Featured News

Analysis: The year that live died

A quick glance at the chart below reveals the pallous state of our sector – and this is just in the UK alone. From TheTicketingBusiness analysis of data pulled from Ticketmaster UK’s own Cancelled/Altered events portal we can consider that the live sector is effectively closed for business.

TM’s information portal details any events it had on sale which are cancelled or altered after initially being posted for sales. The listing covers comedy, arts, gigs, celeb events and some sport (darts, boxing).

Of the 1,018 event listings on this portal just 65 are listed due to venue swaps or door opening time changes. The remaining 96% are cancellations, reschedules (with a date) or postponements (with no confirmed date).

Ticketmaster reports that it is underway issuing refunds for the 213 cancelled events. But nearly half of the list (453 events) are tagged as “Postponed – new date will be announced soon”. Given the likelihood of further lockdown measures, curbs on gatherings and fading consumer demand, any new dates are likely to be well into Autumn – perhaps even 2021, if ever. We can expect a lot more cancellations – and a lot more refunds – to follow.

Of the 283 events currenty listed as Rescheduled (with a stated future date), some 60% are optimistically stating new dates later in the Summer. Very few are moved to 2021. Realistically, will the pandemic crisise have moved on by the June/July summer months? It’s unlikely.

Even the most optimistic in our sector are anticipating a silent summer but hoping for signs of life for the live sector by Autumn. But there are the optimists.

Based on this armchair analysis alone, we can state – with bedgrudging confidence – that 2020 is the year that live died.