Reading Time: 6 minutes
  • Live Nation – owner of AMG – has previously been accused of cutting corners on safety prior to worker and attendee deaths 
  • Investigation revealed that Live Nation has been linked to 750 injuries and at least 200 deaths at their events. 
  • Firm buying St David’s hall is the biggest live concert business in the world, but has also sought to monopolise the industry through the purchase of Ticketmaster. 

By Mark S Redfern @genericredfern

Cardiff’s St David’s Hall is under threat of being adorned with corporate branding as the owner of O2 academies across the country competes to operate the National Concert Hall of Wales. 

Nearly 21,000 people have signed a petition set up to pressure Cardiff Council into retaining control over the beloved venue and to keep it running for the benefit of the people. Welsh artists, Gwenno chief among them, have also joined cries against the move. Organisers of a protest last week outside the council’s officers branded the move “morally wrong” and say they will continue to oppose it. 

Cardiff council have even come under fire from the Welsh Parliament – specifically over the speed with which they have attempted to rush the privatisation through and identified AMG as the preferred operator. Only this week the council approved the takeover in principle. 

Academy Music Group (AMG) is one of the largest operators of live music venues in the country and their O2 Academies have the power of international megacorp Live Nation behind them, the firm controlling a 51% stake in all AMG venues.

Live Nation has decades of experience running events but also a profit-hungry track record of lacking health and safety for gig-goers –  a pressing concern given the tragic events of crowd-crush injuries at the O2 Academy Brixton this week. 

Dangerous Business 

Live Nation has faced serious criticism over their health and safety practices, with a litany of deaths of concertgoers and workers alleged to have resulted from the firm’s mismanagement.

The most notable in recent years was a crush of fans that killed ten people in November 2021, among them a 9-year-old boy, at a Travis Scott gig on the grounds of his Astroworld festival in Houston, Texas.

Crowd safety had also been an issue at the inaugural Astroworld festival in 2019, where fans were  subject to trampling during stampedes at the festival grounds.

The November 2021 tragedy highlighted the poor organisation of the festival grounds and the lack of welfare and emergency procedures to keep the fans safe, leaving families grieving and asking questions about who is to blame.

To add insult to injury, some Astroworld workers were told to resign employee contracts before being paid wages owed. The updated contract included a declaration that ScoreMore, and its parent company Live Nation, were clear of any legal bids by workers for compensation due to distress or injuries following the disaster.

Past employees of ScoreMore also came forward after the gig deaths to share their own stories of disorganisation and abuse from management, and cost-cutting at the expense of concertgoer safety. Survivors have since taken aim at Live Nation and its subsidiaries through the courts.

This wasn’t the only time Live Nation has been alleged to have disregarded safety concerns. 

Just an hour before a 2012 Radiohead gig in Toronto, thousands of pounds of steel rigging smashed onto workers on the main stage. The band’s drum technician, 33-year-old Scott Johnson, was killed by a falling video monitor and three crew members injured in the collapse, one seriously. 

Charges were levelled at the Canadian branch of Live Nation under local health and safety laws for their part in the tragedy. Thirteen charges were brought against organisers with eight laid at the feet of the firm now wanting to take over St David’s Hall.

The company  was alleged to have inadequately overseen the construction of the collapsed stage roof, and not making sure that its contractors followed local safety regulations

Live Nation at the time said that it “wholeheartedly” disagreed with the result of the investigation that led to the legal proceedings. Legal action against executives was well underway until technicalities in Canadian law regarding trial delays caused the prosecution to be dropped. 

All in all, an investigation by the Houston Chronicle prompted by the Astroworld debacle revealed that Live Nation has been linked to 750 injuries and at least 200 deaths at their events. 

This raises serious questions about whether Cardiff Council has taken this safety record into consideration.

No Salary, No Problem

Michael Rapino, the CEO of Live Nation, has enjoyed a rich life from being the head of the largest live concert promoter on the planet and has been crowned the “undisputed king of live music” by Forbes.

John Cusack’s luxury Malibu beach house was snapped up by Rapino in 2021 for an astonishing £11.2 million. This price tag is well within his budget as he has this year signed a new contract with Live Nation that could net him as much as £24 million a year for the next five years.

