Madonna, Iron Maiden, Billy Joel and Coldplay didn’t plan on routing to BOK Center, Tulsa, Okla. In fact, they all said ‘no thanks’ to repeated requests to play at the venue.
But Jeff Nickler, arena GM for SMG, refused to take ‘no’ for an answer. “Our 2016 season was made up of a lot of acts that never played the building or even the market,” said Nickler. “We worked really aggressively behind the scenes to get some of the shows to come here.”
“We’re in the kind of market where we just can’t sit around waiting for the phone to ring,” he said. “The artists aren’t banging down the doors to come to Tulsa to perform. We think long term. We lay the groundwork years in advance for many of the shows we book.”
Nickler vigorously chased Iron Maiden for years. “We were one of only nine U.S. cities on the Book of Souls tour,” said Nickler proudly. “We’re a strong rock market and it took a lot of convincing them to come here so we could prove it.”
Ditto for Coldplay and Piano Man Billy Joel, but Madonna took the longest, over five years of enticements. “We cultivated the relationship with Gerry Barad (COO, Live Nation Global Touring) for five years-plus and finally got Madonna to make her first-ever visit to the state of Oklahoma. It took time and effort, but it was worth everything we went through to land her.”
The key ingredients to success are time and a big travel budget. “This industry is based on relationships,” he said. “The amount of annual travel and budget we allocate to developing relationships is huge, in the six figures, and we’ve seen it really pay off.” Nickler said that it takes “dozens of trips to manage and cultivate these relationships.” — Brad Weissberg
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TULSA LEVERAGES TIME AND A BIG TRAVEL BUDGET
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