Dave Matthews Band was the top grossing touring act of the last decade, with $500+ million in gross ticket sales and 11+ million tickets sold.  Instead of touring as usual this year, DMB is playing four 3-day, multi-artist festivals.  While an increasing # of artists have been putting on their own festivals, it’s notable given that DMB is such a big draw on the road.  

So what does this have to do with Live Nation?  Well, in 2010, Live Nation promoted 56 of DMB’s 61 shows, with a tour gross of $61 million and 1+ million tickets.  As most of those shows took place in Live Nation venues, those 1 million people generated ancillary income for LN (parking, concessions, etc) as well as ticketing fees (most, if not all, of the shows would have been ticketed thru Ticketmaster).  

In 2011, DMB’s Caravan Festival will hit 4 venues: Bader Field (Atlantic City), Govenor’s Island (NYC), Lakeside (Chicago) and The Gorge (George, WA).  Bader Field has a 60k+ capacity and the other venues are on the 20k-25k range.  Tickets are priced at $65/day.  

Of the 4 venues, only the Gorge is a Live Nation venue.  So rather than Live Nation promoting the majority of its tour, DMB will be in control and able to ticket the festivals themselves (except for the Gorge - since it’s a LN venue its ticketed thru Ticketmaster).

Based on the venue capacities, DMB could be able to sell 350k+ tickets this summer, and could gross $25 million - before factoring in VIP packages, travels packages, concessions, etc.  Based on 12 days (3 days X 4 festivals), that’s $2 million+ per day (about 2x what they grossed last year per show, of course they have a talent bill to pay this year).

This year is the band’s 20th anniversary, so perhaps this is a one-off deal and next year they’ll be back on the road as normal.  But it’s certainly possible that the band may prefer being in control - of the ticketing, the overall experience, etc.  Fans may not want to travel as far each year, but there’s no reason DMB couldn’t expand the concept to more cities over time - the key is finding non-traditional venues not controlled by LN.  This could be a much better business model for DMB that allows them to control the overall fan experience from end-to-end and takes LN (largely) out of the equation.  Of course, that’s the strategy espoused by Live Nation - being able to control the fan experience from start to finish.  It just seems that DMB (and their team) is much credible when they make that promise.