Joe Berchtold: Yeah. Thanks, Brandon.
Michael Rapino: I’ll start, and then you can go in there, Joe.
Joe Berchtold: Yeah.
Michael Rapino: Just let me step on that. I think Brandon you’ve heard us talk about it at our Venue Nation Day. We think we’re in this double win right now. We think we have global scale that will still continue because of international markets and more to come. But we also have an incredible amount of opportunity to monetize the scale we have. And for the first 10 years, we built scale. We just kind of ran the scale. The last couple of years since COVID, we launched our Venue Nation division and really focused hiring up and bringing in new skill sets around hospitality, best-in-class food and beverage, best-in-class VIP clubs, et cetera. We think our amphitheaters are run very well. As I say, they’re run very well like Southwest Airlines.
They’re very efficient, and they’ve been great machines to-date. But we think we’re seeing when we invest capital on site, we’re getting 20%, 30% returns on capital when we turn that grassy area into a VIP club, a membership club. You’re going to see Jones Beach this summer. When you walk up to Jones Beach this summer, at an amphitheater, you’re going to call me and go, now I get it. Now I see what these — the machines could double their AOI when you start to really treat them as arenas have been doing a much better job about how do we upscale on site, elevate the experience and take over. So, we think the 50 amphitheaters we have, the bones of them are amazing. They do incredible job. They’re efficient. We think we can double the business as we start to actually look inside the hood and upgrade on site, whether it’s our Liquid Death idea that has been a huge surge in our food and beverage, our shaker cup, our own custom-branded liquor that we launched on site to our new clubs, we’re rolling out to our VIP boxes, to our elevated.
If you look at our overall amphitheater business, about 9% of it is premium. We think that should be 30% to 35%, to give you kind of macro numbers. If you doubled that overnight, your business would double in the long run. So just take your current house, upgrade it, double your capacity on a VIP business, and your business would double. That’s the simplest way to look at it.
Joe Berchtold: Yeah. And then the other half of it, Brandon, is that’s making more on the shows from the fans that attend. In terms of the volume of shows, right now, with our current portfolio, if you assume typical amp has about four months of activity on average, our utilization rate is running about 35%. So, we still have a fair bit of space that we can put more shows into our amphitheaters. And while we haven’t been growing by leaps and bounds, we are continuing to add an amp here, an amp there, on our hyper-local strategy of continuing to look for more spots that we can put an amphitheater in.
Brandon Ross: Great. Then over the past couple of years, I know Platinum has been a pretty big tailwind for probably both the Ticketmaster business and the Concert’s business. And I was curious how far along you are in the rollout of Platinum ticketing, both in domestic and international? And then, how you expect Platinum to continue to contribute to the growth at both Concerts and Ticketmaster?
Michael Rapino: I’ll start and Joe can jump in. Just think of Platinum as it’s dynamic pricing, right? It’s just pricing smarter. And that’s been a skill that we’ve been — we have a great in-house team who wakes up every day working with artists, agents, managers on this. And it may be as simple as just figuring out how to reprice. Tuesday night in Phoenix is worth different than a Saturday night in LA. So, being a lot smarter the way you can price your inventory, price the front better so the back sells out, price, et cetera. We think if you look at — I’ll give it two kind of ways to look at it. Outside of the US, we’re in the first inning. So, we’re just rolling this out around the world. So that’s the great growth opportunity obviously.
We have it in Europe, but still in infancy stages. We’re going to expand it down to South America, Australia, et cetera. So, first inning on the international business, well received when it gets there. Promoters are anxious for it. Artists are anxious for it, because they see when they sell an arena in Baltimore versus Milan, right now, they look at the grosses and say, “Wow, we’re leaving too much on the table for the scalpers. Let’s price this better.” So that’s our best sales pitch. So, you’re going to see that excel. And I would say on the US business, we’re probably about in the fifth inning. The obvious stuff is done at the top end, some artists on kind of the P1 Platinum. But getting all the way through the business, amphitheaters, the B shows, the C, just dynamically pricing that better and smarter all along the way, we see it happen.
It will increase your [take] (ph) flow and sell-through rate, all the way to the day — time you open the gates up. So, we still think that’s a multi-year opportunity to continue to grow our top-line/bottom-line.
Joe Berchtold: The other way I think about it, Brandon, is that the typical secondary ticket is still almost twice the price of a primary ticket. So, as Michael said, just think of Platinum as being the market priced ticket, artists are going to be more and more saying I want that through the house. I want that to be closer to really take away that scalper margin.
