UK consumer spending on live music reached a record £6.68bn in 2024, up 9.5% on 2023 and 28.2% higher than 2022, and more than £2bn above 2019. Stadiums and arenas were major beneficiaries, driven by high-profile tours from Taylor Swift, Dua Lipa and Charli XCX, while mainstream pop gigs accounted for 32.1% of consumer spend across the top 2,000 concerts. Grassroots venues face accelerating closures, with one in four late-night venues closed since 2020, and promoters, festivals and emerging artists also under strain. London captured 28.9% of outlay and festivals faced inflationary challenges.
Live analysed 55,000 gigs, concerts, festivals and events, and found that mainstream pop gigs accounted for 32.1% of consumer spend across the top 2,000 concerts of the year, a year-on-year increase of 4.7 percentage points. It flagged that the grassroots crisis extends beyond venues and artists to include promoters and festivals. Live music expenditure also remained heavily concentrated in the capital, with London accounting for 28.9% of all 2024 outlay, although Manchester experienced a bump thanks to the opening of the new Co-op Live arena.
The UK's festivals and concerts attracted more than 23.5 million music tourists in 2024. Concerts took a 75.3% share of live music spending, up almost two percentage points since 2023. The smaller share for festivals reflects the difficulties faced by that sector amid high-cost inflation and the challenge to compete with major single-day concerts by the likes of Swift and Bruce Springsteen that force consumers to make decisio
Collection
[
|
...
]