Sammy Virji’s manager and live agents have shared with Music Week the strategy behind taking the DJ from the UK underground to headlining global stages.
Since signing Virji in 2020, UTA agents Jamie Waldman and Tom Jones have carefully laid the foundations for the UKG producer’s ascent on the UK/European arena and festival circuit.
Highlights in the past year have included Virji’s headline sets at Manchester’s Warehouse Project, the Netherlands’ Lowlands festival and Belgium’s Pukkelpop. The agents working at UTA's London office also steered Virji's spring 2026 tour of Australia where he debuted his first-ever live set at the Sydney Opera House.
More recently, last month Virji headlined two sold-out nights at London’s Alexandra Palace. UTA has revealed that 20,000 tickets we snapped up in less than an hour.
Across the pond, Marissa Loil, agent, music touring, UTA, has been instrumental in bringing Virji to North American audiences after his US signing in 2023. Off the back of Virji’s viral DJ Mag set that September, Loil and Virji’s management, headed up by CtrlFrk co-founder Jasmine Reeder, planned his first US tour. It went on to sell out.
The ambition was always there, but this level has surpassed what any of us imagined
Jasmine Reeder
Last year, Virji hit the “big five” US festivals, playing sets at Coachella, Bonnaroo, Osheaga, Lollapalooza and Outside Lands. Key to that was aligning Virji with similar acts on bills and steadily educating fans outside of the UK about the garage genre – and Virji’s own spin on it.
Here, Music Week speaks to Waldman, Loil and Reeder to hear about Virji’s “meteoric” growth, landing “organic” co-signs from Four Tet, Skrillex and Fred Again.., and the meticulous plan to raise the stakes of his live shows.
Sammy Virji recently wrapped two headline gigs at Alexandra Palace. How were they received?
Jamie Waldman: “Marissa and I were there and are incredibly pleased with how it went. When you see the team pull something together like that from where we started, I feel a lot of pride around what’s been achieved in a very short space of time. It started from a point of doing Sammy’s first proper London headline show [in 2022] for 400 people [at the since-closed London venue, Werkhaus]. He had to play all night long because there was £1,000 in the budget in total for talent. And, now, thinking about putting on a show of that scale, with Barry Can’t Swim and Chase & Status as surprise guests – and a production to match anywhere in the world – it was momentous to see.”
Jasmine Reeder: “Ally Pally was something else. Two sold-out nights, 20,000 tickets, and the crowd was incredible from the off. What really took it to another level was the surprise b2b we did in the middle of the room. Night one, nobody saw it coming at all, and when Barry Can’t Swim appeared the energy was electric. Night two, people knew something was coming but had no idea who. When Chase & Status walked out, the room erupted. Two completely different kinds of excitement, but both nights felt incredibly special.”
It's always been a case of not skipping the steps
Jamie Waldman
Reflecting on where things were when you signed Virji in 2020, Jamie, do you see where he’s got to now with Ally Pally as vindication for getting on board early?
Waldman: “I don't know about you, Marissa, but every time we go into these shows I feel a sense of nervousness. We have a really structured plan of what we're going to do, but you still don't know about the reaction on the day. You have the sign-up phase – start to see those roll in – and then you can feel that sense of, ‘We've made the right decisions: it’s working.’ Then you see the tickets sell… it’s just an overwhelming sense of pride in what we've created collectively.”
Alongside fellow UTA agent, Tom Jones, you have helped steer Virji’s ascent in the UK, Europe and Australia. What’s been your plan of attack?
Waldman: “It's always been a case of not skipping the steps. Sammy’s been active as a producer-DJ for around 10 or 12 years now. He’s built that on solid foundations. While there’s been a real, meteoric rise, it's always been about, ‘Okay, we could jump from X to Z, but if we miss Y on the way, we're not setting ourselves up for long term success.’ It’s always been thinking, ‘How do we do this for as long as he wants to do it?’”
Jamie Waldman
Can you outline some key challenges along the way, especially with expansion in North America?
Marissa Loil: “As agents, we see all the pieces of the machine and how it's moving forward. It’s about getting in there, having the right conversations, and really establishing Sammy’s name. We saw the potential coming from a North America/South America stance. It was very much an education process because the sound really hadn't taken off in North America yet. I could tell as an agent that the kids were hungry for something new. We’d come off this whole wave of high energy house music that felt like it was like running its course. The kids were like, ‘What's next?’ They weren't looking within North America territory; they were looking at what was happening overseas. And I was looking at what was happening overseas.
