UK Culture Minister backs progress on ticket levy

UK culture minister Chris Bryant says the live business had made “substantial progress” on a voluntary ticket levy and ruled out the need for government intervention at this stage.

Bryant provided an update to MPs at a meeting of the Culture Media and Sport Committee in parliament this morning (13 May).

The session, which examined the progress made to bolster the grassroots music sector in the UK, heard from a host of industry figures including LIVE CEO Jon Collins, Music Venue Trust (MVT) chief Mark Davyd, AEG Presents UK boss Steve Homer, Featured Artists Coalition (FAC) CEO David Martin, the National Arenas Association’s Nancy Skipper and Marit Berning of the Music Managers Forum (MMF).

UK trade body LIVE announced last month that its LIVE Trust has garnered over £500,000 (€587k) in pledges since its launch in January. The Trust receives funding from a voluntary contribution of £1 per ticket from arena and stadium shows with a capacity of over 5,000, with the funds going to support the grassroots ecosystem.

Artists including Pulp, Diana Ross, Mumford and Sons and Hans Zimmer have pledged ticket contributions from their UK tours.

While Bryant told CMS chair Caroline Dinenage that he’d “prefer us to have achieved a lot more by now”, he added: “We hoped to make substantial progress by the first quarter of 2025 and we have made substantial progress. 

“We’ve said that we want it to be a voluntary levy because it’s quicker to achieve – anything that has to require statute takes forever and a day. I don’t know when the next King’s Speech is going to be, so I don’t know when we would be able to legislate.”

“We’re very clear that we would [implement legislation] if this weren’t to be proceeding – but it is proceeding”

He added: “We’re very clear that we would [implement legislation] if this weren’t to be proceeding – but it is proceeding. We’ve got to where I hope we would get to by now. I’d like us to go a bit faster over the next phase. I’d like more people to sign up. I understand that obviously lots of people who are performing now came to their arrangements 18 months, two years ago, about their tour, but there are lots of people who are thinking about touring now.”

The Labour MP and LIVE jointly wrote to CMS ahead of the evidence session, reporting that the industry had made “tangible progress” since the government backed the levy in its response to the committee’s report last November, albeit, they recognised there was “further to go to deliver widespread levy adoption and distribution of funds through the LIVE Trust”.

“By now, if we’d not been able to write to you jointly yesterday to say where we’d got to, I would have been very cross, and I would be saying, ‘Right, well, I’m looking at legislation, can we start drafting it?'” said Bryant. “But we’ve not got there, and I’m very optimistic that this is going to work. I think it’s been a good idea. I think there’s lots of goodwill behind it in the industry, and I think a lot of artists and their management companies will sign up in fairly short order.”

Bryant added that there were “some things that we’ve still got to overcome”, including getting the charity “completely up and running, because it’s not just about the money coming in, it’s about the money going out”.

“But honestly, I have been impressed by how we’re getting there,” he said. “Are there people who could do a bit more? I think Live Nation might want to step up a bit more. They’re a very, very big player in this world… But I just want everybody who’s considering a big tour in the UK in the next year or so to sign up, and then I think we’ll have millions of pounds going to smaller grassroots venues.”

Asked if receiving £1 million in pledges was a realistic goal for the Trust before the end of 2025, Bryant replied: “I’d prefer to see more than a million by the end of the year, partly because I want to see more tours happening in the UK.

“I hope that some money might be going out before the end of the year, but I don’t want to hurry them so fast that the Trust ends up losing trust, if you see what I mean, because I think that that will be counterproductive in the in the long term.”

“It places a burden on artists… They’re either criticised for potentially increasing ticket prices or they’re criticised for not supporting the grassroots”

Earlier in the two and a half hour meeting, MVT chief Davyd lamented that “too many people in the industry” saw the levy as some sort of charitable donation.

“It’s not charitable, it’s simple R&D,” he said. “And the way the music industry is conducted now, we don’t have enough commitment to R&D in the live side… Other countries are getting this right.”

Martin, meanwhile, said the FAC, which penned a joint open letter with the MMF last year calling for a blanket ticket levy, believed “what we have right now is a system of artist-led donations, not a levy”. He noted that “about 8%” of UK shows above 5,000-cap that had gone on sale since November had implemented a donation.

“The problem we have with an artist-led system of donations is two-fold,” he said. “It’s unpredictable, and we don’t have the right amount. We don’t have the maximum amount of money coming in to support the grassroots, but additionally, it places a burden on artists… They’re either criticised for potentially increasing ticket prices or they’re criticised for not supporting the grassroots.”

Speaking after the session, MMF CEO Annabella Coldrick said an “incredible” amount of work had gone on behind the scenes to get the LIVE Trust up and running.

“But now that it’s operational, and with distribution mechanisms like the FAC’s UK Artist Touring fund – backed by the MMF – being developed in parallel, it’s imperative that the entire industry can come together quickly and ramp up the investment into grassroots touring,” she said. “If that momentum can’t be achieved on a voluntary basis, then we urge the government to legislate and make the contribution mandatory.”

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