The Live NationPower 100 team, from left: Wavra, Russell Wallach (No. 43), Fogel (No. 26), Zedeck, Rapino (No. 2), O’Connell, Roux, Jared Smith (No. 43), and Campana. (Smallz + Raskind)
Live Nation has reported another record quarter, earning $3.21 billion on a constant currency basis in the third quarter, a 23 percent increase year-over-year. Constant currency operating income stands at $190.8 million for the quarter, a 24 percent increase year-over-year. Stock was up 3.21 percent as of this writing in after-hours trading.
The company sold 28 million tickets across 6,162 events of its own, and sold 42.5 million tickets overall. Broken down by region, international events actually dropped, from 1,467 in Q3 2015 to 1,207 this past quarter — meaning all gains were in North America, where it threw an additional 517 events year-over-year.
Besides events, Ticketmaster was the largest contributor to the company bottom line, bringing in $460.3 million at constant currency. The company estimates it will have moved 70 million tickets by year’s end. Notably, the company says installations of the Ticketmaster app were up 44 percent across all of this year, and that mobile ticket sales accounted for 27 percent of ticket sales.
A dramatic lawsuit against Live Nation from Songkick, a ticketing platform, brought earlier this year accused the company of leveraging its dominant position in the marketplace to bury its direct-to-fan ticket sales, echoing an earlier suit from a single band.
The company has also been aggressively acquiring companies over the past two years; Austin City Limits organizer C3 in 2014, Governor’s Ball this year and Bonnaroo co-founder AC Entertainment just weeks ago (after purchasing that marquee festival outright in mid-2015).
By Andrew Flanagan
[Thank you to Alex Teitz, http://www.femmusic.com, for contributing this article.]