Peter Gross

Much like radio and music, the concert promotion industry has gotten far more corporate and consolidated, as a couple of powerhouses pretty much generate the lion's share of business. But that doesn't mean indies can't survive and prosper. Coalition Entertainment is carving out its own place in the scene by staging experiential festivals and overseeing a handful of venues. Here, Managing Partner Peter Gross explains how a small fry can still do big business by focusing solely on what they do - and by doing it well.

What was the main challenge starting out?

It's much like the challenge facing any start-up, small indie company - just magnified because we're in the entertainment and music industry. This industry is primarily driven by the larger companies, so we're dealing with regular challenges such as managing cash flow. When we're booking or staging music entertainment festivals, we need to have the funds to sew up future events. We're doing this all the time; we have to be able to sustain and maintain a business and have the employees to improve the shows. We've had to build this smartly when acquiring new business services. Robert has done a really great job in helping to expand our business through indie acquisitions and generating new business or accounts.

But when you're up against the big dogs of the industry, it's always going to be a challenge. We go under the radar to find new festivals and venues that are looking for buyers. There are natural fits with a lot of events and festivals that we've been developing relationships with for three years. There are some incredibly interesting projects across a broad scope with indie companies that relate to us.

As you mentioned, concert promotion is very competitive business with mega-heavyweights such as Live Nation and AEG, as well as Wimmer and others. Do you see them as direct competitors, or have you found a way to work with them?

Naturally, if you look at it from a black-and-white spectrum, they are definite competitors, whether they have competing fests booked in markets where we have events, or have venues in markets we work. You have to necessarily be competitive on a certain front, but I take what I learned to heart from Marc Geiger, my old boss and best mentor. I remember sitting down at the end of a year to look at how his company performed, and when I asked how he thought the other agencies did that year, he'd bluntly say, "I don't really care what they did. I set goals for our team and we just keep our heads down and hit those goals." That's the approach and philosophy I've taken with our accounts and clients. We simply set out to focus on the events we work, and if we execute them well, we'll be in a pretty good spot. We don't look too much at what others are doing.

There seems to be a lot of festivals out there, not just the Bonnaroos and Lollapaloozas but events like Milwaukee's Summerfest. Do you feel you're going after the same topline acts - and is the most money the ultimate winning offer?

Obviously artists are on a cycle, going on and off the road. Gorillaz are coming back with a bunch of dates, and Eminem is out a lot this year. There are a bunch of fests that will have many of the same artists each year. There's always those legendary artists that we'd love to book, but they're tough. We're going to take a more strategic approach. We understand who's doing well and performing well, what artists we can take from selling out a 1,500-cap venue to venues with a 5,000 cap. We always try to find the upcoming artists.

Nowadays, it also depends on the festival. Today, we're creating festivals that focus on certain types of music. We also target venues with a broad spectrum of entertainment, from music to comedy. No matter what we do, we have to create a great, unique environments for the artists and the fans.

How far in advance do you have to book your events nowadays? A previous Power Player said he books major stars over a year in advance. Same for you?

Yeah, definitely, for larger artists and headliners, you have to book them earlier and earlier. They're planning tours for 2019 and 2020, and we'll definitely put in offers for some of those acts. We're now working on an Atlanta fest for September, and 90% of the lineup is booked. We're still sending out offers for the next year. It can be tricky sometimes with big artists; you're kind-of making a bet that they'll be this big next year and be worth this amount of money.

Money is always a significant factor in an artists' decision on where to play, but relationships also matter a lot. There's another festival being held in Atlanta at around the same time we're holding ours, and we have to offer a better opportunity on our festival stage. While money is definitely a piece of it, leveraging our relationships with the artist and talent agency also plays a huge part in their ultimate decision.

How involved are you in EDM concert promotion? Do you feel it's a passing fad, or that the low expense involved in staging an EDM show (little or no instrument touring costs) make it perennially profitable?

We do a ton of work in the electronic space, not only at fests but in venues as well. We hold multiple fests in Atlanta and Austin that focus strictly on electronic music. You are totally right when it comes to concert set-up. When the artists use little more than a laptop, it's a lot simpler to stage things, compared to tours with a backline of an eight-piece band.

On the other hand, EDM is going through an interesting phase. Five to six years ago, it burst on the scene and business just soared. Now in the past year or so, there are signs that its bubble has started to burst a bit in terms of festival attendance. Unlike most music radio genre concerts, a lot of these artists can play these shows without a strong history. You get a lot of soft-ticket acts that don't have a substantial amount of music behind them. They don't need to be on the radio; they can put some mixes out on YouTube or SoundCloud and that would be enough to get them on a bill.

Each EDM festival or club seems to have a built-in crowd. It's definitely an interesting space that I feel is going to continue grow and its presence will get bigger, but it would also be silly and dumb not keep a keen eye on it if it turns into a bubble that bursts.

Just to clarify, what is a "soft-ticket" event?

At a soft-ticket event, bands are usually tied to a lifestyle, such as having a skate company attached to it. The same people or type of people would go see the Vans Warped tour every year, as they would with two other major fests in my market - Lollapalooza and Pitchfork. They can definitely have an effect on our events in the market.

