Geoff Jones has been back in the entertainment business for four years now, establishing Nine Live. It is a division of Nine Entertainment Co., a public media company with a market capitalization of $2 billion, offering free-to-air television, digital business and, now, live entertainment. Nine Live is global and growing, an aggregation of Ticketek, the number one ticketing company in Australia and New Zealand, Nine Touring & Events, formed three years ago; Eventopia, a second tier ticketing company; Allphones Arena, Sydney, which is operated for them by AEG Ogden; Softix, a software licensing company; and Nine Rewards, a marketing, data and research business. Venues Today talked with Jones about the growth plans and successes of Nine Live under his leadership.
What percentage of Nine Entertainment is Nine Live?
It’s 26 percent and growing. Live sport, particularly, helps our media business. The reason Live is so important in the whole scheme of things is the digital age we live in. You can’t replicate the live experience. Whether its sport, concert, theater or other, people like live experiences.
Is that Live’s main growth area?
For my part of the business, growth is in the live space as a promoter and in the data commercialization and monetization.
As a promoter, how have you seen the growth?
We’ve grown every year of our three in existence. We started off with a toe in the water doing smaller tours and now it’s part of folklore that the third or fourth tour we did was One Direction and we’ve now toured them three times in Australia.
What is Nine Live’s business strategy?
I like to talk about our live content in four buckets: Stadiums to small theaters; international sports; global exhibitions; and family and other.
What’s in your international sports bucket?
In July of this year, we’re bringing out three of the biggest soccer teams in the world — Real Madrid, Manchester City and Roma. They will play three games at the Melbourne Cricket Grounds. We are promoting. It’s the first time it’s come here. We’ve done a four-year deal with Relevent Sports, owned by Stephen Ross of the Miami Dolphins, to bring different teams to Australia each year. Relevent owns the format. They book the teams. The format this July will be the third year they’ve done it in the states. We bought the franchise for here. Now we are talking to a lot of other U.S. sports as well. In this globalized world we live in, Australia is a stable country that loves the live space and has a big sporting tradition. American sports have a market here.
And the global exhibitions bucket contains what?
We have partnered with a company and have the rights to three global exhibitions, which will have a horizon of five to 10 years. We’ll tour them around the world. The first one will do five countries, the second 13. We’ll play one city in Australia, either Sydney or Melbourne. It will do London, New York, Toronto — big cities around the world. We partnered with IEC (International Entertainment Consulting), based in Australia, the Gold Coast.
And “Family and Other?”
We are not only interested in buying as a promoter but also in developing content where we have all the rights. We are currently touring our second show, Absinthe, in a 700-seat Spiegeltent, that has been in Las Vegas for three and a half years. It spent a month in Newcastle, is opening in Melbourne this week, then Brisbane, then Sydney. It hosts 10 shows a week and is a really, really good product. Melbourne will do 10 weeks. We partnered with the creators and we’re the promoter. First, we did Empire, which toured Australia and New Zealand for a year and a half, and closed in Auckland, New Zealand, last month. It did 10 cities and close to 400,000 people. Tickets range from $59-$139. We’re working with other partners developing family shows. There are two in incubation – both school holiday stuff which will play arenas for four or five days, three shows a day. One is for preteens, 11-18; one for preschool, 3-9. They are broadly based on other properties but they are compilation shows. We hope to start touring in June 2016.
You mention partners in every other sentence. Is that your MO?
We’re not greedy. As a company, we’re happy to share. We play well in the pit with other people. We’ve had great partnerships on the music side with Sony and Universal in the Nine Touring business.
Isn’t Nine Live very risky? Concert promotion is a risky business.
Concert promoting and big musical theater is risky but, if you have a proven brand, they are very bankable. In the current world, where people have a very low attention span, it’s very hard to break a new brand. You do it by exceptional marketing and virally. As a promoter, we act and think differently. We’re corporate, we’re very timely, we’re exceptionally transparent. We have the benefit of being integrated with our own media channel. We are very good at finding brand partnerships. We find tour sponsors by matching brands to artists and to properties. We think about that as a smart way to make the artist more money and ourselves more money and making a different offer than the others.
What is one example of that strategy?
We broke new ground in this country with the way we integrated some brands with One Direction really successfully, including Coles. The promotion was national and broke all records for them in terms of entries.
How do you pick content?
We have a very good pipeline and a lot of repeatable business. We’re not a one-trick pony. We tend not to fight with promoters for the rights to tour a certain artist. We get the agent and management to see what we do. We don’t tend to go into bidding wars. If we feel strongly about it, we will do that, but bidding wars ultimately end up hurting the promoter. We add value; this is what we do.
How does Ticketek fit into this picture?
The one reason I created the touring business was to bring content to the venues that supported my ticketing company. It’s grown from there, but that was the initial reason. Tier 1 markets get everything — Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne, get everything. We are probably the number one promoter in Tier 2 markets. They support our ticketing company and we support the venue. We don’t aspire to being number one in Tier 1.
Is having the media company essential in promoting sporting events?
Not essential, but very nice to have. We stand alone. I’m happy to say we have the right to go to other TV networks if we want. Other ticketing companies ticket some of our shows. With One Direction, we did five stadiums, seven shows, and two were ticketed by Ticketmaster. You go to the right venue for the act. We don’t slavishly go to our venues.
Would you promote family shows globally?
We’re thinking about it. We have global rights. We’re not scared to think big about it. But we like to incubate here. Our market is a strong market. Our second exhibition will open in London, then the U.S. and won’t end up in Australia until 2018.
You own Allphones Arena in Sydney. Is there more venue operation, construction or purchase in your future?
No. We own a ticketing company and promote. We don’t think arenas are the right fit. Our future acquisitions are in the digital space.
Contact: +61 2 9266 4010