It’s been 14 months since the Department of Culture, Media and Sport took evidence about the plight of Grassroots Music Venues.

Between then and now it was agreed by everyone that a voluntary £1 levy would be raised from the ticket sales of any venue with 5000+ capacity and that money would be channeled through the Live Trust and on to music venues, promoters, artists etc.

Yet only 8% of gigs had adopted the levy and that funds would not be paid until February 2026 at the earliest. It was noted that potentially £22M could have been raised if 100% adoption was achieved. So that’s £20M lost in this 92% failure rate.

Lets get down to basics. A significant number of the 5000+ venues are owned or operated by LIVE Nation and tickets for those events are sold via Ticketmaster and it’s subsidiaries. Given that Oasis tickets routinely were charged up to an additional 25% for service fees, facility fees, handling fees plus a per-order charge, the addition of a £1 levy is peanuts. So why are LIVE Nation not stepping up to the plate?

A lot of discussion went on about whether the driver for the levy should start with the Artist, the Manager, the Promoter but it seemed every agreed it should not be the venue or the ticketing agency. Jon Collins (CEO of the Live Trust) said that LIVE Nation were involved in the discussions but you could clearly hear the sound of the eggshells he was walking on, trying not to offend the largest player in the market. Collins went on to say that LIVE Nation were involved through a subsidiary DF Concerts and were working with Mumford & Sons and Pulp.

This lets LIVE Nation off the hook. They’re “playing” at implementing this levy.  They should be fully implementing the levy for all tours from now on. No excuses.

Update (just after I posted this article): Tixel have become the first ticketing company to add the £1 levy to all of their Arena tickets. They are a secondary ticketing company, so there’s likely been no discussion with the artists, agents or promoters. It could be they are trying to curry favour with those that believe secondary ticketing is in the hands of ticket touts, or it could just be a good thing. LIVE Nation should take note. It can be done!

Resources

• Video of the Culture, Media and Sport Committee meeting Tuesday 13th May 2025.
• Transcripts of the Culture, Media and Sport Committee meeting Tuesday 13th May 2025.