Welcome to the third panel of today’s session of the Business and Trade Committee, looking at consumer prices. I am really grateful to Phil Bowdery and Andrew Parsons from Live Nation and Ticketmaster for spending some time with us this afternoon. Andrew, thank you for coming back after your appearance earlier in the year. Phil Bowdery, perhaps I could start with you. Live Nation has built itself into quite a significant business. How much market power would you say the company has here in the United Kingdom?

Good afternoon. We have as much power as our competitors that have built themselves in the same manner.

If we think about the event promotion business and look at the particular part of the market that is focused on high-capacity venues and big acts, do you have substantial market power in that segment in the UK?

No. We have power that is equal to our competitors. We also do very small venues, of course, not just the major arenas or stadiums. We are effective in clubs as well.

When Committee staff looked through 100 of the biggest events in that particular market segment, it looked like Live Nation was, basically, marketing or promoting about two thirds of those events. Would you say that is substantial market power?

I do not recognise that figure. I am not sure that we are promoting two thirds of shows.

Let us look at this analysis, if we could just put it up on the slide. This is an analysis of about 23 million arena and stadium tickets sold and marketed this year. It looks like Live Nation Entertainment is promoting or marketing about 66% of the tickets in that space. Does that indicate substantial market power?

You are not counting the theatres and other smaller venues to get a broader brush. We certainly are very good at what we do. We have clients who are doing stadiums and arenas, but we also do a lot of theatres and clubs.

If we just looked at that particular market segment, which is arenas and stadia—these are the big and often very expensive acts—it looks like you have a very significant market share. I am just interested in your observation as to whether that constitutes a significant market power.

We are very good at what we do. Therefore, there is interest from the major artists to be with Live Nation.

Does the market power you have—through success, as you say, but also your predominance in this market—mean that you could, for example, have the power to influence prices on a sustained and enduring basis?

I do not see us as being dominant. We have a lot of competitors. It is a very low-margin business that we run. Globally, we are at about a 3% margin.

So you do not think that a two-thirds market share is dominant?

I am not sure where these figures have come from.

These come from an analysis of 23 million tickets that are on sale this year.

That sounds like a lot of tickets.

Yes, but you are marketing two thirds of them.

I would like to see where they are. It is not my vision that we are 66%. We have a lot of competitors.

Your business has succeeded in building up a network in the promotions business, in venues as well as ticketing, which we will come back to. How do you think about your business’s market share of, for example, major venues—venues that you either own directly or might have exclusive marketing rights with?

We do not own any major venues. We do not own any stadiums. We have one arena in the UK, and that is one of the smaller ones. We have theatres and concert halls.

There are venues that Live Nation owns in the UK. Through Academy Music Group, you operate 18 venues, including O2 Academy Bristol, Motorpoint Arena and Victoria Warehouse. Some of these venues are quite significant. I am just interested in how you think about the market share that your venues have.

Significant in capacity or in their position in the city?

I am interested in how you think about the venues market and Live Nation’s market share in that market.

There are attractions—artists and singers—who would fit better into some of those venues and would not be able to move into the bigger venues unless they grow, as they do. It is not a case of what we do with those venues. If it is the best venue for the artist, that is where he or she will perform.

There is not an infinite number of very big venues in the UK. It could well be that your shareholders in the United States are saying to you, “You ought to be growing your market share. You ought to be growing your control over those venues,” because that brings some commercial advantages. Do you not have an analysis of the arena market?

I know that there are approximately 15 arenas in the country. We own but one.

Do you have exclusive marketing arrangements with any of the other 14?

No.

When we look at ticketing, the last public data we had was from the Competition Commission back in 2010. Mr Parsons, we found that Ticketmaster’s share of the UK market for primary retailing of live music tickets was about 40% to 50%. Do you have a sense of what that figure is today?

