In their earnings call last week, Live Nation gave some insight as to how they plan to begin the slow march back towards having live events.
President and CEO Michael Rapino stated they plan to test reduced capacity festivals, drive-in shows and fan-free streaming shows:
Whether it’s in Arkansas or a state that is safe, secure and politically is fine to proceed in, we’re going to dabble in fanless concerts with broadcasts, we’re going to go and do reduced capacity shows because we can make the math work,” Rapino said. “There are a lot of great artists that can sell out an arena, but they’ll do 10 higher end smaller theaters or clubs. We’re seeing lots of artists chomping to get back out once it’s safe.
So it’s important for us to keep doing drive-in concerts, which we’re going to test and roll out, which we’re having some success with, fanless concerts which have great broadcasting opportunities, reduced capacity festival concerts, which could be outdoors, could be in a theater, could be in a large stadium floor where there’s enough room to be safe. We have all of these plans in place depending on the market and where that local city may sit in their reopening phases.
Revenue was down 21% at the promotion giant and their stock has fallen approximately 50% during the Coronavirus pandemic. Rapino will not be taking a salary for the rest of 2020 and other top executives will be seeing a 50% salary cut. The company is borrowing $600 million and looking to cut $120 million in costs.
