Live Nation (LYV) Q3 2026 Earnings Call: Attendance Tops 60M

Live Nation Entertainment (LYV) highlighted record-scale attendance, broad international growth and stronger Ticketmaster momentum during its Q3 2026 earnings call. Management also reiterated full-year AOI growth expectations while flagging venue preopening costs and business-mix effects.

Key Takeaways

• Q3 concert attendance exceeded 60 million, increasing almost 20% year over year.
• International attendance rose 29%, with Latin America, Europe and Asia each growing at least 15%.
• Stadium shows generated more than half of global fan growth, while September was Live Nation’s largest amphitheater month in North America.
• Management now expects full-year attendance to approach 180 million, supported by higher sell-through, fewer cancellations and stronger stadium volume.
• Ticketmaster added more than 20 million net new tickets from new clients year to date, primarily in international markets.
• Live Nation reiterated double-digit full-year concerts AOI growth and raised its Ticketmaster outlook to high-single-digit AOI growth.

Key Financial and Operating Data

Business and Operating Performance

Concert growth was geographically broad. North American amphitheaters performed well, with September becoming the company’s largest amphitheater month. International attendance increased 29%, and every major international region cited by management delivered at least 15% growth.

Stadiums accounted for more than half of global fan growth. In North America, part of the increase reflected later event timing as Live Nation managed logistics around the World Cup. Management also said stadium volume finished stronger than initially expected.

Ticketmaster benefited directly from higher concert attendance, which accounted for 95% of its growth. The business also added more than 20 million net new tickets from clients year to date. Major Q3 on-sales for Harry Style, Bruno Mars, Oasis and Metallica provided momentum for 2027.

Venue Nation is expected to host about 75 million fans worldwide in 2026. Management said operated and third-party venues made broadly comparable contributions to overall fan growth, although operated venues generate higher profit and margin per fan. Recently opened U.S. amphitheaters, acquired European arenas, premium offerings and sponsorship sales all performed well.

Management Guidance

Management expects full-year concert attendance to approach 180 million. The increase reflects higher sell-through rates, lower cancellation rates and stronger stadium volume than anticipated at the beginning of the year.

Live Nation reiterated its expectation for double-digit concerts AOI growth in 2026. Ticketmaster’s full-year AOI growth outlook was increased to the high-single-digit range, supported by concert demand, client additions and stronger sports performance offsetting expected pressure in secondary ticketing.

The company plans to provide more detail at its Investor Day on Venue Nation openings, venue investment, preopening costs, capital deployment, partner funding and expected returns.

Risks and Areas to Watch

Venue expansion is increasing preopening costs in 2026, and management expects those costs to continue ramping over the next couple of years.

Business mix also affects profitability. Stadium events generally carry higher ticket prices but lower margins, while fans attending Live Nation-operated venues generate higher margins than those at third-party venues.

Prepaid advertising expense was up double digits through Q3. Management said year-end write-offs for marketing tied to tours already on sale for 2027 would affect Q4 results.

Ticketmaster had previously expected pressure on secondary ticketing as enforcement increased. That headwind has not emerged for the full year because stronger sports performance provided an offset.

Analyst Q&A Highlights

Analysts focused heavily on the profitability of Venue Nation’s expansion. Management emphasized that operated venues deliver better per-fan economics, but stadium mix and rising preopening costs must be included when assessing AOI growth.

On the higher attendance outlook, management attributed the revision to stronger sell-through, fewer cancellations and better-than-expected stadium volume. These factors can add millions of fans relative to initial plans.

Questions about venue acquisition closings and the partner-funded portion of venue capital expenditure were deferred to the upcoming Investor Day, where management plans to explain deployment, ownership shares and return implications in greater detail.

Full Earnings Call Transcript

Complete Earnings Call Transcript

Management Remarks

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.

Question-and-Answer Session

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.