Unfortunately, I do not. It is notoriously difficult to get a realistic and accurate position, simply because most of the main competitors do not publish their figures. I would be clutching at straws and cannot give you an accurate representation of what that would be. We are talking about arenas at the moment, and I understand why that would be an area of focus, given that they can be seen as a significant part of the business. Of the 15 arenas, which are considered to be the main, established touring buildings with a capacity of 10,000 or above, we provide ticketing services to five. As I say, it is difficult to give you a percentage share, although I understand the question and the ask. Probably the best way I could articulate how I see our position is that it is very competitive. I have been in the industry for 25-plus years. The UK ticketing market is as competitive as anywhere in the world, and we see that every day. We have great teams. We invest in technology and resources to compete every day, but it is just that. We are competing for business, sometimes successfully and sometimes not.

Do you have a number for what fraction of the tickets you sell relate to events promoted by Live Nation?

I do have that number. It is within our own sphere, if you like. Some 60% of events and tickets are for non-Live Nation businesses—in other words, competitors to Live Nation, effectively, if you want to think about it in those terms. To me anyway, that represents one of the clearest examples of a well-functioning and competitive marketplace, and our having to be good at what we do. We have to establish a lot of trust within the business for that to be the case. People outside Live Nation are working with us on merit and on the basis of delivering the best services in support of their shows and their fans.

We do not have market share data for ticketing. We do not have market share data for ownership of big-capacity arenas or stadia. We have some data that appears to show that about two thirds of promotions are going through Live Nation. Is there any other data available to you for judging your performance in growing your market share in the UK?

From a ticketing perspective?

Yes.

For us, some of the big prizes are the arenas. We would look at that with some disappointment as it stands at the moment. Some of this is cyclical, and we would hope to win some of those again in the future. It is important to consider the ticketing sector as a whole, as opposed to a single genre or type. There are areas of the business where we are very much a challenger brand, if you understand the expression. We are trying to break through across the West End theatre and clubs business, which is incredibly competitive. We work hard to compete in those spaces every day with the right technology and the right marketing.

As I understand it, Live Nation Entertainment has four divisions. In terms of ticketing, Ticketmaster has more than 60%, according to The Guardian. The Competition Commission had you at 50% 15 years ago. In terms of festivals and venues, it is 25% according to the Association of Independent Festivals. Of venues, 18 are 100%-owned or part-owned, as well as 51% by Academy Music Group. Within Artist Nation Management, you have 500 artists, so you are big but maybe not dominant there. In event promotions, you have more than two thirds of the largest-capacity venues, so between 35,000 and 90,000 people. On live music events, last year you had 2,500 of those shows versus your nearest competitor at 1,071. Add those things together and it looks like very substantial market share and dominance. It is about the synergies between all these things wrapping around the industry and around the consumer. That is what is going on here, and that is what we have a big problem with. I just want to understand where I have got those facts wrong.

Specifically on the ticketing piece, as I mentioned before, I do not recognise—

Primary concert ticketing was 60%. The Competition Commission had you at 50% 15 years ago. Do you not recognise that?

As I mentioned earlier, the market is incredibly competitive and, I would argue, significantly more competitive now than it was back then. I could not confirm or deny that number.

The Competition Commission, which was part of the Government, said that you had more than 50% in 2010. Do you not recognise that? Have you never heard of that before?

I am not familiar with that number. What I am saying is that the market, in my view, is more competitive now than it was then.

The Guardian says you have 60% of primary concert ticketing. You are saying that is not true.

Yes, I am. I see huge growth. I will return to the arena point, at the risk of repeating myself, because it is significant. It is a huge part of the market that we are talking about here, and we have only a small piece of it.

Without wanting to take us down that rabbit hole, our point, essentially, is that you are wrapping yourself around the consumer every which way, whether it is ticketing, festivals and venues, management of artists, or event promotions. Essentially, it is the octopus. That is what is going on here, and that is what we are worried about.

That is understood. I look at our business and how we operate, and the margins that we are able to work across. That is the clearest set of evidence to me that the market is competitive. Our per-ticket fees for last year averaged at around 11.1% within the UK.

There are lots of ways to make money apart from the ticket, are there not? You have all sorts of ways of making money.

Yes, absolutely. I do not disagree. There are many examples of vertically integrated businesses, and we are very much one. Many businesses are operating off small and thin margins, as ours do. If you take the 11.1%, the take rate—the piece that Ticketmaster is retaining after the share with the event organiser or with the credit cards—is around 3%. If we look at that same number from 2017, it would have been over 4%. Again, it is the clearest indication to me that there is competition, and that the competition ensures that fees are very consistent over a period of time.