At the same time, you're also seeing festivals get real creative on certain types of music, expanding to make it a soft-ticket event with greater appeal, such as the Kaboo Fest in California and Okeechobee in Florida. Those fests do an incredible job; there's almost a Game of Thrones type of hype around them. You're not only curating a great lineup, you're creating an experiential appeal, so people can focus on specifics such as area-centric food and vendors. We just did the Air & Style fest with snowboarder Shaun White, which is similar to Vans Warped in being experiential.

Has the streaming economy impacted the live business?

Spotify, other streaming services and all the socials are definitely used on the live front by buyers from the standpoint of evaluating artists who are having a lot of success outside of radio airplay, and are building their popularity through Spotify. We can look at weekly and monthly streams and see if they're going through the roof. It's an extremely effective measurement.

At the same time, there are also a lot of legendary bands, such as Widespread Panic, that have been around for decades of massive touring. We track their hard-ticket numbers. The demo of their audience is a bit older, and they're just starting to make a presence on Spotify and the socials. Their audience isn't as extremely active as the younger demo, but that's starting to change. Heck, my mom is on Spotify now; it's interesting to see this massive demo starting to use Spotify and socials, when they didn't have a large presence there before. At the end of the day, it's just another great tool.

Are the rising cost of tickets an issue ... are you worried that they will soon be?

I do feel that's going to be a bigger question as times goes on. That will be determined by more than how much we'll need to pay the artists. These fests are large scale-operations that have large budgets outside of the talent, which is a large line item itself. We have to justify the spending of the entire operation through the ticket price. What will happen, if the prices keep going up, is that it will inevitably out-price some of the market. The people who usually come to these festivals aren't all wealthy individuals. If you start putting out $300 festival tickets, that's pretty significant. Sure, people thought spending $100 or so on a ticket to see up to 100 bands would be a good value, compared to spending x amount to see one act at a regular venue. But the difference in customer experience cuts into that value - and when the ticket goes up to $300, that doesn't seem like such a good value anymore.

What's more, there are more and more fests out there, so each one is not as unique an experience. Festivals such as Van Warped and Bonnaroo used to be destination tours, a rite of passage for a certain demo of teens. If there's only one festival in the area, such as Mulberry Mountain in Arkansas, the kids will still pay good money for it. But when fans in L.A. have 15 different fests in their backyard to choose from over the summer, that's going to play into attendance - and price.

Radio exposure of the acts you book certainly helps your events, but are their station concerts becoming problematic?

You're right in that while many of our artists need radio play to help their careers, we're seeing radio stations producing their own events that these same artists are encouraged to play. Radio stations are doing more and more shows at larger venues, almost mini-festivals that curate a bunch of different artists. This can be viewed as competition in a lot of ways; these concerts are very soft-ticket events. It's just a reality of the live event space. They're continuing to grow more soft-ticket events for millennials and generations of others willing to spend on more experiential events. It's just another offering people have the option to choose. At the same time, we work with a bunch of stations on our venues so they can be our radio partners. They come in and help promote the show, so we still definitely continue to do a good amount of work with them.

Does Coalition have any new events on the horizon?

We have three new festivals coming up. One's a Country music festival in L.A. proper ... right within the city. While Stagecoach is held well outside of L.A., this will be a one-day Country music and tailgating extravaganza. Tailgate Fest caters to the fans who show up hours before to turn the parking lot into the party. It brings the stage outside to the tailgate. No packing up the party to head inside, no need to stop that game of cornhole, no need to stuff all your belongings in your pockets to last you the evening.

The second new fest we have in the works is a jam band-based festival in Austin. The third new festival we are working with is Wonderfruit in Thailand, which was founded in 2014 and is on pace to be one of the premier festivals in Southeast Asia.

On top of that, we are now working with Oskar Blues/Black Buzzard with their 500-cap venue in Denver, Lucky Man Concerts with the 2,200-cap Marquee Theater in Arizona and a new venue in Brooklyn.

What about future growth? Is it a goal of yours to make Coalition the size and stature of the next AEG?

We really want to keep our heads down and continue what we've been doing. Our focus has always been North American festivals and venues, but Asia is an area of growth that can distance ourselves from the competition.

Asia, in some sense, is the last frontier. It's like what South America used to be eight years ago; then they had the Lollapalooza events and, today, there are countless fests. Asia is an interesting area for us. We have a division of Coalition that solely focuses on Asia; we're working on a festival in Thailand, and we're starting to get a lot of work within China, Hong Kong in particular. China, with well over a billion people, is a tricky market because the government places certain restrictions on business. It's still a much-unappreciated market even with the dominant global event operators only recently growing their presence there.

We've appointed someone to head our focus in Asia as well as other international territories, including Canada. This year we have some cool shows set for Toronto. We're continuing build out events in international areas and work hand in hand with festivals that need the expertise to operate well. We're also big on experiential marketing, sponsorships and brand integration. Corporate companies that want to have bigger presence need someone with experience to book talent for them. That's where we come in, so I expect to see an increase in small, private events and branded corporate events -- even if it's not in the entertainment area, we plan to expand there as well.