Venues are still evolving to house the needs of Irish audiences, explains the chief executive at Live Nation Ireland
‘I KNOW all the good and the bad side of theatre,” says Mike Adamson, chief executive of Live Nation Ireland.
The technical, logistical side of what makes an entertainment venue a good entertainment venue seems to thrill him – the subjects on which he enthuses include concourses that merge seamlessly into a venue (a feature of Dublin’s O2), air hover systems for retractable seats (the O2 again) and why wood-panelled walls would have been a bit too “cold” for the Grand Canal Theatre.
The venues owned by the UK-based Apollo Leisure Group where he started his career were somewhat different than the O2 amphitheatre where he now speaks, or the vermillion Grand Canal, where he later poses for photographs.
At the time of Apollo's expansion, West End theatres had construction dates that ranged from the 1800s to the 1930s – a time when accessibility requirements and demand for bar facilities were less evolved. "That theatre has been built for today's public," he says of the Grand Canal, which will celebrate its second birthday in March. The 2,111-seater venue – which counts Oliver!, The Phantom of the Operaand The Lion Kingon its future calendar – has the major advantage of being able to attract touring musical productions that used to bypass Ireland for lack of a suitably sized venue.
“You can’t survive on musicals alone,” cautions Adamson. “Even though it might be 50 per cent of it, you need the one-night concerts, you need some diversity. That’s the trick to it.”
And so this month, as well as hosting 12 nights of Mamma Mia!, the theatre will also welcome Michael Moore, Rebecca Storm and sold-out one-offs from Josh Groban, Bon Iver and Jools Holland.
Meanwhile, at the 02, fresh from her recent video escapades in the North, Rihanna is set to play the first of two sold-out dates tomorrow night.
Winter, however, is now a quieter affair for a purpose-built music venue like the O2, with several nights where the show does not go on. This is not a recession thing, but an industry thing. The traditional push by record labels to flog albums at Christmas has weakened in recent years, with the result that artists tour less in winter now than they used to. Or as Adamson puts it, “March is the new December”.
Like the Grand Canal, the 02 is still in its infancy, having opened in December 2008 after a 14-month period of reconstructing the old Point, which Apollo had first opened in 1989.
Adamson tells the story of Apollo’s first venture into Ireland like this:
“We had come over to Dublin because the Gaiety was for sale, but when we saw it, we knew the stage wasn’t big enough. We were just about to leave town when someone said ‘there’s this guy called Harry Crosbie down the road, would you like to meet him on the way to the airport?’ and we said okay.”
The Point, co-owned by Crosbie, changed Ireland’s entertainment landscape but, by the turn of the century, it was feeling a bit warehousey. Adamson knew that it was time to contemplate a rethink. “The old building was a great building, but it had its day,” is he how he puts it. “If we hadn’t done it, our business would have started to drop.”
This time around, instead of the multipurpose Point, he wanted a venue that was all about the music, not a US-style bowl arena of the kind primarily designed for sport. “That compromises what you do for music. That’s why we wanted to go with an amphitheatre. It’s better for the acoustics; for the audience,” he says.
“The only thing I’d say about an amphitheatre is that it’s fairly flattering to good artists, but it’s also very unforgiving as well – if you make a mistake, it accentuates that too.”
The benefits for the audience include clear sight lines, shorter average distance to stage – plus that concourse that blends into the main part of the venue, making a trip to the bar seem like less of a journey into purgatory. He had to fight for this feature, he says, overcoming concerns about light spillage.
He was keen, too, to ensure the Grand Canal Theatre avoided the stark, clinical feel that sometimes attaches to new buildings. “I wanted a warm theatre in the Victorian style, with red carpets.”
The “initial conversations” about the theatre began 10 years before its opening in March 2010. Accomplishing the Point’s regeneration into the O2, meanwhile, was a seven-year project (during which time SFX Entertainment, which had bought Apollo in 1999, became part of the newly formed global entertainment behemoth Live Nation).
Adamson says he doesn’t mind these gestation periods. “The longer it takes, the more you get it right. The rushed ones are the ones people didn’t get right.”
The next big project is Cork, where Live Nation is in talks with developers touting three rival sites for an all-purpose arena, which he seems certain will have a capacity of about 6,000. “The discussions in Cork have been ongoing for five years already, so if you take the average length of these projects, I’ve only another few years to go,” he reckons.
While the Convention Centre Dublin has started chasing some of the same type of bookings as the Grand Canal, as far as the O2’s roster of mainstream artists is concerned, Adamson sees the principal competition lying offshore. “Your competition might be a venue in Paris or Manchester or Amsterdam, because an artist might only want to do 10 European dates and there are more than 10 arenas in Europe that want to book them.”
The live tour for high-school musical TV show Gleeis a case in point. Rachel, Finn, Mercedes et al were in Dublin for four shows last July. "We could have done 10."
The most recent accounts for the company behind the O2, Amphitheatre Ireland Ltd, show that it made a net profit of €7.15 million in 2009, its first full-year of operation. Revenues were only slightly softer in 2010, he says, and he attributes this not to ticket-buyers being strapped for cash, but to the availability of artists. The company examines its revenue performance on a rolling three-year basis for this reason. Artist bookings for the first half of next year are “looking fairly strong”, Adamson says.
The influx of big-name touring artists can undergo peaks and troughs. So when a unit-shifting frontrunner like British singer Adele declares she wants to stick to more intimate theatres, she will be instantly besieged by promoters begging her to change her mind. “Lots of people have been trying to persuade her,” he nods. Indeed, the next day, Adele announces to an audience at London’s Hammersmith Apollo that it was goodbye theatres – she was “moving on to arenas”.
Adamson seems unfazed by recession. The pop end of the market is "very fan-driven", making it less susceptible to economic drags. Ticket prices are dependent on the production, but he insists that Live Nation is "very sensitive to the present time". In any case, the 02 is the second-busiest music venue in the world, according to figures published by Pollstarmagazine, which placed it behind only London's O2 Arena. "We're ahead of Madison Square Gardens," notes Adamson. "The Irish have always been a going-out crowd."
The numbers
$1.49bn– the market capitalisation of Live Nation Entertainment Inc. Its stock is traded on the New York Stock Exchange.
20,000 –number of shows that Live Nation Entertainment produces annually around the globe, according to its website.
6 –number of dates played by Beyonce at the O2 in 2009. She is the venue's single biggest ticket-seller since its revamp.
€25m –sum that O2 paid for the Dublin venue's naming rights in a 10-year deal.
50.1– the controlling share that Live Nation UK has in Festival Republic, the promoter of Glastonbury, Electric Picnic and other festivals. MCD owns the other 49.9 per cent