With respect, you are cherry-picking those points. I will park it there.

There is just one point to note. You would agree that, as a business, Live Nation’s margins have more than doubled. In 2018, the margins were 1.6%. In 2024, they are up to 4%. That would appear to point to a business that is getting stronger in terms of its market power and its ability to strike a profit.

That the business has been successful over that period of time is doubtless the case. The percentage that I am more familiar with, which we can follow up with, is 3% as a typical margin. I would not be able to comment further than that.

Has that margin been moving up or down over the last four or five years?

I have the details related only to the Ticketmaster business, where I have evidence showing that it has gone down since 2017, when it was 4.1% on average, to nearer 3%.

Just coming back to the market power that Ticketmaster and Live Nation enjoy, I was interested to see that, in the United States, Ticketmaster has been alleged by the US Department of Justice to control 80% or more of major concert venues’ primary ticketing for concerts. In Ireland, I see that Ticketmaster holds 90% of live music ticketing in that country. Do you foresee that, in the UK, you could be reaching those sorts of figures? I presume that Michael Rapino will be looking for that kind of growth and market power here in the UK. Is that a good thing for the consumer? Should the CMA allow it?

I am afraid that I am going to risk repeating myself a bit. The market has got more, not less competitive from a ticketing standpoint. There are more global players operating on a very similar basis in terms of being vertically integrated businesses. This is not something unique to Ticketmaster.

Your share of the market is getting stronger. Your CEO will be wanting a similar sort of performance in the UK as is being achieved in the US and Ireland, surely.

The business is certainly growing, and you can see the evidence of that every day. There are more shows playing in more locations than ever before. The amount of talent coming to the UK just this summer is absolutely extraordinary. In many respects, there is just more access to a diverse range of talent than has ever been the case. From that, the business itself grows. I know that I am repeating myself, but we are a thin‑margin business that operates successfully off the volume that we are able to achieve, and we do that successfully.

Coming back to my question, should the CMA allow a provider, such as you, that sort of significant market power?

I cannot answer that question, because I do not see that we have that level of power.

In principle, should the CMA allow that?

Should the CMA allow what?

It is obvious that the business in the United States has such significant market power that the Department of Justice has launched an investigation. Should the CMA in this country be comfortable with a similar level of concentration to that enjoyed by the business in the United States?

It would not be fair for me to speak on behalf of the CMA or about what would or would not be possible, on a set of circumstances that, I imagine, just does not seem reasonable to answer.

Phil Bowdery, can you explain how your ticket prices have changed since the pandemic?

Since the pandemic, they have followed natural inflation.

They have pegged with inflation?

Yes, exactly. In 2015, our average ticket price was £46. In 2024, it was £39, if you take inflation into account, so it has gone down, not up.

In which year was it £39?

It was £39 in 2024.

Are you comparing like with like?

Yes.

If we are talking about arena and large stadium sales, what is the comparison price?

It is the average price across all venues.

I am not talking about all venues. You could have changed the mix of the venues, could you not? You could have entered into different segments. I am just talking about the comparison for a stadium or large arena.

Stadiums are fixed on summer, but it is the same thought that runs through it. It is still across the average that we have taken these numbers across all our shows, not just the smaller ones. We are lower, if you take inflation into account, than we were in 2015.

What is the average price for a stadium and arena ticket?

It depends on the artist, of course.

You just gave me an average price for all venues. You know the price for all venues, which includes theatres and smaller venues, which I can understand.

It is £39.

I am asking about arenas and stadia. You must have the figure for that, surely.

No. It is taken as a whole across the business. We are doing as many smaller shows as arena shows, and the stadiums are limited to the summer.

So you run a business, but you do not know what the average price is for a particular segment.

It depends on the artist. The price will change with the artist.

So you are inviting us to believe, Mr Bowdery, that, in 2025, you cannot tell the Committee the average price that you are promoting an event for in the stadia and arenas where you are hosting those events?

I did tell you that our average in 2024 was £24 overall, and £43 for arenas and £51 for stadiums was our average.

