Founder/CEO, Messina Touring Group
in terms of its scale and impact, how would you describe 2020 and the current crisis, its impact on your business, and the biggest challenge or challenges our industry faces? Louis Messina: 2020 started off great. Then March came and then, what was that Mellencamp song? “When the walls come tumbling down.” It was a disaster. The live business came to a halt. No one has been working since March. That goes from employees in my office to artists that I work for. Artists at least, have the luxury of creating art. People with no talent, like myself, we do nothing. I create stars. But when the stars can t be on the road… The only upside of this thing, there was a time where I m going, I ve been doing this for 48 years, maybe it s time to start slowing down and having that retirement talk with myself. Maybe I should pass the torch. But one thing that has come out of this is that retirement is nowhere in sight these days. That s the upsid
By: Andy Gensler
2020 will forever have a huge, indelible asterisk beside it. It will serve as a stark reminder that the most challenging year our industry has ever endured was an anomaly, an aberration, a pox on our businesses, one that deviated widely from all norms and can’t end fast enough.
Congratulations to Sir Elton John, whose phenomenal “Farewell Yellow Brick Road Tour” crowned
Pollstar’s Year-End Top 100 Worldwide Tours with $87.1 million grossed from Nov. 30 to March 7. His multi-year trek, which was No. 2 on 2019’s tally with a $212 million gross, is shaping up into something special and will further burnish Sir Elton’s incredible legacy as it continues into 2023. And kudos, too, to the rest of the chart’s Top 10, rounded out by Celine Dion, Trans-Siberian Orchestra, U2, Queen + Adam Lambert, Post Malone, Eagles, Jonas Brothers, Dead & Company and Andrea Bocelli – but for one thing: 2020 .