Kid Rock Gets A Unique Financial Deal With Live Nation

Kid Rock

KID ROCK sat down recently with THE WALL STREET JOURNAL, and explained how he plans to change the economics of concert touring. "I'm lucky enough that I can afford to take a pay cut," he said.

THE JOURNAL notes ROCK is "giving his fans a price break could turn out to be lucrative: His ticket sales have spiked, and the singer will also be getting a cut of beer sales, which will be set at $4 a pop. It's virtually unheard-of for a major act to cap ticket prices that low. KID ROCK (the 42-year-old ROBERT RITCHIE) struck an unorthodox deal with promoter LIVE NATION ENTERTAINMENT, which owns or operates most of the outdoor amphitheaters he's visiting on tour. Instead of taking a big upfront fee from the promoter, the 'guarantee' an act receives even if attendance is poor, he shouldered more risk by sharing ticket sales with LIVE NATION. In exchange, the promoter agreed to share revenue from food, drinks and parking -- house earnings in which entertainers rarely get a stake."

KID ROCK told the paper in an interview, "I don't think they're going to give the deal I got to everyone else, but I think it proves a point and moves things in the right direction. Let's give the fans the best deal, then us rich m*th$#@*&#ers can go fight about how to divvy up the money. Because even at $20, there's plenty of money there. I said to LIVE NATION, look at these past tours that I've done. Some nights you make a lot of money, some nights you lose a lot of money. Why don't we just be on the up and up and divide the money fairly? Then the profit is going to be in the number of people who turn out. And thank the Lord that it's working, because after I made the deal I thought it could be a career-ender if it doesn't work."

How is he splitting the money with LIVE NATION?

"I can't discuss that," ROCK told the WSJ. "The more [tickets] we do, the better split we get. We knew if we could average 14,000 people a night, we would be in great shape and there wouldn't be much of a pay cut. And we're right at that number with a month to go before the tour starts. It costs me a lot of money [to stage a concert] -- about $125,000 a night -- so I asked LIVE NATION for a better cut of the back end if I do put those butts in the seats. We won't know how much we're making until a couple weeks after the show, when we settle hot dogs and beer and everything else. How will people react to a $20 ticket with $4 beers? They might go nuts and spend threefold the money and we'll end up doing $15 tickets next year."

Read the full interview here.

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