John Meglen with Celine Dion.
John Meglen’s pursuit is a unique one. His job, in essence, is to help the world’s most talented performers reach their highest artistic potential and exceed their peak career earnings. As you can imagine, it is a very difficult job.
There’s no need to call him a pioneer. Sure, he’s got plenty of music biz bravado, but he knows that accolades don’t sell tickets. People buy tickets to see the superstars. Celine Dion. Elton John. Cher. Bette Midler. Rod Stewart. And now, Shania Twain.
Since 2003, he’s mounted eight different large-scale productions (two for Celine Dion and two for Elton John), grossed over $800 million in ticket sales and owned the 2,000-5,000 seat category for Tops Stops of the Decade chart. Venues Today interviewed Meglen on March 7, one week before AEG CEO Tim Leiweke abruptly left the company owned by Phil Anschutz. As Meglen details in the interview below on the 10-year anniversary of the Colosseum, Leiweke played a crucial role helping Dion build her castle on The Strip.
Four thousand tickets each night, 200 nights per year. That’s a lot of inventory.
We still wake up nervous every day. It’s been an amazing run, but it hasn’t been a holiday for 10 years. There have been many pains and frustrations and joyous moments. But what hits me more than anything else are the people we lost. People like Lloyd Brault who ran Celine’s production company and was side by side with me for the first show. Lloyd passed away a couple of months into the opening. That hits you in the gut and the heart, but we’ve also got people like Dorothy, an usher at the Colosseum who just turned 88. She’s been there since day one and she’s a wonderful, beautiful lady. Anderson Cooper from CNN met her and was amazed that she still was coming to work every day.
Describe the early days when the Colosseum was still just an idea.
This was René (Angélil) and Celine’s idea (Angélil is Celine’s husband and longtime manager). We just happened to be there at the right time and believed in the idea. It was a pretty risky deal in the beginning — you had the entire industry telling you that this wasn’t going to work. Caesars Palace spent $100 million to develop the building, but at least if it didn’t work out, they still had a building to show for it. And then you have Phil Anschutz and Tim Leiweke telling me to go ahead and spend another $150 million to build and mount this thing. Between AEG and Caesars, you had a quarter-of-a-billion-dollar investment in something that 99 percent of the people in the music industry said wasn’t going to work.
What was your estimate for how long it would take to recover your investment?
The original agreement was only a two-year deal. At the time, we didn’t have the 110-foot wide HD Mitsubishi LED screen. Later on that came up and we had to make the commitment to buy the screen. It was $6.5 million for the screen and another $1.5 million for the cameras and switching gears. You can usually tell how expensive something is going to be based on the catering in the meeting with René. If there’s just coffee and croissants, it should be OK. If you show up and there’s a guy making omelets in the corner, it’s starting to get expensive. On this particular morning, Tim Leiweke and I met René at the Ritz Carlton in L.A. Tim and I show up at the same time and headed into the dining room together and a waiter intercepted us and escorted us to a private dining room. That was the first sign this wasn’t going to be a cheap meeting. But then when we walked into the room and saw an omelet guy on one side and another guy making waffles on the other side, I turned to Leiweke and said, “This is going to be a very expensive breakfast.” And that’s when René told us about the screen. We got the deal done by adding a third year of Celine.
Did Anschutz or Leiweke ever express any skepticism about the project?
No, they were completely enthusiastic the whole time. Tim got it from the get-go — he is a can-do guy. And it didn’t take me long to explain the whole concept to Phil and for him to say that we should do it.
When Celine first started her run, she was doing 40 weeks a year. Who did you want to fill out the remaining 12?
My original thought was Neil Diamond. I pitched the idea to Sal Bonafede, Diamond’s tour manager who, God rest his soul, passed away in 2007. When I told him my idea, Sal said he didn’t think the Celine show was going to work. Later, I got a call from Howard Rose and we started discussing the idea for Elton John. He was the first guy outside of our organization who understood and believed in it.
When you met with René and Celine, what did they say about their vision for the show?
Celine was visiting Las Vegas and took René to see O (a Cirque du Soleil production at the Bellagio). After the show, she went down and talked to the cast and had a heart-warming chat with her fellow French Canadians. At dinner that night, she told René that she would love to do a similar show. Director Franco Dragone heard about Celine’s interaction with the cast and sent her a beautiful note that said, “Celine, if you ever come out of retirement, I’d love to work with you.”
Who are the customers buying the tickets for Celine?
It’s all about Middle America, and my line has been that I’m trying to sell tickets to everyone between New York and L.A. — and I consider Orange County in between. The pitch is simple — this is the only place in the world you could see this show.
How did the Shania Twain booking come together?
I wanted Shania in there years ago — I had been chasing agents Rob Light and Marc Dennis at CAA forever trying to get her. She would later go through some changes in management and, in 2010, I got a call from her new manager Jason Owen to sit down and discuss the show.
You’ve spread the residency model to other AEG properties including The Joint at the Hard Rock. What’s different?
The runs are shorter, and we seek out the great production pieces from their past tours. Motley Crue has an incredible drum machine that rises 360 degrees with Tommy Lee on it. We’re using stuff that’s been sitting in warehouses to create great moments for the band.
Has it changed the way you think about the business model?
From a financial standpoint, it’s about creating a high net situation out of this experience — and then it’s about how much money can you take out of the market? A guy like Elton John could sell out the MGM Grand Garden Arena twice a year and make $1 million per show. Or he can play 50 shows a year and, while he’ll make only a third of that per night, he’s still making $15 million in a market where he normally makes $2 million.
The money is really that big?
Oh yeah. We gross $600,000 to $750,000 per night when that building is humming. The only time I drop in the rankings is when I’ve got to take someone out and move a new production in. I don’t have that now for the next two years with the four artists and Jerry Seinfeld booked for the building. We can turn over shows in a day, that’s very easy. By 2015 or 2016, I’ll have to mount a new artist and go dark for a few weeks. The property hates it when we go dark.
How did you weather the economic recession?
At the end of 2008, we did get nailed. We didn’t lose money, but we weren’t making what we had year-by-year. It just kind of disappeared. We weathered the storm and things slowly got better. The proof of concept works and I think it can work elsewhere.
Are you happy with how the rest of Las Vegas is dealing with the economic recovery?
Their last evolution has been nightlife entertainment. That’s not necessarily my ticket-buying crowd and makes me question the Britney (Spears) concept [she’s considering a shortterm residency at Caesars Palace] — which, by the way, I’m not involved in. Remember that the people who go to clubs like Pure and The Bank often come six people to a car, all staying in one room and spending the day at the pool, which has become a daytime rave. That’s not really our ticket-buying audience. That’s the New Yorks and the L.A.s. I’m in between New York and L.A. I want the megastars that are just as popular in Des Moines, Iowa, as they are anywhere else.
Will the residency model be your legacy?
No. It’s all about the people working on this thing. Whether it’s the person singing on the microphone or the security guard at the loading dock, everyone has to do their job for this to work. You can’t forget that, and you can’t leave people behind. It’s many talented individuals working together for the collective.
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