Has that number gone up or down over the last four or five years?

That is for last year.

Between £43 and £51.

Yes, and £24 overall.

If we went back a couple of years, do you have a figure for what it might be?

We would get into covid, when nothing was there. As I said before, it was 2015 when our average was £46, and that came down to £39 in 2024, adjusted for inflation.

Is that for the stadia and arena segment?

That is for all shows.

We are just trying to focus on the stadia and arenas, though, Mr Bowdery.

We do not play just arenas and stadiums.

We appreciate that, but you clearly have a very significant market position in the stadia and arena segment.

As do our competitors.

Yes, but it looks like you have two thirds of that business.

Again, I do not recognise those figures.

It is an analysis of 23 million tickets, Mr Bowdery, so it is quite a wide scope.

Maybe I will take it up with The Guardian.

That figure is not from The Guardian. It is from the association of live events and festivals.

Sorry, but I thought that one of your colleagues said it came from The Guardian.

It was a different figure quoted from The Guardian. Maybe we could exchange correspondence to try to pin down precisely what that figure might look like.

Yes, absolutely. That is no problem.

Our business here is completely different from America, and I am not sure in what context that was said. We are certainly proud of how we put on our shows. They are safe. Everyone enjoys them. It is one of the most satisfying jobs you can have to look at a full arena, theatre or stadium when the artist is performing. I had the privilege of having Dua Lipa in Wembley Stadium at the weekend. Just 10 years ago, she did her first club show in London.

I doubt it very much. Q133       Dr Huq: Hi, both. What happened with Beyoncé tickets between 2023 and 2025? One was the Renaissance tour, and the other the Cowboy Carter tour this year. We have the different ticket price categories here. The premium ones went up 11%, but there was a 110% hike in standing tickets in 24 months.

They were premium tickets, because it was a special area to be in. Q134       Dr Huq: They are premium standing?

Yes. Regular standing was £106, I think you will find. Q135       Dr Huq: There was then a yo-yoing. This is an example of how dynamic pricing can go down as well as up. There were fans who originally paid £1,700 for a package, but those tickets went down to £550. How did you determine that the prices for that show were initially so high, only for them to go down by such a dramatic amount?

Prices were set by the artist and her team. I was not involved in setting those prices. Q136       Dr Huq: So it is the independent woman herself who determined this?

Yes, absolutely. Q137       Dr Huq: Really? It looks like a level of mispricing. Where did the calculation go wrong here?

I do not know whether it was mispriced. There was definitely expensive standing, but that was a premium ticket with lots of added features. Q138       Dr Huq: Prices can go down as well as up?

They can. Q139       Dr Huq: Maybe this would have been one for the supermarket people as well, but there is an app called Too Good to Go. My student son uses it a lot. I do not know how many people are familiar with it, but it has restaurant and supermarket food prices. At the end of the day, when the food is reaching its sell-by date, you can go on this app and get stuff for tuppence ha’penny. They use dynamic pricing to decrease the cost of things through an app. Would you be open to doing something similar for when demand falls for concerts?

When demand falls, we lose on a quarter of our shows. Unfortunately, it does happen to us, but that is the nature of our business. It is very competitive. Q140       Dr Huq: Could that be a way to do it, rather than having a load of empty seats: to give them to people at a discounted rate through an app? Then there is some predictability.

Unfortunately, if you are not selling tickets, it normally does not matter what you do; you are not going to sell them. The attraction has not grabbed people’s attention. Q141       Dr Huq: Is it not something that you would entertain?

Not personally, no. Q142       Dr Huq: There is an app already called Tickets for Good.

I know of it. Q143       Dr Huq: Do you work or would you consider working with them?

No. They charge a fee to the buyer. Q144       Dr Huq: It is a nominal amount. For people who do not know, they give away free and heavily discounted tickets to NHS workers. They did it for the Blur stadium gigs.

That is a different thing. That is Blue Light. Q145       Dr Huq: It is for charity workers and teachers, not just the NHS. Maybe Blue Light is exclusively for health professionals. They say that 350,000 NHS staff use their service, as well as workers in other sectors, so teaching and what have you.

