Justin Bieber performs his record release show at Staples Center, Los Angeles, in the round.
Key players consider Justin Bieber’s five-performance record-release event somewhat unique to an artist with a huge and actionable fanbase but very repeatable, either in Bieber’s future shows or for another artist’s tour or album launch.
Scooter Braun, Bieber’s manager, and Dan Beckerman, AEG CEO, put together a brainstorming session in just one day to develop a live show format in just two weeks that drew 46,845 fans to three shows at Staples Center, Los Angeles, on Friday, Nov. 13. Bieber then took the show and concept for one show at Allstate Arena in Rosemont, Ill., and one show at Toyota Center in Houston, before returning to Los Angeles for the American Music Awards.
Tickets averaged $20. Most fans coupled the ticket purchase with an album purchase.
The 2016 Justin Bieber Purpose World Tour and Album On-Sale broke all sorts of records due, first, to Bieber’s music and, second, to involving the fans in such a significant way, Braun said.
Fan events are not uncommon to the industry or Beiber, but this one was very different, Braun said. It involved a stage in the round, a Q&A session with Bieber answering fans from the audience, an acoustic set and showing of a short film produced to promote the album.
Production and travel costs were a break-even proposition, Braun said. “We were in a position where people were saying it would be a close race for number one (album),” Braun said of origins of the idea. “We knew we had made an amazing album. Weeks later, seeing how many songs have charted and Spotify iTunes records broken, we can stand by the music first and foremost.
“But we wanted to build as much attention around this album as possible so people gave the music an opportunity. “We put together the short film with music videos and worked the social media and put out the songs at key moments and did the proper radio interviews.
“But I said, ‘look, we need to do an activation where the fans feel involved. They get to see and touch him.’”
Braun thought about one of his favorite live shows, Frank Sinatra’s finale at Madison Square Garden in New York, produced by Jerry Weintraub. “It was a small center stage in the middle of the Garden and Frank turned the Garden into a theater. It was a celebration. He walked out like a boxer. I wanted to re-create that for the fans.”
That’s why Braun felt validated when, at the 9:30 show at Staples Center, Floyd Mayweather actually showed up and walked Bieber out, like a champion boxer.
The question was how to pull the live show off, so he called Beckerman to collaborate. “I’m grateful to Dan and AEG for not thinking I was crazy with three weeks to go,” Braun said.
That one phone call to “activate the AEG team,” as Beckerman put it, resulted in a three-hour brainstorming session that evening, (followed by Braun watching the Los Angeles Clippers game with Beckerman’s tickets), and a plan was hatched.
There were 25 people in a conference room from Team AEG meeting with Team Bieber, including reps from AEG Live, AXS Ticketing, AXS TV, AEG Facilities and AEG movie theaters, Beckerman recalled. “Scooter knows our company very well. He knows we have a lot of weapons in our arsenal.”
The funniest idea was to do a 24-hour telethon with Bieber’s friends and light the internet on fire, Braun said. “We had a good time. It’s about getting in a room and throwing ideas at each other and thinking outside the box and knowing I have an artist in Justin Bieber who trusts his team and doesn’t say, ‘no, it’s too much work.’ He is someone who looks at you and says, ‘I’m in, let’s go, let’s make it special.’ At 21 years old, he will have his sixth number one album and break every single record this week and then Adele will come and take them all back.”
The idea narrowed down when they discovered that, amazingly, Staples Center was available on a Friday in November, an unusual phenomenon. AXS Ticketing went about creating a platform to bundle ticket sales with album sales in a seamless way, working with UMG Records. “Our ticketing system is flexible and nimble,” Beckerman said of the Brian Perez-led firm.
AEG is deeply entrenched with Bieber as national tour promoter for all his tours, including the upcoming 70-plus date tour that kicks off Dec. 6 in London. “People have release parties in clubs but, with Justin’s following, we knew we could fill Staples Center several times over,” Beckerman said. And he will again during the tour, playing Staples Center March 20, 21 and 23.
The additional venues were chosen because, as Braun put it, they could route to L.A. from New York, where Bieber did the Today Show, via Chicago and Chicago is always one of Bieber's loudest and wildest crowds. As to Houston, Toyota Center has “one of the best video facilities in the country for arenas, for our short video film. And if you’re going big, you have to go to Texas.”
Both Braun and Beckerman believe the arena-size launch party is repeatable. Braun even sees tour potential in elements of the show. Beckerman liked that it was very casual, loose and authentic. At one point Bieber was skateboarding on stage.
Staples Center sold out for the intimate, authentic "visit" with Justin Bieber.
From an arena perspective, an activation like this is even better than scoring rehearsal dates in exchange for a show date.
“These were some of my and Justin’s favorite shows," Braun said. “It let him be in the moment with people who have supported him, seeing him through the ups and downs. It was a celebration. At the 9:30 show, the audience asked him to sing and he sang ‘I’ll Show You’ and he broke down crying and told them, ‘We’re in this together.’ The place just literally lost it. It was just a very powerful moment, the culmination of years of hard work, of who he wanted to be, how he wanted to change,” Braun said.
“More than anything I’m proud of Justin Bieber,” Braun added. “With all these activations and things we did, the reason the record did as well as it did and is the biggest debut of the year is because of the music he chose to make and the fact people are believing the music and rooting for him. It’s a testament to his craft and the man he’s choosing to be. It’s a team effort, but at the end of the day the person who deserves the credit is Justin himself.”
The questions were random, Braun said, citing one about his bucket list of places to go which he said was “Antarctica, is that weird, yes?” One woman said, if I’m dealing with depression, is there anything you can say to me? And he said yes, this is my advice because I’ve gone through it. “When it was done, we thought we should do this more,” Braun said.
“This will not be last time we do something like this. His connection with his fans is so unique that a show like this works. He enjoyed it. The fans enjoyed it. Reviews were incredible.”
Interviewed for this story: Dan Beckerman, (213) 742-7155; Scooter Braun, (310) 859-9060