In just over two weeks, the curtains will close on a year made peculiar by the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. One of the markets most heavily impacted by the crisis is live events, which a new Pollstar report estimates lost more than $30 billion globally in 2020.
The “Pollstar 2020 Year-End Special,” as it’s titled, extrapolates Q1 box office tallies to venture a guess at what industrywide earnings would have looked at in the absence of the pandemic. The first three months of the year saw 10.92% growth over the same period in 2019 – but soon after, restrictions imposed to curb the spread of the novel coronavirus signaled a trend in the opposite direction.
Box office sales were projected to hit $12.2 billion in 2020, but instead losses of $9.7 billion were posted. Revenue from the top 100 tours totaled $1.2 billion – $3.3 billion less than the figure reported in 2019. Ticket counts for the same tours dropped by 77%, likely owing to the impacts of social distancing guidelines on attendance.
2021 shows more promise, as onsite rapid testing and a recently approved COVID-19 vaccine give organizers a light at the end of the tunnel. Health experts don’t expect enough people to be vaccinated for live events to resume until summer at the earliest, however.
Read Pollstar‘s full analysis of the live events industry in 2020 here.