The new property will complement his houses in the swanky LA neighbourhood of Brentwood, buying two places in 2013 for a value of almost £12 million. 

Rapino has, on occasion, acknowledged his privileged place in life and offered to go without for the greater good. As the Covid 19 pandemic swept in it decimated the live entertainment sector as social distancing rules made gigging in large crowds untenable.

The CEO pledged to waive his salary for a year to ensure Live Nation stays on an even keel financially. This gesture gave the firm a lot of good press and kept shareholders happy that their money would be safe during those turbulent times.

However, that pledge was later found to be a lie. Rapino went less than two months without a pay packet, over the rest of the year he took home almost £1.6 million in wages.

He’s also not escaped criticism for the safety scandals. 

Public Enemy’s Chuck D penned an open letter to the organisers of Astroworld and namechecked the CEO for dodging blame for the farce: “I am calling on Michael Rapino’s entire team at Live Nation and a consortium of all the major concert promoters out there to do the right thing.”

“To step up and step out of the shadows to fix these situations and save lives. To stop letting one Young Black Man take the blame, the hate, the fall… concert promoters have all the power to make the changes to keep everyone safe and alive.”

Rampino’s job encompasses much more than live events. Whilst at the helm of Live Nation, the CEO has managed to get the company a racket over not just organising concert venues but a whole host of the gigging experience.

Go Directly to Jail

There’s a word for when one of the world’s largest venue operators buys the firm that sells the lion’s share of their tickets: monopolisation.

Not only are Live Nation trying to buy up as many venues as possible to control the racket on live entertainment, St David’s Hall being one of their latest targets, but they are on a mission to make as much money as possible from the gigging experience from beginning to end. It’s the fans who pay the premium.

With its 2010 merger with notorious ticket-broker site Ticketmaster the company has moved into the business of exorbitant entry fees. This is a process known as vertical integration, a company shunning contractors from its supply chain to make even more money for its executives.

Ticketmaster has long been a source of pain for fans wanting to see their favourite artists. Hiked prices for tickets that go well beyond face value and hidden admin fees have made the service a hated, but unfortunately now unavoidable, part of the gigging process.

Tickets for gigs at O2 Academies have been made non-transferrable to cut out ticket scalpers, but Live Nation are quick to mention in press promos that tickets can still be resold through Ticketmaster Exchange, the reselling arm of Live Nation’s subsidiary. 

Ticketmaster Exchange is a cunning play by Live Nation to not only charge their lucrative processing fees on the initial sale of tickets, but to also charge again when scalped tickets from the original sale relist their tickets on Ticketmaster’s own reselling platform. 

This lets Live Nation get a slice of the gig production with their ever-expanding portfolio of venues, the sale of tickets to go to said venues, and the inevitable resale of scalped tickets on the exploitative secondary market.

Owning the monopoly on how fans buy their tickets means that prices only rise as there is less competition between firms. 

Not satisfied with just making profit from running the events, Live Nation has bought Jay-Z’s record label Roc Nation to have ownership over their artists roster which includes Rhianna and Megan Thee Stallion. 

The British arm of Live Nation also promotes and runs Creamfields, Download, Latitude, Wireless, Reading and Leeds music festivals.

Live Nation is proud of how big their slice of the pie has become: “Comprised of three market leading divisions – Ticketmaster, Live Nation Concerts, Live Nation Sponsorship – Live Nation annually issues over 500 million tickets, promotes more than 35,000 events, partners with over 1,000 sponsors and manages the careers of 500+ artists.” 

St David’s Hall, a staple of the Welsh performing arts culture for decades and home to many less financially profitable acts, is in imminent danger of being repackaged by a bland overseas megacorp. Whether the institution will be turned from not-for-profit to as-much-profit-as-possible lies in the hands of Cardiff Council chiefs.

A spokesperson for Cardiff Council told voice.wales that questions around safety should be directed to AMG.

AMG nor Live Nation have returned a request for comment.

Massive profits, deaths at shows, monopoly tactics, and a slippery fat cat CEO. Has the legacy of Live Nation’s damaging business practices been taken into consideration by Cardiff’s councillors?