Live Nation (LYV) Q3 2026 Earnings Call: Besucherzahl übersteigt 60 Mio.

Live Nation Entertainment (LYV) hob im Rahmen der Telefonkonferenz zu den Ergebnissen des dritten Quartals 2026 Rekordbesucherzahlen, ein breites internationales Wachstum und eine stärkere Dynamik bei Ticketmaster hervor. Die Unternehmensführung bekräftigte zudem ihre Erwartungen für das AOI-Wachstum im Gesamtjahr, wies jedoch gleichzeitig auf Vorbereitungskosten für Neueröffnungen von Spielstätten sowie auf Mix-Effekte im Geschäft hin.

Wichtigste Erkenntnisse

• Die Besucherzahl bei Konzerten überstieg im dritten Quartal 60 Millionen, was einem Anstieg von fast 20 % im Jahresvergleich entspricht.
• Die internationalen Besucherzahlen stiegen um 29 %, wobei Lateinamerika, Europa und Asien jeweils ein Wachstum von mindestens 15 % verzeichneten.
• Stadionkonzerte machten mehr als die Hälfte des weltweiten Fanzuwachses aus, während der September für Live Nation der besucherstärkste Amphitheater-Monat in Nordamerika war.
• Das Management rechnet für das Gesamtjahr nun mit einer Besucherzahl von nahezu 180 Millionen, gestützt auf höhere Abverkaufsquoten, weniger Absagen und ein höheres Volumen bei Stadionkonzerten.
• Ticketmaster erzielte seit Jahresbeginn netto mehr als 20 Millionen neue Tickets von Neukunden, vor allem auf internationalen Märkten.
• Live Nation bekräftigte für das Gesamtjahr ein zweistelliges AOI-Wachstum im Konzertbereich und hob die Prognose für das AOI-Wachstum von Ticketmaster auf den hohen einstelligen Prozentbereich an.

Wichtige Finanz- und Betriebsdaten

Geschäftliche und operative Entwicklung

Das Wachstum im Konzertgeschäft war geografisch breit aufgestellt. Die nordamerikanischen Amphitheater entwickelten sich positiv, wobei der September für das Unternehmen der besucherstärkste Amphitheater-Monat überhaupt war. Die internationalen Besucherzahlen stiegen um 29 %, und jede von der Unternehmensführung erwähnte wichtige internationale Region verzeichnete ein Wachstum von mindestens 15 %.

Auf Stadien entfiel mehr als die Hälfte des weltweiten Fanzuwachses. In Nordamerika spiegelte ein Teil des Anstiegs eine spätere Terminierung von Veranstaltungen wider, da Live Nation die Logistik rund um die Fußball-Weltmeisterschaft koordinierte. Das Management gab zudem an, dass das Stadionvolumen am Ende stärker ausfiel als ursprünglich erwartet.

Ticketmaster profitierte unmittelbar von den höheren Konzertbesucherzahlen, auf die 95 % des Wachstums entfielen. Zudem verzeichnete das Segment seit Jahresbeginn netto mehr als 20 Millionen Tickets von neuen Kunden. Wichtige Vorverkäufe im dritten Quartal für Harry Styles, Bruno Mars, Oasis und Metallica sorgten für zusätzlichen Schwung für 2027.

Venue Nation wird 2026 voraussichtlich rund 75 Millionen Fans weltweit begrüßen. Nach Angaben der Unternehmensführung leisteten selbst betriebene Spielstätten und Spielstätten Dritter weitgehend vergleichbare Beiträge zum gesamten Fanzuwachs, wenngleich selbst betriebene Spielstätten einen höheren Gewinn und eine höhere Marge pro Fan abwerfen. Kürzlich eröffnete US-Amphitheater, übernommene europäische Arenen, Premium-Angebote und Sponsoring-Erlöse zeigten allesamt eine starke Entwicklung.

Prognose der Unternehmensführung

Die Unternehmensführung rechnet für das Gesamtjahr mit einer Konzertbesucherzahl von nahezu 180 Millionen. Dieser Anstieg resultiert aus höheren Abverkaufsquoten, niedrigeren Ausfallquoten und einem höheren Stadionvolumen als zu Jahresbeginn angenommen.

