AEG Europe's SVP, venue programming Emma Bownes has addressed concerns over rising ticket prices and the grassroots crisis in an interview with Music Week.
Bownes, who joined AEG in 2010, was promoted to her current position earlier this year, which sees her lead programming strategy for AEG Europe’s arena portfolio, The O2 in London, Hamburg’s Barclays Arena and Berlin’s Uber Arena and Uber Eats Music Hall.
Opening up on her new role, she said: “A lot of it has meant increased focus on our venues in Germany. It’s been their busiest ever year. The Uber Arena in Berlin hosted 1.4 million fans and the Barclays Arena in Hamburg had one million.”
As part of the Music Week Interview in our April edition, Bownes – who won the Live Music Inspiration trophy at last year's Women In Music Awards – discussed the escalation of ticket prices for top-tier concerts.
“I hope it does slow," she told Music Week's Anna Fielding. "I can’t see prices significantly dropping, but I do think that in general, production costs and touring costs have increased so much post-Covid and that obviously has a knock-on effect on the price of a ticket. And my concern is that some genuine fans will therefore be priced out of seeing the artists that they love."
Bownes is an ambassador for the Young Voices Foundation. The children’s choir event brings more than 60,000 children to The O2 each year, and recently marked its 89th show at the London venue since it opened in 2007.
"That show is all about bringing families to see their kids," said Bownes. "They do everything they can to keep the ticket price as reasonable as possible and it’s currently under £30. But these touring costs and production costs are impacting them, too. It will be extremely sad to think that we’d be at a place where production cost hikes mean that ticket prices have to rise to the point where some families can’t come and see their kids sing.
"Then there’s the incredible work that Kate Nash has been doing on raising the issue [via her Butts For Tour Buses OnlyFans campaign]. She shouldn’t have to subsidise her tours, she should be able to make money from the talent she has and put that in front of people who want to see it.”
We’re at a point in the pipeline where acts come through having played in those smaller places – but is that pipeline going to be shut off or reduced in the future?
Emma Bownes
A board member for the Music Venues Trust (MVT), Bownes turned her attention to the predicament of the grassroots scene to ponder whether the success of bigger venues was coming at the cost of smaller ones.
“Honestly, I don’t know," she said. "Maybe that is the case. Maybe if people have purchased arena-level tickets they don’t have the disposable income to go to a local venue. But I am genuinely concerned about smaller venues. Mark Davyd [CEO] and Beverley Whitrick [COO] and everyone at MVT have done a really good job of keeping this as a talking point and I think we’re beyond the point of me needing to say it’s an issue because the whole industry realises it is.
"At The O2, we’re at a point in the pipeline where acts come through having played in those smaller places – but is that pipeline going to be shut off or reduced in the future? It affects all of us. There was a while where everybody talked about the issue and not much was done to fix it, but I think we’re at the point now where artists like Sam Fender, Katy Perry and Coldplay are adding that donation to the Music Venue Trust to their tickets and hopefully we’ll see more of that and it will start to help.”
While working for the MVT, Bownes said she had been impressed by the "resilience" and "genuine work ethic" displayed by grassroots venues.
"I think that probably comes out of the culture of working in a small music venue," she said. "The people who work in grassroots music venues, and therefore the Music Venue Trust, are by nature extremely hard working. I think that Mark and Bev and the rest of that team are just the same. They focus on getting their message out, and they have done an incredible job with it. The industry has been talking about it for years now, and it’s because of them. Sitting in a room with people who work on that team is inspirational because they passionately care.”
Bownes also offered an update on The O2's sustainability efforts after the venue hosted the world’s first carbon-removed arena events at The 1975’s headline shows in February last year.
A collaboration between AEG Europe, live sector sustainability consultants A Greener Future, carbon removal enterprise CUR8 and the band, the pilot saw the extraction and removal of 136.46 tonnes of residual carbon per show, equating to 545.9 tonnes across the four shows – said to be “the equivalent yearly electricity usage of 395 average homes”.
“The carbon-removed gigs for The 1975 were a trial," said Bownes. "And post that trial, we’ve done a lot of work to determine which elements worked well, which didn’t, and how we can pay for it. Because nothing comes without a cost, but how can we split that cost fairly across the artist, the venue and the fan? We’ve put together an outline of how that works, and we’re just trying to get it in front of as many artists and promoters, agents and managers as we can.
"The feedback from promoters has been genuinely positive, because we’re right into the detail of what needs to be done to remove the carbon that will be emitted from hosting that gig. We’re not just talking about it. We think we can quantify how much carbon has been generated and, therefore, what we’ve done to address that."
Interview by Anna Fielding
Music Week subscribers can read the full interview with Emma Bownes here.
