Cost of doing festivals and tours soared in 2022
— Was 2022 an extraordinarily profitable year for festivals, concerts and tours by bands and solo artists? An extraordinarily costly one? Or both? And with concerns about a possible recession or new COVID surge, what is the outlook for this new year?
The answers depend who you ask about the past 12 months and what lies ahead. The past year saw some tours, venues and festivals enjoy record attendance. But others could not overcome inflation, skyrocketing production costs, supply-chain issues, staffing shortages and the continuing impact of the nearly 3-year-old COVID pandemic.
A number of superstar acts earned more than ever from their performances, including Elton John and Bad Bunny, both of whom did sold-out San Diego concerts at Petco Park. Their 2022 tours earned, respectively, $274 million and $393.3 million.
Other performers had more modest paydays. But some younger acts — and even some established ones — shortened or canceled their tours, citing daunting economic challenges and mental health issues.
“Unpredictability is the new normal,” said Bartell Hotels President Richard Bartell, whose company owns and operates the 42-year-old Humphreys Concerts by the Bay series.
“It was a wild and bumpy year,” agreed multiple Grammy Award-winning album producer Chris Goldsmith. As president of Belly Up Entertainment, he oversees operations and talent bookings at the Belly Up in Solana Beach, the Music Box in Little Italy and the soon-to-open Del Mar concert venue The Sound.
Record earnings for Live Nation
Both Humphreys and the Belly Up had banner years in 2022. So did Live Nation, the world’s largest concert and live events producer, which in November reported record $12.3 billion in revenue for the first three quarters of 2022.
That was a dizzying jump of 43% over the 2019 earnings for Live Nation.
Between June 30 and Sept. 30, Live Nation reported, it staged more than 11,000 worldwide events that drew more than 44 million fans. Both totals are records.
But that success did not extend to such critically acclaimed artists as Santigold and Animal Collective — whose acclaimed debut albums came out in 2008 and 2000, respectively — or to San Diego troubadour Gregory Page, whose debut solo album was released in 1994.
Philadelphia-born singer-songwriter Santigold canceled her entire 2022 U.S. tour because of onerous travel and production costs, as well as health concerns.
“Gas, tour buses, hotels, and flight costs skyrocketed,” she wrote in an October statement on her website. “Many of our tried-and-true venues (were) unavailable due to a flooded market of artists trying to book shows in the same cities, and positive (COVID) test results constantly halting schedules with devastating financial consequences. Some of us are finding ourselves simply unable to make it work.”
October also saw Animal Collective, an experimental psychedelic-rock band formed in Baltimore in 1999, cancel its fall tour of Europe. This followed the cancellation of some the band’s 2022 U.S. tour dates after three of its four members contracted COVID.
“Preparing for this (European) tour we were looking at an economic reality that simply does not work and is not sustainable,” Animal Collective wrote on its Instagram page.
“From inflation to currency devaluation, to bloated shipping and transportation costs, and much much more, we simply could not make a budget for this tour that did not lose money even if everything went as well as it could ... ”
Festivals triumphed and faltered
Some multiday festivals vanished in 2022, some almost overnight, including Camp Flog Gnaw in Los Angeles and Nevada’s Day N Vegas. Other festivals had record or near-record years, including Coachella, which resumed — after being postponed because of the pandemic in 2020 and 2021 — and once again drew a sold-out crowd, over two consecutive weekends, of 750,000.
But the cost of producing festivals and individual concerts increased across the board, sometimes at dizzying rates.
This applied to free events, such as the two-day 2022 Adams Avenue Street Fair, and to for-profit events, such as San Diego’s three-day Wonderfront Music & Arts Festival.
“Before we canceled our 2021 street fair, we paid $12,000 for (renting) five stages. This year, it costs $24,500 for four stages,” said Scott Kessler, the head of the Adams Avenue Business Association.
“Band fees have increased, our port-a-potty rental fees have doubled and the price we’re paying for everything has gone up. Everyone’s been out of business for two years, so how can you fault them? Our board voted to lose money on the event this year and not to cancel it. We made the right decision.”
For Wonderfront, whose high-priced 2022 headliners included Gwen Stefani and the Zac Brown Band, production cost rises were considerably more steep.
“Everything is more expensive this year — labor, equipment rentals, you name it — not 30 percent higher, but 300 percent higher, in some cases,” said Paul Thornton, a co-producer of the festival. “I’ve never seen anything like it in my three decades of producing music events.”
Wonderfront debuted in 2019 but was stilled the next two years by the pandemic. Its welcome return in 2022 was marred by the dramatic increase in production costs, a loss of momentum after being dormant for so long and a corresponding drop in attendance. The rule of thumb for new festivals is that it typically takes about three to five years to become profitable, as was the case for Coachella.
Ticket prices ‘way higher’
The only constant seemed to be that there was no constant. In some instances, the pluses and minuses were mirror images of each other.
Music fans had more concert and festival options than ever, to both their benefit and detriment, as the national median price for concert tickets jumped to $103.71 in 2022, a 19% increase over 2019, according to leading concert industry publication Pollstar.
The cost of admission also jumped at small venues like the 200-capacity Casbah, San Diego’s legendary alternative-rock club.
“We had pretty good attendance in 2022, but expenses have gone up on all fronts and we haven’t raised our drink prices,” said Casbah co-owner Tim Mays. “Ticket prices are way higher — artists are getting paid more — and we’re not doing as much walk-up (ticket sales) at the door as we used to. The dollar only spreads so far and people’s incomes haven’t risen as much as the costs of putting on shows.
“Known bands used to ask for $10 to $12 per ticket. Now, $15 is the low end and a lot of bands want to charge $18 or $20 because it costs so much more to be on the road. And if a band gets COVID or loses a well-paying anchor date in L.A. or San Francisco, which is their big payday, it can force them to cancel the whole tour.”
Belly Up Entertainment honcho Goldsmith said, despite performance cancellations, “That was offset by the real appetite people have to hear bands and solo artists perform live. We had a great year, probably equivalent to 2019, in terms of attendance and the artists we presented.”