Live Nation bekräftigte seine Erwartung eines zweistelligen AOI-Wachstums im Konzertbereich für 2026. Die Prognose für das AOI-Wachstum von Ticketmaster im Gesamtjahr wurde auf den hohen einstelligen Prozentbereich angehoben, gestützt durch die Nachfrage nach Konzerten, Neukundengewinne und ein stärkeres Sportgeschäft, was den erwarteten Druck im Zweitmarkt-Ticketing ausglich.

Das Unternehmen beabsichtigt, an seinem Investorentag ausführlichere Einzelheiten zu den Eröffnungen von Venue Nation, den Investitionen in Spielstätten, den Vorbereitungskosten, dem Kapitaleinsatz, den Partnerfinanzierungen sowie den erwarteten Renditen vorzulegen.

Risiken und Beobachtungsschwerpunkte

Der Ausbau der Spielstätten führt 2026 zu höheren Vorbereitungskosten für Neueröffnungen, und das Management rechnet damit, dass diese Kosten in den nächsten beiden Jahren weiter anziehen werden.

Auch der Geschäftsmix beeinflusst die Rentabilität. Stadion-Events weisen im Allgemeinen höhere Ticketpreise, aber niedrigere Margen auf, während Besucher in von Live Nation betriebenen Spielstätten höhere Margen generieren als in Veranstaltungsorten Dritter.

Die vorausbezahlten Werbeaufwendungen wuchsen bis zum dritten Quartal zweistellig. Wie das Management mitteilte, werden Abschreibungen zum Jahresende auf Marketingausgaben für Tourneen, deren Vorverkauf für 2027 bereits läuft, das Ergebnis des vierten Quartals belasten.

Ticketmaster hatte zuvor infolge verstärkter behördlicher Durchsetzung Gegenwind im Bereich des Ticket-Sekundärmarkts erwartet. Dieser Gegenwind hat sich im Gesamtjahr jedoch nicht eingestellt, da die stärkere Entwicklung im Sportsegment für einen Ausgleich sorgte.

Höhepunkte der Fragerunde für Analysten

Die Analysten richteten ihr Augenmerk vor allem auf die Rentabilität der Expansion von Venue Nation. Die Unternehmensführung hob hervor, dass selbst betriebene Spielstätten pro Fan eine bessere Wirtschaftlichkeit bieten, der Stadionmix und die steigenden Voreröffnungskosten bei der Beurteilung des AOI-Wachstums jedoch berücksichtigt werden müssen.

In Bezug auf die angehobene Besucherprognose begründete das Management die Anpassung mit besseren Abverkaufsquoten, weniger Absagen und einem über den Erwartungen liegenden Stadionvolumen. Durch diese Faktoren können im Vergleich zu den ursprünglichen Planungen Millionen zusätzlicher Fans hinzukommen.

Fragen zum Vollzug von Übernahmen von Spielstätten und zum partnerfinanzierten Anteil an den Investitionsausgaben für Venues wurden auf den bevorstehenden Investorentag verschoben, an dem die Unternehmensführung den Kapitaleinsatz, die Eigentumsanteile und die Auswirkungen auf die Rendite eingehender erläutern will.

Vollständiges Transkript der Telefonkonferenz

Vollständiges Transkript der Telefonkonferenz

Ausführungen des Managements

Operator

Good afternoon. My name is John, and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to Live Nation's Third Quarter 2026 Earnings Call.

I would now like to turn the call over to Ms. Yong. Thank you, Ms. Yong. You may begin your conference.

Amy Yong

Good afternoon, and welcome to the Live Nation Third Quarter 2026 Earnings Conference Call. Joining us today is our President and CEO, Michael Rapino; and our President and CFO, Joe Berchtold.

We would like to remind you that this afternoon's call will contain certain forward-looking statements that are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ, including statements related to the company's anticipated financial performance, business prospects, new developments and similar matters. Please refer to Live Nation's SEC filings, including the risk factors and cautionary statements included in the company's most recent filings on Forms 10-K, 10-Q and 8-K for a description of risks and uncertainties that could impact the actual results.

Live Nation will also refer to some non-GAAP measures on this call. In accordance with the SEC Regulation G, Live Nation has provided definitions of these measures and a full reconciliation to the most comparable GAAP measures in our earnings release. The release reconciliation can be found under the Financial Information section on Live Nation's website.

With that, we will now take your questions. Operator?