I work with a lot of artists who will donate tickets to the sites for the benefit of those people. Q146       Dr Huq: So that is not something you guys would ever consider working with? We have looked at reputational damage.

Again, the artist would be in control, and we work with the artist to do those things. Q147       Dr Huq: I remember once going to Hyde Park. Elton John had a throat infection, so they made it free to watch Elvis Costello. I preferred that, as I am not an Elton John person.

I will let Elton know that. Q148       Dr Huq: I saw it was going around on the web: “Free Elvis Costello concert in Hyde Park.” Have you considered how, when ticket prices are hiked, it has a knock-on effect on everything, such as accommodation and, as we saw in the last session, transport and flights? It feels like fans are being fleeced to see their favourite person.

I cannot talk for what hotels or airlines they do with their pricing. Q149       Dr Huq: They are all connected.

They could be. I have to stay in the hotels at the venues as well, so I see some of those prices.

Mr Bowdery, you are saying that the extraordinary price increases that we have seen between two similar concerts two years apart are not an expression of your own market power. What is it down to? Who has driven this extraordinary increase in pricing?

The artist has. As I said earlier, it is not a true reflection. There could be premium involved. It is very easy to put a slide up that shows a difference in price, but there is a premium attached to it.

So the artist is dictating to you the price of these tickets?

The artist and team.

When Mr Parsons was last here, we rehearsed some of the comments that we had heard on the record from artists such as Robert Smith and Neil Young, who both decried the influence of Ticketmaster and Live Nation on ticket pricing. We were just a bit perplexed with an answer that suggested that the artist was setting a price when there appeared to be quite a lot of evidence of artists complaining about the price. How do you explain that?

I cannot. I do not promote Neil Young or The Cure, but I am sure they would have been involved in their ticket prices.

So they were perhaps misleading their fans in the statements that they were making about Live Nation.

I have no idea. I would not put words in their mouth at all. Q154       Dr Huq: Ed Sheeran completely cuts out the middleman, and it is all direct. It just sounds like everyone is saying, “Nothing to do with me, guv.”

I am there to advise. It is a very competitive business. Putting the ticket prices up does not necessarily help me in any way, shape or form, because they might be prohibitive to people going. I have to set a guarantee with an artist and then work, with their team, on the best way of achieving that guarantee. The ticket price is then set with them to achieve that guarantee.

So you would advise an artist about what the market will bear when it comes to ticket prices?

I would certainly be there to say, “This is an artist of a similar genre. This is the ticket price they charged. If you want to look at that, then we can, or, if you want to add something special or take it down, we can.”

Presumably, in your business model, you categorise the type of artists and say, “Yes, you are in that category.”

Artists define themselves in whatever genre they are.

You said that you advise them.

Yes, but whatever category they are depends on their genre.

So you say, “In this category, we could sell this number of tickets at that price.”

No. They are looking for a guarantee, and we have to see how we can achieve that guarantee.

But you are advising them on what you think is realisable.

The team, yes. Some of the expectations may be higher than we would suggest. As I said, it is beneficial not to go high, because we do not want to make it prohibitive.

What do you mean by a “guarantee”?

A guarantee to the artist.

Is that total revenue?

A financial guarantee.

So they will come with an expectation of how much revenue they could take out of a particular tour, say, and that would be a figure that you would advise on.

It is a figure that they would want, and I would try to get to that figure or advise them how to get it, but my competitor is doing the same thing. I might have the edge by giving them more.

So your guarantee to the performer is about the total revenue from tickets.

Less costs.

I understand, but will you also be giving a guarantee in terms of the number of tickets that you will sell?

Yes. The only way that we have revenue coming in for a show is the ticket revenue.

Andrew Parsons, when we last saw you, which was about February, you were questioned about Ticketmaster’s approach to dynamic pricing. You were categoric in your statement that Ticketmaster does not use dynamic pricing, which was contradicted by a statement on your website. Can you be absolutely clear to the Committee today? Were you mistaken in your comments, or was the policy on the website misleading your customers?

I hope I was clear last time. I am happy to address it again, of course. What we were absolutely clear about is that there is no algorithm. There is no personalised data. There is no automation determining ticket prices. They are set in advance with artists, event organisers, the tour and their team, and they do not change. On that basis, it was clear to us that the terms and conditions you referenced were providing meaning around this word “dynamic”, which is complex and difficult, and it was best to get rid of it.

