This included sets to rival a Hollywood blockbuster and individuals from across the cosmos…and the District Line. As ever, the introductions began with the trademark humour of Greg Parmley.
The proceedings kicked off proper with Live Nation’s Phil Bowdery conducting the Open Forum with his esteemed panel of industry experts: Ruth Barlow (Beggars Group), Steve Strange (X-Ray Touring), Neil Warnock (UTA), Ian McAndrew (Wildlife Entertainment) and John Meglen (AEG). Topics covering the last 12 months ranged from the terrible incidents of terrorism across the globe within live music events, to Brexit and on to the hot topic of gender and the #metoo campaign – where some of the comments highlighted the fact there is still much to do within the industry.
Next up, and on a slightly lighter note, was the highlight of everyone’s yearly calendar, The Ticketing Panel hosted once again by Tim Chambers. Subbing in for the usual smiley face of our UK MD Mr Parsons we had our US colleague, EVP of Music for Ticketmaster North America David Marcus. As the driving force behind our Verified Fan technology, it was a timely visit from across the pond and joining David and Tim were the equally in demand Oliver Hoppe (Wizard Promotions), Paul Newman (AXS), Adam Webb (FanFair Alliance) and Steve Zapp (ITB). Topics ranged from pricing, the development of dynamic pricing and where the actual decision-making on pricing sits, to the age of the multiple presales and the advantages and disadvantages of this. Among these discussions David was able to put across the ways in which implementing the Verified Fan technology in the States has helped to keep tickets at the prices the artist / promoter / agent set and ensure those tickets get into the hands of customers who will attend the event.
The late afternoon session was conducted by Ticketmaster International’s Hannah Mason, who delivered an incredibly informative presentation on the upcoming GDPR to a packed room. Covering what it is, she explained how it will affect companies throughout the events industry and what steps we should all be taking right now. Everyone agreed it was a very valuable and timely talk that established Ticketmaster as the expert in client support on the subject. A packed first day was rounded off with a few drinks with our friends at UTA, and then we all headed back off home at a very reasonable time (!) to be well rested and fresh as a daisy for day two.
Day two included a great session by Stuart Galbraith (Kilimanjaro) on venues and who holds the power, with the conversation inevitably getting onto ticketing and who “owns” the tickets – venue, promoter or artist? This of course led on to who owns the data, an area we are happy to say that we share with our clients where we have a preferred relationship as opposed to some of our competitors.
As tradition dictates the day ended with the Arthur Awards, a chance for winners to celebrate and losers to state how being nominated was enough. After a year of ineligibility due to our win in 2016, Ticketmaster once again walked away with the Golden Ticket Award. As ever this means a huge amount to us as it is you, our clients, who vote for this, so thank you all for your continued support and hopefully we’ll be up there again in 2020! Congratulations also to Live Nation’s Anna Sjolund and Anna-Sophie Mertens on their respective awards.
After the night’s celebrations a few of us made it in to hear legendary manager Peter Mensch being interviewed by Promoter 101’s Dan Steinberg, an event that was definitely worth getting up for and thoroughly entertaining.
Throughout the whole of ILMC our friends over at Universe greeted attendees at their welcome lounge and performed countless demonstrations of the platform’s capabilities to promoters and industry members from across the globe. If you missed out, do get in touch and we can arrange a demo for the newest member of the Ticketmaster family to show of their impressive toys.
All in all another eventful and jam-packed ILMC fully living up to its “out of this world” setting. We’ll see you again same time next year when who knows where we’ll be taken to, although it’ll probably be around the bar!
Words by Sarah Slater