Operator

[Operator Instructions] And the first question comes from the line of David Karnovsky with JPMorgan.

Fragen und Antworten

David Karnovsky

Joe, I wanted to see if you could unpack the Q3 result a bit. It looks like fan count came in even higher than expected. So can you give some color on where you saw that added growth and how it flowed to concerts and ticketing AOI? And can you also just remind us of any preopening expense growth in the quarter?

Joe Berchtold

Thanks, David. Yes, great quarter for concerts with attendance of over $60 million. I think the first time we've had that level of attendance, up almost 20%. Both North America and international doing well. International, in particular, was up 29% in every one of the regions. So Latin America, Europe, Asia, all up at least 15%. So we're seeing consistently strong performance globally. In North America, we had a very good amphitheater, including September being our largest amphitheater month overall.

And then globally, it was a very big stadium quarter. Stadiums drove over half of the global fan growth, up measurably in both North America and internationally. North America, a chunk of that being the timing that we've talked about before, where the stadium timing this year was a bit later than it was in previous years, just given how we had to manage the logistics around the World Cup. So overall, excellent, and that obviously flowed through to the ticketing business. Ticketing business, 95% of their growth was from concerts. So certainly benefited from the great attendance that we had at our shows.

Operator

And the next question comes from the line of Stephen Laszczyk with Goldman Sachs.

Stephen Laszczyk

Joe and Michael, maybe just digging a bit deeper into the growth at Ticketmaster. It's come in a bit better than expectations over the course of this year. I think you're now calling out high single-digit AOI growth for the full year. Just would be curious if you could talk more about the strength you're seeing play out this year, the durability of those trends and then ultimately, how you would expect to close out the year for Ticketmaster.

Joe Berchtold

Sure. I'll get that started. So first of all, better than expected even in terms of the fan growth in our concert business, which we've now guided towards close to $180 million. So that obviously supports the Ticketmaster business. Ticketmaster has also continued to add a number of clients, particularly internationally with over 20 million net new tickets so far this year. So that continues to perform well. We had flagged a year or so ago that we thought that there was likely to be some headwinds on the secondary side as we really continue to increase the enforcement on the concert secondary, which we expected to reduce that business.

And as we noted, we have some offsets with increased performance on the sports side. So we're not seeing that headwind for the year. So with that, we took up our guidance to now expect high single-digit AOI growth for the year. It's been great year-to-date. Q3 was very strong in part because we had a number of substantial on sales for shows next year, Harry Style, Bruno Mars, Oasis, Metallica, all being substantial on sales in the third quarter. So that's already set us up now with some nice momentum heading into next year.

Operator

And the next question comes from the line of Brandon Ross with LightShed Partners.

Brandon Ross

First, I just wanted to get a clarification or follow-up on David's question and wanted to hone in on the impact of Venue Nation specifically on your concert numbers. There's a lot of moving pieces there. You're acquiring venues, preopening in others, but the O&O fans should be more profitable. How should investors think about how that all nets out at this point in time?

Joe Berchtold

Yes. As you said, Venue Nation is having a great year. We expect to have about 75 million fans attend our venues worldwide. So we're seeing solid growth from that, continued solid growth as well from third-party fans as we're looking at roughly 20 million fan growth overall. So I would say pretty comparable contribution to our overall fan growth from the year. from both operated and non-operated fans. Clearly, the operated fans are higher profitability per fan, higher margin per fan.

When you look at the overall numbers, the couple of pieces you need to take into account with your math are one is the stadium fans because those are the highest priced tickets will tend to be a lower margin. And then preopening costs that we've talked about, which is just as we're ramping up the venue side, these early years this year and for the next couple of years, we're also ramping up preopening costs. So that's -- that all just needs to get put into the math. And as we get into next week in our Investor Day, we'll lay out more for you guys, the ramp of what we expect in terms of the venue fans as well as the investment overall, including the preopening costs over the next few years.

Operator

And the next question comes from the line of Cameron Mansson-Perrone with Morgan Stanley.

Cameron Mansson-Perrone

To follow up on Venue Nation, you've acquired a handful of venues this year. Some of those like Milan, I believe, have closed. But could you give us an update on what's closed and what you're expecting in terms of the timing of acquisition closes across some of these markets like Prague, Paris, Santiago, Copenhagen, for example?