"We worked very closely, globally, making sure that the promoters were educated and the positioning was right to get Sammy to that next level. It’s our job to help build the story that Sammy has created himself. The music speaks for itself, the performance speaks for itself. And to mention the great work that management has been doing, too. Everything has functioned so well together.”
Waldman: “North America was an education. Europe, we're still doing some educating. I grew up with garage so to now see it in this position is incredible. It’s a very UK music genre. At some point it kind of fell off a cliff edge, went so pop, so mainstream. So to see it rise like a phoenix is amazing. Europeans don't know about it. Asian markets don't know about it. So it's like, ‘How do we educate them on this music?’”
And how have you been doing that?
Waldman: “It started with us doing a lot of bookings for Sammy as warm up or ‘room two’ to drum & bass acts. Then it was like, ‘How do we step out of that shadow and place him and everyone in the scene on their own path?’ The music is actually more closely connected to house than drum & bass, so it was thinking, ‘How do we connect with those audiences? How do we draw those lines?’ People have tried to pigeonhole us, ‘You’re bass music, you're over here.’ That’s been a big piece of the puzzle [to solve]. With Sammy’s rapid rise, we've worked really hard on making sure that the alignment is right, and with the people he plays near.”
What’s been the approach in North America?
Loil: “We had a clean slate to build this project. Alignment was everything. Positioning, festivals, who we would support – although we wanted to stay on the course of our own headline plans for Sammy. But in terms of getting in there, we work with the UTA marketing team who were really helpful in providing knowledge on the tools we could use to start building Sammy’s community around him in a new territory.
“It was even as far as when we work with the promoters or like, ‘These are the mailing lists that we want to hit from previous shows’, we thought, ‘Don't hit the bass heads!’ Actually, don't not hit the bass heads,’ but we wanted him to be seen by fans of a world we wanted to exist in. We kept the data, which we’d built from day one, and showed the team all these different resources we had at hand to maintain that community around Sammy as he continued to grow. Maintaining momentum and seeing his fans come out show after show has shown there's a consistency behind the scenes in what's been working in cultivating his fan base.”
There's a consistency behind the scenes in what's been working in cultivating his fan base.”
Marissa Loil
Waldman: “To add to that, there definitely was a part of – not so much from a marketing perspective – but, as Sammy started to have this explosive momentum globally, there was interest from other people in the scene. Where it was Disclosure asking him to play back-to-back in Amsterdam, or Ben UFO playing his songs at Dekmantel, or there was that moment at Coachella [2023] where Four Tet was playing his music on the main stage with Fred again.. and Skrillex. These really established names, suddenly, were backing him, giving him the cosign. It just really brought him onto everyone's radar. And that’s the marketing you need, right?”
Loil: “Organic!”
Waldman: “Yeah, exactly. It was the stalwarts of the scene paying him respect.”
Marissa Loil
Has Sammy Virji always had big ambitions in terms of live?
Reeder: “The ambition was always there, but this level has surpassed what any of us imagined. The trajectory has been extraordinary. That’s what makes it so special. UTA has been an enormous part of that journey. The work that Jamie, Tom and Marissa have done in expanding his live profile across the UK and Europe, then into North America and beyond, has been exceptional. There’s trust there on both sides. When you’re making decisions about an artist’s live career at this scale, you need a team around you that genuinely understands the vision. That’s what we’ve found with them.”
Waldman: “Jas has been an incredible driving force behind the whole project. Sammy and Jas have worked together for a long time and they have such a deep understanding between them. She really is the machine behind everything that he’s sharing with the world.”
Finally, Virji has a headline show at Finsbury Park in London this August among several other festivals including Manchester’s Parklife and LA’s Hard Summer. What opportunities will these bring?
Waldman: “Finsbury Park is going to be a big celebration of everything that's been achieved off the back of the album [Virji’s second, 2025’s Same Day Cleaning]. Sammy did his first live show at the Sydney Opera Show this year. He came off stage and said, ‘Right, well, we've done that. That was amazing. It will never be as good as that,’ ha-ha. So we’d like to take a look at what opportunities there might be to bring that to other parts of the world in the future.”
Loil: “As far as North America last year, a huge accomplishment was that he was one of maybe two artists that played all big five festivals. That’s a really hard feat to get all of those major buyers on board, and it was a big tier crossover circuit. This year, we're leaning in a bit more on the dance side. [He’s had] a massive spot on EDC Las Vegas, one of the biggest dance festivals globally along with Tomorrowland. Hard Summer is another big one where he’s second to closing the main stage.
"There’s a lot of really big moments that will continue to expose him to different audiences, which at this point is very lucrative to what we're building forward. Leaning into the different audiences within different lanes is going to, again, continue to drive and build the overall fanbase and community around him.”
