Live Nation Entertainment (Ticketmaster) 2026 Q2 Earnings Call

Good afternoon, and welcome to the Live Nation second 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.

We're lucky enough, as you can see from our numbers. We've seen no consumer issues to date, in terms of purchasing. Numbers are up across the board, whether it's international, U.S., clubs, amphitheater, stadiums, all genres, all venues, and all geographies right now, up over 10% in terms of fan count. We're seeing consumers buy at record levels. It'll be another record year after multiple record years. The comps are always tough to beat, but we're seeing the continued global growth of the concert ticket. We're seeing it on site. Our food and beverage is up this year-over-year, across all of our owned and operated. They're coming to the venue and they're consuming, and we're providing better menus and better options. We're seeing no pullback there.

Liquor is up year-over-year, we're not actually seeing any of those stories about the consumer not drinking as much. They seem to look at the two-hour night out at the concert is probably the night they're not cutting back. We're not seeing any pullback. The whole blue dot, we have fewer cancellations this year than ever. We're running below historic lows at 1.1% cancellations versus 1.6 average. Every now and then, the media blow up about a certain tour canceling is, again, it's the 1%, not the 99%. We're seeing deferred record levels right now in terms of going forward. We think 2026 is going to be an absolute record year. We're going to see a strong Q3 and Q4 in terms of finishing off the great touring year we're going to have.

No consumer concerns, just a kind of similar World Cup in sports, what we're seeing on that side of the equation.

Sure. As you said, I think we always start most importantly looking at the full year, given quarters move around. I think we've stepped up our expectation now. We expect double-digit fan growth for the full year to drive double-digit revenue and AOI growth, ultimately margin expansion. Obviously none of that for the first half. If you look at the first half, international growth has been good, U.S. has been impacted by stadium availability for Q2 into the first part of Q3. For the U.S., really all the fan growth in the U.S. will be in the second half, we expect double-digit fan growth year-on-year in each of Q3 and Q4 for the U.S.

International has had a very strong first half, we expect that to continue again with double-digit growth in fan count for each of the third and fourth quarters internationally. The reason for confidence in that is that we really have our shows have been booked and confirmed. If you looked at our deferred revenue, it's at a level now that gives us confidence that really tickets are in the bank. It's a matter of playing off the shows. Finally, just given the faster growth on operated venues or fan count and operated venues relative to third-party venues, that's really the foundation of what sets us up for margin expansion.