The National Independent Venue Association released the results of their first survey showing the economic impact of independent venues in each of the 50 states and Washington D.C..
The information categories provided aren’t too different from what you might see if you plug your organization’s numbers into an economic impact calculator like Americans for the Arts’
However, the data they collected is only from entities:
….not controlled by a multinational corporation or a publicly traded company, and their primary
mission is to present live performances to the public. This includes venues, promoters, festivals and more.
Each state either has a notation about the contribution to tourism or profitability. Some of the profitability numbers were interesting to read. For example, apparently only 19% of venues in NY reported being profitable. Most of the other states I clicked around on with this category reported were in the 30%-40% range. The only one that was lower was Vermont at 13%. Nationally, they report 64% of stages were not profitable.
The other thing that each state reported was the operational challenges across the nation. Based on the frequency they were reported they were:
- Marketing and Bringing in An Audience
- Artist costs driving higher artist fees
- Staffing costs
- Inflation
- Monopolies
- Rising Insurance Costs
- Scalping and Reseller Platforms
- Cost of Rent and Mortgage
- Uncapped, unlimited performing rights organization fees
- Decreasing alcohol sales
The second to last one about performing rights organization fees I am guessing may be groups like ASCAP, BMI, SESAC, etc charging high fees for the rights to perform songs. I didn’t see any specific explanation on the page or press release.
Many of these aren’t surprising since it is pretty clear many of these factors are driving up costs. I didn’t expect decreasing alcohol sales to make the top ten list. But that does have a certain logic to it.
