Live Nation, the U.S. firm with a strong market hold on large concert ticket sales, has been reporting record high ticket sales in 2022 (see here https://www.livenationentertainment.com/2022/08/live-nation-entertainment-reports-second-quarter-2022-results/). Overall, our data shows live events continue to be well below their 2019 peak.

A few factors definitely help explain this gap. To start, concerts are just one slice of the overall live events industry. Beyond that, Live Nation centers on only one slice of the concert industry: Large concerts. And acquisitions affect their overall numbers too. Thanks to an infusion of cash from the Saudi Arabian Public Investment Fund, Live Nation was able to continue acquisitions through the pandemic, creating a larger market as compared to 2019. 

My read is that our overall data suggesting live events still has a ways to go towards recovery of AV spend remains accurate. There are too many caveats to the Live Nation claims to extend them to live events overall. I'm curious what live events folks think of the Live Nation numbers--do they make sense to you? Are large concerts really taking off? Is the AV revenue there?