As one of Australia’s foremost concert promoters, a veteran of the industry, and falling just outside the Top 10 of BRW’s influential rich list for his continued efforts, Michael Coppel is undoubtedly a key part of the Australian Music scene, which Live Performance Australia predicts will grow to an $830 million industry in three years time.
Following Live Nation’s acquisition of his titular, Melbourne-based company, Michael Coppel Presents, in April 2012, the Australian has since risen to become th President and CEO of Live Nation Australasia, and in a recent interview with Billboard, Coppel opens up about the crowded market, the state of music festivals in Australia, and Live Nation’s future plans.
Live Nation Australasia have big business on their hands with a long-awaited return from Black Sabbath for a string of arena shows, as well as The Presets, Carole King, and Linkin Park. But the first order of business is bringing pop star Pink to Australia in June for her Truth About Love tour, and the 42-date stint is already doing blockbuster business.
Kicking off June 25, 2013 at the new Perth Arena, Pink has already sold more than 450,000 tickets, including a staggering 16 dates at Melbourne’s Rod Laver Arena due to fans stampeding the box office.
As Coppel himself points out, for the size of Australia’s 22 million population, that’s some staggering figures for a single tour. “We’ve only got 22 million people and if you count New Zealand, we’re under 30 million,” Coppel tells Billboard. “Every other big market in the world, whether it’s Germany or the U.K, certainly the U.S. and Japan, are at least two times that number.”
“But because we’ve got a very high level of ticket prices and a very strong dollar,” he continues “we’re extremely attractive to acts touring here because they can make as much money here at the top level as they can in North America and more than they can make in Europe. As a touring market, Australia bats very high financially and on enjoyment. We rank very highly.”“As a touring market, Australia bats very high financially and on enjoyment. We rank very highly.”
Coppel adds that while the “triple-A” acts are doing great business touring Australia, many of the “‘B’ and ‘C’ tours are struggling because people are being really selective,” says Coppel. “Promoters realise if they don’t have a Pink, Radiohead or Coldplay, or acts at that level, or a Soundwave or Stereosonic on the festival side of things, you’re really not going to see (sales) you would have counted on 12 months or two years ago.”
The market has certainly changed, and with the increase of the Australian dollar compared to the rest of the world’s financial mire, the increasing demand for international acts wanting to tour Australia and profit is high. But along with those demands comes increasing risks and pressures for Australian promoters, who are wary of unnecessarily inflating the prices and starting a bidding war.
It was a major theme at a panel at the Brisbane BIGSOUND conference last year, where Splendour In The Grass co-founder/new Falls Festival partner Jess Ducrou, Aly Ehlinger of international promoters C3 Presents, and Big Day Out’s Ken West (to name a few) all chewed the fat over the high-rolling prices of booking acts, and the economy game of the music fold. West in particular poignantly noting “I don’t want to risk my house every year.”
Coppel seems to agree. “With promoters, you get pushed to [for example] buy 12 shows, because that’s the only way an act will come down here and make it work. Well, probably six or eight might be the ones you want to buy. The artist might be worth 2,000 or 4,000 (tickets) in a market, not 6,000 or 8,000. That’s a mistake a lot of us are making.”
“There’s so many festivals now, the only way you get a lineup is to pay more money than the other guy.”
But a mistake made for the value of “holding onto relationships,” says Coppel, “you don’t want to give in to competitors. Usually, if you don’t agree with what’s put forward, the agent or manager will look somewhere else and find someone who does say ‘yes’ and tour-up even if it doesn’t make sense ultimately for the band to come down here.”
The Live Nation Australiana CEO also discussed the saturated festival market, where even the big players like Falls Festival, Homebake, and Big Day Out have felt the squeeze of a fiercely competitive market, hoping to avoid repeating the heavy festival death toll of 2011.
The latest victim being Peats Ridge Festival, which despite a successful 2012 showing and nearly a decade’s experience, fell over after its finances collapsed; with the MEAA accusing the organisers of owing “hundreds of professional musicians, performers and production crew” thousands in unpaid debts.
“We’ve so many festivals and they’re all dependent on a competitive lineup, even acts who aren’t traditional festival acts are being drawn into that world,” says Coppel. (A good example being Splendour In The Grass’ Jess Ducrou saying that Coldplay were “not a festival band” after their name failed to help sell out last year’s festival.)
“That creates an issue about longevity for artists. Artists can’t keep coming back and playing festivals, they have to build their audience,” Coppel explains. “The money that’s available in the festival market keeps driving the prices up, which keeps ticket prices high. That’s a big factor. In general though if the economic things could work themselves out, you’d have to argue it’s a strong market.”
Coppel’s own venture into the festival market, the Australian spin-off of the British V Festival, went on ‘indefinite hiatus’ after its 2009, Killers-headlined edition. When asked if the event would make a return, Coppel replies: “only if we can define a competitive point which makes sense for us to come into the market.”
