Security’s United States Citizenship, and Immigration Services, and Customs and Border Protection.
Back in the day, U.S. labels were doing deals with (Canadian) artists. They would show their showcase application (to enter the U.S.), and labels could support them if they came down to the U.S. for showcases or to record. Now a lot of (Canadian) artists are distributing music themselves, and they don’t have those resources. They are going super indie with two people in a (hotel) room, and they have limited resources, but still have (showcase) events. It will be interesting, especially when we see what happens with Brexit, and how the (UK) industry came together to say, “Okay we are not going to be able to solve this logistical issue of getting artists in and out of the UK.”
Maybe at some point, the (UK) government, in conjunction with or influenced by the industry, creates an easier path, similar to the withholding tax waiver program that the Canadian government created for lower-income artists.
There are several categories of temporary or nonimmigrant visa status available from the U.S. to musicians and individuals in music-related professions: O-1 Extraordinary Ability, P-1 International Groups, P-2 Reciprocal Exchange, P-3 Culturally Unique, Q-1 Cultural Exchange, H-1B Specialty Occupation, and J-1 Management.
The P-2 visa is useful for musicians and their crews going to the United States to perform under a reciprocal-exchange program. Under that program, musicians who are members of the AFM of Canada (also known as the Canadian Federation of Musicians) can request a P-2 classification to tour in the U.S.
There must be an itinerary and the status is granted in one-year increments only. If the artist or band has multiple performances planned in the U.S., rather than a single gig, an itinerary must be filed with the petition indicating the location and date of all performances.
For a fee, artists and crews can be fast-tracked for touring in the U.S. as you know.
Yes. That’s true.
P2 Visa regular processing can take up to 90 days. Premium processing takes 21-30 days, with a fee of $2,500 Most Canadian acts are paying for expedited processing right now because regular processing is running so far behind.
Multinationals based in Canada in the ‘80s used to have rosters of 30 domestic acts. Now there are few Canadian artists directly signed to the majors in Canada, and the funding of touring is largely through federal or provincial government programs on a limited scale.
Canadian artists aren’t getting signed directly in the U.S. Some of the Canadian indies with good rosters have good U.S. distribution deals. Their U.S. partners could help support their entire rosters, but that has changed as well on both sides. The Canadian indies are in a bit of a different place, and they usually decide mutually that their American distribution partners go their separate ways.
There is an interesting opportunity here for a company like ours. In that at the end of the day, we see ourselves as logistical marketing and financial partners for artists. There is this idea of how can we reach out so we can be good logistical partners in all of these things that we are talking about that are challenges. It’s not just about how can we pay artists a guarantee, and help sell their tickets. How can we make their touring experience even feasible or better in Canada? Those are things that we are actively talking about, and actively trying to figure out. Not only how we sell shows, but also how we present that as part of our offering to artists on the logistical side. There are a lot more challenges than there are solutions.
Where are you originally from?
I was born in Prague in the Czech Republic, and then lived in Montreal.
What year did your family come to Canada?
I want to say 1982. I would have been 4.
You later moved to Toronto on your own.
I moved to Toronto when I was 18 during my first year of CEGEP (the Quebec college bridging the gap between completing secondary school, and attending university). My first job (in live music) was with Shaun Pilot at the Masonic Temple when Charles Moon owned it.
At 19, you were running Emerge Entertainment full-time?
That’s right. Technically, I had a partnership before that. But 19 was when I really started doing it full-time. I was the founder and the co-shareholder.
Emerge was involved with the first three annual Virgin Festivals in Toronto starting in 2006
Yes, I did all of them except for the last one. Partnered with Elliot Lefko, and we collaborated on a few things. He had just gone to Goldenvoice (as VP) around that time. We had the rights to the Virgin Festival. There were four in Toronto, and afterward we did Vancouver and Calgary. We (Emerge) promoted in Toronto trying to develop artists, and we were lucky enough that a lot of people in the industry, especially at WME, and CAA with acts like Adele, the Killers, Daft Punk, and Katy Perry. The agents that work with them were very supportive to work with an independent as their artist careers grew, and we were able to build a really cool company. It was so much fun, and we built a great business.
Why was Emerge sold to Live Nation in 2008?
The business got so big that we either needed to raise money or do a deal with someone. The shows we were doing were getting bigger. Obviously, if you do an arena show that doesn’t perform, you can lose a lot of money. I wanted to continue working on bigger and bigger things. The two options were to do a deal with someone or to raise money. Luckily enough, Michael Rapino and Riley O’Connor at Live Nation were interested in what we were doing, and we made a deal.
You then became VP of Talent & Marketing at Live Nation Canada.
It was a great 5 years there, I learned a lot.
In 2013, you relocated to New York to work as the managing director of the re-launched SFX Entertainment.
After 5 years at Live Nation, I wanted to learn some different things, and potentially get to see some new scenery. I had an opportunity to move to New York and work for Bob Sillerman through that SFX 2 rollercoaster. There’s no better way to put it.
Robert X. Sillerman is largely responsible for helping create two of the biggest companies in music — iHeartRadio and Live Nation — through a series of deals he finalized in the late 1990s. He sold the business. Clear Channel who would spin off its concert holdings into Live Nation in 2005.
In 2012, Sillerman set out once again with a relaunched SFX Entertainment to consolidate the dance music business by buying up dance promoters in Europe, Asia, and North America as well as snapping up TomorrowWorld the Dutch promoter ID&T, and the digital download hub Beatport.
