Live Nation Entertainment, Inc. (NYSE:LYV) Q2 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

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Michael Rapino: We have 900 different sponsor brands. Every category you can imagine is fairly distributed evenly. So we haven’t seen any sector pullback that has affected any of the core business overall. We’ve always said, we believe that our business is a — it is a much less of an investment than a lot of the other TV and big campaign investments that brands make, it’s a much more targeted approach. So we’ve seen more brands shift some of their dollars from the other categories to the event space where they can kind of get that direct consumer interaction that they can’t maybe get on digital and elsewhere. So we’ve seen most sectors increase their spend in our category. It’s been growing, and we’ve been growing with it. We think that trend is going to stay because as they’re all trying to figure out how to connect with consumers in a digital world, we in sports live, give them that one opportunity to hit consumers at scale on a Thursday in Pittsburgh.

So we think we’re going to see more growth in our category.

Operator: And the next question comes from the line of Cameron Mansoon-Perrone with Morgan Stanley. Please proceed with your question.

Cameron Mansson-Perrone: Two, if I can. The increase in accretion expectations for the year that you call in the release connected with OCESA, imply that the performance there is pacing pretty well above your expectations earlier in the year. Can you talk a little bit about what specifically has been outperforming with OCESA? And then more generally, in terms of Latin America, it’s obviously been a focus for you guys. Do you feel like now with kind of touch points in Mexico, Brazil, Colombia, that you’re in a position where you can kind of expand to the rest of that region organically? Or are there other kind of individual markets where it might make more sense to penetrate through M&A? Thanks.

Michael Rapino: We think the — kind of our global playbook has always been the same. We enter most of these markets, low cost, maybe a bolt-on promoter or festival. We end up having enough content that we can bring the tour to the market, and then we build up the flywheel once we get to that market. So in Brazil, we’ve got Rock In Rio, an incredible festival foundation. We now have a great touring business there, bringing artists to the ground. We’ve launched our sponsorship business there, and now we’ve just launched ticketing there. So I think it’s a great combination. We’ll see a continual growth in Latin America, Brazil, a big year and Argentina is crazy as the market is on ticket sales. We like the entire market down there. So you’ll see us organically grow. We’ve always been a predominantly organic-driven business and then we’ll use continual bolt-ons to keep powering and doubling up on our efforts there.

Cameron Mansson-Perrone: How about on OCESA and what’s driven that outperformance?

Joe Berchtold: I mean that spend across the board. I think on their concert side, we’ve done well in terms of starting to get shows on our dream platform down to Mexico. Latin artists are clearly on fire. So they’ve got very, very strong set of regional shows they’ve been doing. Their festival business is doing great. We’ve worked with them to get the ticketing platform enhanced and that’s continuing to perform very well, and they’ve been bringing in sponsors. So it’s really across all elements of their business, I would say, has well outperformed relative to what we thought when we acquired them or even when we thought 6 months ago, 9 months ago or now this year would be.

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