After the good news about a future Covid19 vaccine, new optimistic predictions are still coming. This time it’s the industry giant Live Nation that is planning for a return to “full-scale” events by next summer.
According to the company CEO Michael Rapino, Live Nation is developing new ways and measures that will allow big events to take place. This will include strict sanitary measures at the venues in addition to more flexible ticket policies for the fans. These new policies may include presenting a recent negative Covid19 test to access the festival or event.
These announcements came just after Live Nation announced its 2020 third-quarter results. The company lost 95.1%of its revenues – compared to the same quarter last year – due to the ongoing Covid crisis.
However, the results were still better if we compare them to the previous quarter. This is mainly due to new event formats taking place, such as live streams and drive-in shows. In addition, tickets for the summer 2021 events are already going fast. EDC Las Vegas tickets are already soldout for example.
“Our expectations for a robust outdoor summer season in 2021 are also reinforced by the two-thirds of fans keeping their tickets for cancelled festivals so they can go to next year’s show, along with strong early ticket sales for festivals in the UK next summer.”
Michael Rapino
Keeping it Realistic
Live Nation seems therefore to be getting ready for 2021 with well-known measures and vaccine hopes that might put back the world into rotation again. However, Live Nation CEO remins realistic :
“Everyone [that] has been affected by this understands the world’s going to start differently and it’s going to require a slower ramp up,”
Michael Rapino
He adds, “Let’s see how the next few months go through testing and vaccines and in a proper national plan, etc. We’re telling any artist that has a new tour [or] that’s thinking of going on the road: ‘Let’s look at the fall [2021], but we don’t need to make those decisions until January [or] February.’”
So while we might be at the start of the end, 2021 will most probably be very far from what we knew before the Covid crisis.