“There’s so many festivals now, the only way you get a lineup is to pay more money than the other guy. I just don’t think that’s a basis of doing a festival,” says Coppel. “The festivals that have strength are the ones that kept a connection with the key idea, whether it’s Stereosonic with dance music, or Soundwave with hard rock and heavy metal. And regional festivals like Splendour or Falls, they have a bedrock idea that they’ve kept faith with.”
Coppel and Live Nation have found their niche however, this morning announcing the hip hop themed festival, Movement, with a lineup curated by the iconic Nas for its inaugural launch and securing him for the role until 2015.
Live Nation’s considerable finances, pulling power, and experience are looking far more certain to fill a niche that is just waiting to be tapped, following other less-than-successful attempts to capitalise on the hip hop market.
Hip hop tours and festivals have a patchy history in Australia, indicative of the problems hurting the festival market, with Heatwave festival disintegrating before people’s eyes, and Supafest getting in hot water with their creditors after some shonky dealings. Both going belly-up and owing investors millions in debt.
Whether through lacking organisation, infrastructure, or failing to deliver on the promise of over-reaching ambitions, with the charity event One Great Night On Earth being a prime example, quietly folding before even announcing its “dream lineup”.“I don’t think (Michael) Chugg and (Michael) Gudinski will ever merge their businesses.”
The shrinking market and rising costs have also seen a number of intriguing new alliances being forged within the Australian industry in the last 6 months, helping to strengthen themselves in the ruthless festival market.
The Chugg Entertainment group announced a partnership with Homebake 2012 as co-promoters, while top brass from Splendour In The Grass, Jessica Ducrou and Paul Piticco, stepped in and bought a share of Falls Festival with Simon Daly.
The Dainty Group partnered with former Big Day Out promoter Vivian Lees to create Two Worlds Touring in September. Meanwhile Lees’ former partner, Ken West sought solace in a new partnership with C3 Presents, the international company responsible for the likes of Lollapalooza and Austin City Limits, bringing their considerable promotional power to Big Day Out for its 2013 “ground up re-build.”
Coppel sees that this kind of consolidation in the market may be restricted to the festival field, while saying of larger mergers in the business: “if you look at the personalities, it’s hard to see it.”
“I don’t think (Michael) Chugg and (Michael) Gudinski will ever merge their businesses. I think Gudinski will want to remain independent. He’s always expressed his desire to do that. I think Michael (Chugg) is such an idiosyncratic character, it’s hard to see him consolidate with anyone else,” says Coppel.
“Dainty has clearly decided he has to get bigger and bulk up and compete internationally, rather than just in this market, so he moved into business with Richard Branson on the Stones tour. Generationally, all the major promoters here have reached their 60s. So in the next 10 years there’s got to be a shake out, through retirement and mortality.”
Indeed, it’s been the same major promoters that have dominated the Australian market for nearly 30 years, what Billboard dubs the Fab Four of Down Under – Michael Gudinski, Michael Chugg, Paul Dainty, and Coppel himself.
“It’s been the same list of major promoters for the last 20-plus years… I don’t think that’s normal for any industry. There’s got to be a shake out.”
“I don’t think that’s normal for any industry,” says Coppel. “It’s not normal for any concert market any where else in the world. The problem is, the cost of entry to become a mainstream promoter is 10 times, a hundred times what it was when I started off.”
“I started with 10 grand,” he declares. “Now I don’t think you could do a club show with 10 grand. Unless you’ve got several millions of dollars of capital behind you, it’s really hard to see how you can break as a concert promoter.”
Michael Coppel certainly has “several millions of dollars of capital” behind him now, with his role at Live Nation Australaisa, Coppel says “because of the big products which come through the company worldwide, we’re destined to become the biggest promoter. And I want to maintain the standards in doing that.”
Coppel stresses he wants to use his position to “develop and build the marketplace… It’s very important for us to develop a focus on and programs to succeed in breaking artists internationally, and not harvesting the success that artists have built up. It keeps new fans coming in and it gives you as a promoter a new generation of artists to work with.”
But despite being one of the forerunners who helped forge the Australian market, the cowboys of the wild west of the late 70s and 80s, who along with Chugg, Gudinski, and Dainty helped turn it into the $539 million dollar industry it is today, and since becoming one of the gatekeepers at Live Nation – one of the most powerful concert promoters in the business today – Coppel’s advice for future generations? “Don’t become a promoter.”
“I’ll give some free advice. If anyone wins $100 million in the lottery, take it and enjoy your life,” says Coppel, to avoid an existence of “working 80, 90 hour weeks and take 6 or 7 flights a week and have people complain to you,” he laments. “I learned my lesson early in this business. You’ll never please everyone. There will always be someone who says, ‘You could have done better’.”
