LYV
#I think we are doing a good job, at least in this call, of suggesting that we believe we hit ---+ we will repeat history in terms of our growth rate.
So, if you looked at our stock over the last three years and what we have been able to do on a revenue and a cash flow perspective, we see no reason why we can't continue to grow this business at similar rates.
In order to grow, number one is we have an incredible unique business model at this point.
With our scale leveraged across our flywheel, we are able to drive some more concerts, which drives a bigger audience, which drives more sponsors, which drives more ticketing fees.
So, you're really starting to see the flywheel effect of our business.
So how will we grow ticketing.
Both ways you mentioned.
We will continue to be more efficient as our new and improved technology comes to life, and we get to retire our old platform and technology that was much more inefficient, so we will have a per-ticket savings.
Over time, it will continue to drive our savings on that side.
But we still have Ticketmaster on a global basis, and one of the things we've done I think really well at Ticketmaster when we took over is to redefine our business.
Ticketmaster was looked always at a very I think narrow perspective of the business called arenas in America.
We look at ticketing on a global basis, so why we talk about being in 22 countries and growing that, why ---+ we are very excited on secondary to get way ahead of the curve on those other 12 markets outside of America.
So we think we can grow the pie, we can grow our market share within secondary, and grow it on a global basis.
We still think we have a lot of room whether it be in clubs and theaters with TicketWeb, one of our products, whether it's festivals with Front Gate, we still think we have room in a lot of the niches within the industry that we have currently or historically not served.
So, we think we have lots of room to grow vertical and horizontal in ticketing as well as achieving costs through a more efficient platform.
Sponsorship, as I said, is kind of the bigger a platform it becomes on a global basis, the more people we put through the turnstiles, the more attractive we are to Madison Avenue.
So, we are seeing ---+ we are able to increase our ad units, rate card as you said, take a local partner up to a regional partner or renew him at a higher rate, because we have better assets, both on site and online.
So when we look at sponsorship, it's somewhere in the $2 billion number is what the latest reports would say is spent on music in America out of the advertising budget, so we are still we would say dramatically under our market share.
We could double our advertising business before we have to actually even get out of that kind of $2 billion that is dedicated by Madison Avenue to go spend on music onsite activation.
So we still think there's a big pie available.
The better our ad units and the better our positioning of our business is for Madison Avenue, we think we will continue to grow that business through rate card and through higher per-deal metrics.
I'll work backwards.
Sacramento, I was surprised how much press I did see on that one too, given the size of it.
So that would have been our theater ---+ they must have very good PR people at the Ace of Spades that we're doing the deal with.
So it's a theater club.
We have theater and club division.
We would book/manage over 100 theaters or clubs, kind of in the 1,000 to 3,000 range.
It's a strong, strong category for us globally.
And my team under Ron Bension is continually looking for theaters and clubs where we would be taking over booking to drive our business into.
So that would be a small deal in relative terms to our business, but that 100-plus theaters and clubs which drives ---+ which is a great platform for us because it tends to be younger skewed, which means we get present to the Red Bulls and the young sponsors that are really looking for a very young demo, and it also drives our ticketing business.
So, they are continually looking for opportunistic theater or clubs to manage and/or book in kind of a non-CapEx manner.
As far as South Africa, it continues to be our 41 countries and path we've been on.
When you look around the world, there tends to be these markets like South Africa, Cape Town, where there may be an established promoter who really has a strong market share.
He is the go-to kind of promoter or business for any artist that goes to South Africa.
We've been working with Attie for years, and he has been our go-to promoter for years, so at a certain point, we have been talking about a deal where instead of spending Rihanna and selling off to Attie where he is monetizing all of the local business, you get to a point where our business is so scalable now on a global basis that when we move into markets like that and acquire and continue to consolidate kind of the global footprint, we then are our synergies of ---+ drive the local promoter, build our sponsor business and drive our ticketing economics make it very accretive for us.
South Africa, we don't think it's a short-term big business for us, but we think, over a long term over the next five years, we think it is a growth industry, one of those emerging markets that, again, if you are a 19-year-old fan in South Africa, Cape Town, right now, you are on YouTube and you're dying to see Rihanna or Beyonce.
So the more and more we sit with these artists and talk about what's their global plans, the more and more they are now looking at places like South America and Asia and South Africa and Cape Town to add to their itinerary.
And we want to be ahead of the curve on having our platform in place so we can monetize that content when it touches down.
You led with I think it was an unfair question, is that how you (multiple speakers)
You can ask them at the next Liberty investor dinner we go to.
Listen, Liberty has been a great, solid shareholder for us.
Greg and <UNK> and Mark Carleton have been very instrumental in playing along with our strategy.
We've made them a lot of money since we merged businesses and we both have done very well together.
And we would expect Liberty to be a long-term shareholder and a great contributor to our strategy.
Where and how they do what with their tracking stocks, as you know, that's not important to me.
What's important is that we deliver good returns to our shareholders and good things happen when that happens.
And that's our focus and we will keep doing that for Liberty and others.
