The Potential Within The Promoting Industry

Early in the week we had this assignment as part of our Finance course in the Master’s program where we had to research a company through its financial history. Since I’m into the promoting industry I obviously chose to research Live Nation Entertainment, of which BTW I’m a huge fan.

For those who don’t know, LN operates in four main businesses within the entertainment industry including the most commonly known, live concert promoting. They provide artist management and artist services, ticketing services and solutions through Ticketmaster, which they also own, and venue management that is possible because of the several venues they also own. According to Yahoo Finance (2011), “as of December 31, 2009, the company owned, operated, or leased 85 entertainment venues and 47 other facilities, including office leases in North America; and 27 entertainment venues and 32 facilities internationally” (¶ 1).

Live Nation has grown so much that it even turned into a publicly traded company and I consider this to be a huge success for them especially for being a promoter. I mean, you don’t see every day many promoters turn into a publicly traded company generating an annual revenue in sales of $5,063,748 every. I also believe the fact that they have tried to own the entertainment industry as much as they have creating or buying the means necessary to make their business instead of outsourcing the services is also a big value for this company.

While doing this project it reminded me of Richard Branson and Virgin. I follow Richard through my Personal Learning Networks, he is truly one of my heroes, and I have done several researches on him and his company for this program. After studying them I found these two companies have something in common; they both live from the entertainment industry although operating in different segments and they both have aimed their goals very high and have been successful; they think big. And that is something I feel related with.

How the Market Influences the Promoting Industry in Venezuela

Being from Venezuela at this time of the history is hard to conceive a business plan that could work there, especially for young people like me. The situation is very complex and weird because although it’s hard sometimes things do work.

The promoting industry in especial has a high opportunity to be successful because Venezuelans are very consumerism and fashion driven. The population might be struggling to get ends meet but still you will see everyone with the latest mobile phone, the latest car, the airport stuffed with people leaving for vacations, you will see the same people partying every weekend and spending a lot in new outfits, for such night outs, and drinks, and so on. For this reason products are easily placed in the market and are highly promoted with a lot of creative events when they are released making corporate promotions a good spot of work if you have an excellent sales team.

On the other hand, the concert promoting thing is quite different. It’s a small country with a small population, compared to others. So unless promoters present current and modern artists, especially the ones the young population is listening to, or maybe an older one but legendary, the sales are destined to be doomed because there is not enough audience. This combined with the monetary fact, the cost and the production of the event of an artist that you are certain it’s not going to be an100% sold out, the results will be negative.

The reason why I talk about this and have this point of view is because I worked within the two major promoters there and it was very clear that when they didn’t play it safe the event never did well having as consequence poor sales, a waste of money, time and man power. That’s just the way it is there.  In order to have a balanced finance in the promoting industry in this country is better to play it safe; stick with the hot artists and trends.