Even though you are in this business, you did not recognise the word “dynamic.”

We did, and we determined that it was best to remove it. The important point is that what we did before and what we have done since that change to the site has not changed. How we operate has remained constant over that period.

Let us be clear here. You said that you do not operate dynamic pricing. Are those weasel words? You are suggesting that you have predetermined what the escalation in price might be in the system, as opposed to it being live and you are influencing or interfering with it on the day or at the moment of sale. You have predetermined how that price will ramp up. That is what you do, is it not?

You are making something sound very nefarious when what we are talking about is having a set number of tickets at a price, and a set number of tickets at another price, which have been determined by the parties, who have given us and agreed that information. I do not see anything underhand in that. That is how it works.

The average person who would like to go to a gig is being priced out of the market, sadly, and I am sure there are many around this table. The consumer sees a price advertised to go to see whatever gig, and then find that it is not the price they are going to pay, because it has moved into a different price category. That is dynamic pricing, is it not?

I do not think it is. What we are clear about is that the tickets are set in advance. They are agreed. We do not set those prices. They do not move during the on-sale period. They can go down over a period of time, which is why we were clear to continue using wording that reflects that. As I have said before, the perception of that movement is based on cheaper tickets no longer being available, and higher-priced tickets often being those that are left.

So the conclusion is that your policy was misleading to the consumer?

The word “dynamic” was unhelpful, yes.

Let me just read you what the purchase policy said when you gave evidence on 4 February. It said, “Some tickets are ‘market priced’, and so sale prices may increase or decrease at any time, based on demand. This is similar to how airline tickets and hotel rooms are sold and is commonly referred to as ‘dynamic pricing’”. That was the purchase policy on your website on 4 February, when we asked you whether you used dynamic pricing as a business, and you said, “We can be quite clear that this is not how the Ticketmaster website operates.” The evidence you gave to this Committee was in direct contradiction to the purchase policy listed on your website on that day. How do you explain the difference?

I thought I just had, but I am happy to say it again. The way that we operate was the same before and after. “Dynamic” implies an algorithm. It implies some level of automation that was not in place. I was quite clear on that then and I can be clear on that now. It was not in place then, and it is not in place now.

But the purchase policy on your website says, “Some tickets are ‘market priced’, and so sale prices may increase or decrease at any time, based on demand”. To us, that sounds like dynamic pricing. You decided that it should be called dynamic pricing, because the sentence went on to say, “and is commonly referred to as ‘dynamic pricing’”. That was your own purchase policy on your own website on the day you told this Committee that you were not operating it.

I agree that it is right that we changed that, because of how it can be misinterpreted.

Was it misinterpreted or misleading?

It can be misinterpreted, because “dynamic” can mean different things to different people. We do not have any automation driving that, so it was right that we updated it on that basis.

So you were worried that consumers were misinterpreting how you had described dynamic pricing on your website? Do you not think that you were misleading your customers at that point?

We were looking to make it more accurately represent what it was that we were doing. That is what we have done, and that is right.

Phil, I am struggling to recognise this company. With my limited knowledge, I thought Ticketmaster was a big player in the UK, but you seem to be a plucky start-up fighting your way, with sharp elbows, in a shark-filled environment where there are lots of other people out there with their elbows out. What is the situation with these rivals? You have no connection with these rival companies at all. You do not talk to them. There is nothing at all. It is a cut-throat business and you are out there fighting your end.

I know my competitors personally, but it is a very tough business. Our margins are small, as are theirs. They are vertically integrated as well, with the same look and trying to promote as many shows as they can in the same way that we are. It is very competitive.

You must be doing all right, otherwise you would move out and do something else, would you not?

I would like to think that we are very good.

All that gives you the edge is simply that you are very good at what you do?

Yes. We have a superb marketing team. Promoting is about selling tickets. It is about promoting that artist to sell tickets. We need to have the correct marketing, and we are very fortunate, particularly in London, to have a first-class marketing team.

