Selling out a stadium is the easy part. That sounds backwards, I know. But after producing live events in one of the fastest-growing entertainment markets in Latin America, I can tell you the real work starts long before tickets go on sale, and it continues long after the crowd goes home.
The US Times just published a feature on Costa Rica’s live entertainment boom and how my team operates inside it. You can read the full feature for the complete picture, but here’s what stood out to me.
The piece opens with our sold-out Grupo Firme concert at Estadio Nacional. From the floor, it looked like a celebration. From our office, it looked like logistics: schedules, contracts, contingency plans, and settlement math. That contrast is the entire story of this market.
Anyone with money can book an act for one night. Whether there’s a real business underneath depends on everything around the booking: ticketing, venue relationships, security, vendors, and a financial model that works before a deposit is ever wired. As I told the reporter, creativity brings ideas to life, but systems make them sustainable. In a market this young, that discipline decides who’s still producing shows three years from now.
A stadium show incurs high fixed costs and has exactly one night to recoup them. Rain, an artist scheduling problem, a bad currency month, and a promising date become a loss. So we stopped asking every show to win on its own. Strong dates carry the occasional miss. And if the plan was made in peace, you don’t change it in panic.
Here’s the part most promoters overlook: what happens between shows matters more than the shows themselves. We collect audience data, segment it, and retarget it with the same discipline that runs e-commerce. It sounds unromantic for a concert business. It’s also why second and third productions sell out while everyone else starts from zero.
If you’ve ever wondered what separates the operators who survive a boom from the ones who disappear when it cools, this piece breaks it down better than I could here.
Read the full article on The US Times →
Booms don’t reward the people who show up for the moment. They reward the people who build for what comes after it.
