From Lana Del Rey to Beyoncé and Kendrick Lamar, the UK has already hosted a series of gigantic outdoor gigs this year. Having already played six Wembley Stadium shows on their Music of the Spheres tour in 2022, Coldplay are bringing it back for 10 more later this summer, plus two more in Hull. And now, here come Oasis, playing a total of 17 stadium concerts in Cardiff, Manchester, London and Edinburgh.
These are the kind of figures that get the music industry very excited. Last year, according to UK Music, 23.5m concertgoers spent a total of £10bn in the UK, supporting 72,000 jobs. “Artists are delivering spectacular performances, and there’s nothing like the feeling of being at a live show,” says Denis Desmond, UK and Ireland chair of the massive promoter Live Nation. “We’re seeing a real and sustained boom in outdoor shows, festivals and stadium concerts”.
Certainly, it looks that way. The Guardian has calculated that in London alone this summer, there are at least 100 single-day outdoor shows with a capacity of 15,000 or more, ranging from events in local parks to stadium shows. Festivals and arena shows have always been popular in the UK, but there have never been so many big outdoor gigs.
Industry insiders put the shift down to customer demand. That’s undoubtedly part of it – there are many people who enjoy standing in the sun with thousands of others listening to a selection of acts, but have no desire for it to involve camping in the middle of nowhere. One senior figure in the live industry says the changing nature of the music industry has driven the shift, too – social media and streaming mean many artists are popular enough to play to bigger audiences earlier in their careers, and outdoor shows provide the perfect opportunity.
It’s not just consumer-led, though. Local councils have been actively courting promoters to put on shows in parks, to raise money for local services; stadium operators have been trying to attract more shows (the Rugby Football Union wants to put on more shows each year at Twickenham, up from the three it is currently allowed, to nine next year, 12 in 2027 and 15 in 2028).
Either way, this current glut of shows is so immense that there are those wondering if it can be sustained. All summer, there have been stories of cheap last-minute tickets available on secondary ticketing sites, and Facebook-disseminated offers to shift unsold seats. And while the demand for Oasis tickets might have been enormous, not everyone can be Oasis. At the time of writing, there are seated tickets available in all areas for Catfish and the Bottlemen’s show at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium at the start of August (and plenty for their Cardiff Principality Stadium concert, too). Nor will you have any trouble getting into Post Malone’s two shows at Tottenham. Even at shows billed as sold out, venues don’t appear full – there were many pockets of empty seats when Dua Lipa played the first of two shows at Wembley Stadium.
That’s not necessarily bad news for the artists, who are paid a guaranteed fee, but it is very bad news for promoters, because shows at this scale tend only to break even when 90% of tickets have been sold. And that is where some industry figures sound a note of caution. “I think we’re all surprised at the amount of large-scale events London can sustain,” one says. “Will it continue at this same growth and to the same scale? Only time will tell.” Another says brusquely: “There are certainly a lot this year, and they’re not all doing well.”
Artists, too, are uncertain: the Guardian knows of acts who turned down slots high on stadium show bills this summer, because they were concerned about the reputational damage of playing to a crowd sparse enough to be mocked on social media.
It’s perhaps a measure of industry uncertainty that so few people within live music were willing to talk on the record about this year’s boom, and certainly not to confront the issue of whether sellouts or sparsely attended washouts are likely to shape next summer’s bookings. Desmond, though, remains optimistic. To him, these shows are a chance to build memories: “We’re seeing generations come together – fans who saw the Beatles or the Rolling Stones in the 60s are now attending shows with their children and grandchildren. A connection that only live music can create.”
Nevertheless, whether those younger generations will need the older ones to pay for the incredible cost of a ticket, and whether the live music sector can continue to operate at the scale that it is, remain points of debate in the industry.