You do not have an advantage over your competitors. You talk to your competitors. They are doing the same things as you. You are just better at it, so you do not have anything that you do differently.

Yes, of course. I am a good promoter, but so are they. I would like to think that is my edge. I have been doing it for a long time.

I have no sight of those emails, so it would be very difficult for me to comment. Many venues are independently owned or run, so there is no collusion between us and the venues.

We have no exclusive or exclusionary contracts with any venues.

Maybe in the US, but certainly not in the UK.

In 2022, the CEO of OVG wrote in an email to the CEO of Live Nation, “We have never promoted without you. Won’t.” “I never want to be competitors.” That looks like market collusion between two firms, or you could call it co-operation if you were being generous. What is the relationship with OVG in this country? Is there that kind of familiarity?

Obviously it runs Co-op Live. I put a lot of shows into Co-op Live, so I know the management, but I put a lot of shows into the O2, which is AEG, and I know those guys. There is also the independently run AO Arena in Manchester, which is ASM. There are lots of different companies running the venues. I have been doing promotion for a very long time so I have a relationship with everyone, but there is no collusion. I am not happy with their rents, and I tell them every time.

Dealing with another entity, what is your relationship with SJM Concerts?

It is good. Simon Moran is the owner of SJM. He is probably the biggest independent promoter in the world, certainly in Europe.

Are you partners or are you competitors?

We are competitors.

How many companies do you co-own with SJM?

I am not privy to that information. I do not think there are any promoting companies that we work together on. Maybe there is DF in Scotland, but that is the only one that I know of.

Really?

On the promoting side, yes.

Any other sides?

Do you mean venues?

You name it, anything.

I am not party to that.

I will give you a hand. There is DF Concerts. Moran holds a 20% stake. There is a stake in Boomtown festival. You, Gaiety and SJM each hold stakes there. There is Camp Bestival; there is V Festival; there is Academy Music Group.

I do not think V Festival exists.

LN-Gaiety purchased stakes from the founders, including Simon Moran, making them co-owners. That is what I have.

Yes, but V Festival disappeared quite a while ago, unless I am mistaken.

Okay, but I have seven here. What is weird about this is that you say you are competitors, but you co-own a whole load of companies together. You cannot really say, “I co-own something together, but we are competing”.

Why?

It does not work that way.

You are talking about venues. I compete with him as far as promoting is concerned.

Again, the words “vampire squid” are going through my head, but maybe “octopus” is better. It is just the wraparound.

It seems to be a good word for you.

Yes, it seems to be a good analogy for what is going on here.

I do not recognise it. As I said before, I am a promoter. Simon is a competitor unless we are working together at the behest of an agent or manager.

Phil, you say you are a promoter, but Live Nation manages artists, festivals and venues. It sells tickets. It does that more than anybody else in the country. You are saying, “Oh, I am a promoter”, but the reality is that you are part of an enormous corporate group that wraps itself around the consumer in all these different ways.

We are vertically integrated, as are most of our competitors.

Except you are a lot bigger than your competitors.

That is—

It is true.

I would like to see all these figures that say we are bigger. We work very hard.

It is all on the web.

I will look.

Thank you very much. We have some quite different views about what might constitute substantial market power. We have had some difficulties getting some of the pricing information. We look forward to an exchange of correspondence on that. We have finally nailed what is and what is not going on when it comes to dynamic pricing. Let me close by asking this question, which is based on hearsay evidence to us. Have employees of the Live Nation group ever threatened artists, promoters or venue operators, or applied anything that those artists may interpret as pressure, in order to change their behaviour?

Not to my knowledge, no. We have never threatened anybody.

I was pretty clear at the outset that the evidence to me is very clear that the ticketing market is incredibly competitive. The margins reflect that. The margins relative to other marketplaces that charge far higher commissions support that. Our retained amount has declined over 10 years. We provide services to a minority of the major buildings within the UK, as we spoke about. All these things, to me, suggest that it is incredibly clear that the marketplace for ticketing is very vibrant and competitive every single day.

Thank you very much indeed to both of you for taking the time to come and give evidence to us. We are really grateful for the evidence you have given us. There will be a couple of bits of correspondence to follow up.

Thank you. Have a good afternoon.