Unknown Executive

I think you all know we have an Investor Day next week. we're trying to get today to anything that you want kind of specific around the quarter. But we're going to take you through a great presentation next week and give you much more detail around Venue Nation, what rolls out, AI impact, all the good things you want to know about the next few years on what we're rolling out to build your model. So we'll see you there next week and give you that detail.

Operator

And the next question comes from the line of Ian Moore with Bernstein Research.

Ian Moore

Just to hone in again on kind of the Venue Nation openings this year in the quarter. You've acquired and obviously opened organically a number of venues. I guess of the ones that are joined this year, still ramping, what's kind of been the biggest, I guess, surprise versus your expectations? And what's driving that? Is it more shows, more spend per fan maybe sponsorship?

Joe Berchtold

I think the main thing that we've seen this year, both of our operated and third party is just the strength of the consumer, right? All year, we've been reading in the press about all the concerns about consumer spending, are they going to keep going to shows? Are they going to keep spending at shows? Will shows close? Will they go on sale well? And we are absolutely seeing continued strong consumer demand globally in all these venues. And you look at some of the amphitheaters we opened here in the U.S., had just about a full slate of shows, performed very well. Premium did well, continue to see strength there, the few arenas we've acquired in Europe, all of them doing well. sponsorship sales on the B2B side continuing to do well. So I wouldn't call out any one of them as being particular, but I would just note the continued strong dynamics on all of the venues.

Operator

And the next question comes from the line of Kutgun Maral with Evercore ISI.

Kutgun Maral

I had a follow-up on concerts where you had a really strong quarter. If I look at the first 9 months of the year, concerts AOI is up about 4%. So your outlook for double-digit growth implies that the fourth quarter loss narrows by at least $30 million or so versus last year, and I imagine it will narrow meaningfully more than that. I guess with fans now approaching $180 million for the year, that implies about 12% fan growth in Q4. Can you help unpack the main drivers of the implied AOI improvement a bit more for the next quarter?

Joe Berchtold

Yes. I think we've said a number of things over the course of the year. I think we got into a pretty good detail over the first couple of quarters explaining what was going on with the results for each of those quarters and how we saw the full year playing out. I think we've been consistent that we expected to see AOI growth for the full year in concerts hitting double digits. And we reiterated that today. So no change in that overall expectation. I laid out earlier some of the puts and takes that we have. Very strong overall fan growth, strong in both venues we operate as well as third-party venues. The margin and per fan economics can get impacted what type of venue it is sometimes, but I think we've given you the pieces there. And then we've also given you the preopening costs.

The last piece that I would note as being an impact is the marketing expense that gets written off for prepaid advertising at the end of the year. We noted here that through the third quarter, that was up double digits. So you can assume the very good news that our fourth quarter gets impacted by prepaid advertising for tours that are on sale and performing well next year. So that's the best problem in the world to have.

Operator

And our final question comes from the line of Steven Cahall with Wells Fargo.

Steven Cahall

So just wanted to understand the upgrade to fan count growth, I think it's about 3% above what you'd guided to before. Is that upside from your expectation that you're all seeing in the second half? Or is it more that as you've gotten visibility into the year, you're more comfortable upgrading that? Just trying to understand how the business is performing versus your expectation as we roll into next year and if you feel like you have incremental momentum? And then just a housekeeping one, how do we think about the partner share of venue CapEx flowing through the cash flow statement in 2026?

Joe Berchtold

So on the upgrade to the expected attendance, I think it's number one thing as the shows are just consistently doing well. So our sell-through rate is higher this year than it was last year. Our cancellation rate is lower. At the start of the year, we probably would have been planning for those to be in line. So for those to outperform at our business, that can account for millions of incremental fans. I think we've ended up stronger on our stadium volume than we thought early in the year, given what we had to manage through with the World Cup here in the U.S., those would be your 2 largest factors that would have driven the increase.

In terms of how we're managing all of the economics, why don't we save that one for Investor Day, so we can go through in more detail and make sure we're answering all the questions on how the capital is being deployed and what pieces of it are ours versus partners. And what the implications that has for IRRs and rates that we're seeing every year.

Operator

Thank you. And that concludes the question-and-answer session, and that also concludes today's teleconference. We thank you for your participation. You may disconnect your lines at this time.