Sillerman, however, was eventually forced out of the company by creditors and it re-emerged as LiveStyle in 2017. A year later, Sillerman was pushed into bankruptcy over an unpaid $7.4 million promissory note to React Presents during the SFX rollup.
Who was running SFX in New York at the time you were there?
Mitch Slater (as executive VP) was there. Mitch, Shelly Finkel (as chairman of business strategy and acquisitions), and Bob Sillerman. I’m still friendly with Shelly. We will have lunch once in a while. It was a very intense, but extremely formative four years including going through Chapter 11. The Chapter 11 restructuring was a very rough time. Everybody was like, “Why did you stay?” And I’m like, “Well hopefully, it’s the only time that I will have this skill development or experience.” It ended up being very helpful for the pandemic because Chapter 11 applies the same pressures that the pandemic applies from a cash flow perspective, and in terms of how you deal with people on your team. Do you have to furlough them or lay them off temporarily? Or any of these other things.
At SFX, you led the American festival expansion of Tomorrowland, Mysteryland, and Electric Zoo.
Oh yeah, there were great times at SFX, of course working with all of the ID&T people in the Netherlands, with the Tomorrowland team in Belgium, and with the Rock in Rio guys in Brazil. The thesis of SFX was probably that a lot of things were right. Why didn’t it work? Maybe, the deals to acquire the businesses were a little too rich, and there were other issues in terms of the corporate overhead to support bad-timing in terms of the market, and everything else. Yeah, we had some really great people. Many of which are still active in the business. I just talked to Disco Donnie (dance promoter “Disco Donnie” Estopinal) and it sounds like his business is doing great. He’s still doing his thing. Ruling electronic music all the way from Puerto Rico.
(Disco Donnie Presents recently acquired the two-day festival Lights All Night in Texas, and it control over Ubbi Dubbi, and Freaky Deaky, Disco Donnie Presents is the biggest promotion company in Texas.
You then spent two years (2017 – 2020) at the Endeavor subsidiary IMG Events as senior VP, leading the Global Music and Festival division.
Yes, just over two years. I worked with the Country Thunder folks. We were partners with them during that time, and also overseeing a variety of other projects like bringing the Red Hot Chili Peppers to the Middle East, and developing Wake Up Call festivals for W Hotels. Again, it was a great opportunity. I am still closely connected to a bunch of IMG folks, and we are working on some projects together. I left right before the pandemic. March 1st, 2020 is when I started work at MRG.
Tell me about Fource Entertainment which you co-founded in 2008. The company now run by Anthony Jouet, is a leading independent promoter in the Czech Republic, and Poland.
As I told you, I was born in the Czech Republic. That’s the connection from a geographic perspective. I was connected to the prior ownership group at the O2 Arena in Prague. They were looking for some talent buying help, and I was a promoter in Canada (with Emerge) and I spoke Czech so I was probably a good resource. So I booked a couple of great arena shows. Everybody from Celine Dion to Beyoncé to Black Eyed Peas. I worked with the legendary Rob Hallett on a couple of things including Leonard Cohen.
Around 2009, Anthony Jouet had come from France to intern at Merge which was the craziest thing ever. And he worked with me at Live Nation. But he had to go back to Europe. I had booked a Kylie Minogue show at the O2 Arena and it wasn’t selling as well as we liked. I said, “Why don’t you go to Prague, and move in with my grandmother?” We had a spare little apartment set up in my grandmother’s house. “Why don’t you move to Prague, and help me with the Kylie Minogue show. I’ll see you in a month for the show?” A week later Anthony flew to Prague, and I saw him a month later. He had fallen in love with the city, and a month later he said, “Hey, there’s no cool independent promoter in the Czech Republic. Why don’t we do what you did with Emerge in Canada in the Czech Republic?” I said, “Great. Let’s start a company.”
And so we became partners in Fource.
Anthony runs that business day to day. I just try to help where I can. He has done an amazing job. We’ve grown Fource to be the biggest independent in the Czech Republic. We are doing arenas all the way to club shows. The market has been great. In 2017, we wanted to grow and be able to operate on multiple markets. The Czech Republic is a small market. We were doing a little bit in Slovakia. So Anthony identified Poland as the next place. We have been 2 ½ years in Poland with the pandemic. This summer we had My Chemical Romance, and we had some other great shows that we’ve done. We have people on the ground there, and we are building the business.
It must be so great to be able to return to your home country on those occasions.
I love it. The initial thesis was that I wanted to stay connected to my home country and work with one of my best friends. If we had only 5 shows a year, and I had an excuse to go to Prague, it would have been good enough. But Anthony and the team there built something really special. It’s really a great story.
I was just back in Prague. We co-promoted Imagine Dragons (at Letiště Praha Letňany in Prague on June 6th) with Live Nation, and sold 120,000 tickets in two days. It was great to be back there. It goes to show you what a great job Anthony has done. Like I said, the reason (behind Fource) was to work with someone I really like and respect and to have a reason to go back home, sort of speak.
Larry LeBlanc is widely recognized as one of the leading music industry journalists in the world. Before joining CelebrityAccess in 2008 as senior editor, he was the Canadian bureau chief of Billboard from 1991-2007 and Canadian editor of Record World from 1970-80. He was also a co-founder of the late Canadian music trade, The Record.
He has been quoted on music industry issues in hundreds of publications including Time, Forbes, and the London Times. He is a co-author of the book “Music From Far And Wide,” and a Lifetime Member of the Songwriters Hall of Fame.
He is the recipient of the 2013 Walt Grealis Special Achievement Award, recognizing individuals who have made an impact on the Canadian music industry.
