The message from Britain’s largest platform to its smallest stages came over loud and clear.
At U.K. music’s biggest night, the 2025 BRIT Awards held at London’s cavernous O2 Arena, a succession of rising artists used their moment in the spotlight to stress the importance of the grassroots independently owned venues where they cut their teeth as musicians.
In her acceptance speech, Georgia Davies, bassist of Best New Artist winners the Last Dinner Party, issued a rallying cry to the gathered industry titans, declaring: “We wouldn’t be a band, and a lot of the artists here would not be bands either, without the U.K.’s incredible independent venues. They are the lifeblood of the music industry, and they are dying.”
Meanwhile, Rising Star winner Myles Smith picked up his trophy and demanded: “If artists selling out your arenas and stadiums started in grassroots venues, what are you doing to keep them alive?”
Indeed, nearly every superstar British artist — from the Rolling Stones and Elton John to Oasis, Adele, Ed Sheeran and even Dua Lipa — learned their craft in such grassroots venues. But in recent years those venues have been squeezed by multinational live-entertainment leviathans like Live Nation and AEG, and many were forced to close when the Covid pandemic shut down the touring world for months or, in many cases, more than a year. According to Music Venue Trust (MVT, a registered charity that aims to protect, secure and improve the UK’s grassroots circuit), 125 grassroots U.K. music venues shut in 2023, followed by a further 25 in 2024. The average number of gigs on a U.K. tour fell from 22 in 1994, to 11 in 2024, while four in 10 venues operated at a loss.
In what is almost certainly not a coincidence, the decline has been matched by a drop in the number of U.K. artists breaking through, both domestically and internationally.
Thankfully, there is now a plan in place to preserve Britain’s fabled independent venues, which have played a key role in the emergence of U.K. talent since long before the Beatles first took the stage of Liverpool’s Cavern Club in 1961.
After a long campaign by the MVT and other trade bodies, the new U.K. Labour government has backed a voluntary scheme for arena and stadium concert tickets in the U.K. to carry an additional £1 ($1.28) charge, known as a levy, to support grassroots venues, artists and promoters.
A report from the Culture, Media & Sport Committee recommended this approach in May 2024, and the idea had already been voluntarily embraced by artists including Sam Fender, Coldplay and Katy Perry ahead of the government’s official response in November, and a December industry roundtable with Culture Minister Chris Bryant.
Bryant backs a voluntary levy run by the industry, but has made it clear the government wants to see “real progress” by the end of this month, with the business expected to provide quarterly updates. The government has indicated it may legislate to bring in a regulatory scheme if it’s not satisfied with the voluntary efforts.
Since that meeting, Diana Ross, Lynyrd Skynyrd and others have announced arena dates that include the levy as an add-on to the ticket price.
“They have all accepted the principle and they’re more than happy to do it,” Steve Homer, CEO of AEG Presents U.K., which is promoting those tours, tells Variety. “I’m not sure Ms Ross would have ever played the Forum in Tunbridge Wells, but for those sorts of artists to be openly supporting it is positive, and hopefully can set a precedent for others. The more people that adopt it, the easier it is to go, ‘So-and-so is doing it, so there’s no real reason for you not to.”
However, at the same time, the likes of Beyoncé, Kendrick Lamar and Black Sabbath have put big shows on sale with no sign of such provision (although the Sabbath show does benefit a number of other charities).
A spokesperson for Live Nation U.K., which promotes those shows, said in a statement: “Live Nation supports artists’ choices on charitable donations and has worked with many artists who have contributed to the voluntary levy – from Coldplay to Frank Carter. We understand how important it is to give artists the chance to grow their careers by investing in grassroots venues. Since 2022, the number of shows Live Nation has hosted in these spaces has risen by over a third.”
Others in the industry note the planning for some big shows may have taken place before the levy scheme won official approval, meaning it was not discussed with artists and their teams. But David Martin, CEO of the Featured Artists Coalition (FAC), says the onus should not be on artists to make the decision.
“It shouldn’t be on an artist-by-artist, tour-by-tour basis, because it puts artists in a position where, either they’re being lambasted for opting in and pushing ticket prices up, or they’re being lambasted for not opting in and not supporting the grassroots,” he says. “It’s really important that the whole live sector is contributing to the levy, [rather than] a burden being placed on individual artists to make donations.”
All of the U.K.’s main promoters attended the December roundtable and, according to Variety’s sources, the levy was also discussed, largely positively, at a meeting of the Concert Promoters Association at the International Live Music Conference in London last week. Precisely where the blockage occurs remains unclear, but the message has yet to get through to everyone.
“I’m not saying I’m some sort of saint but, for me, it hasn’t been difficult to have that conversation,” says Homer of his own approach to the scheme. “I don’t want these venues to be under threat and, if there’s a way of supporting them, this seems like an easy way to do it.”
MVT CEO Mark Davyd, who has been the driving force behind the levy scheme, agrees that there may be “structural reasons” behind some shows not announcing their participation. But he also warns that, with the sector still in crisis, such excuses might not wash for much longer.
“If you do a blunt assessment in March, it will look like we’ve failed,” he says. “I don’t think that will be the [government’s] conclusion in March, but it risks being the conclusion in June and there’s a very, very heavy risk of it being the conclusion in September.
“I’d be surprised if there’s anybody left who doesn’t understand that, if there isn’t a voluntary version, there will be a statutory version,” he adds. “And the statutory version will have to be accompanied by a statutory regulator and be based on percentages, so it presents a whole bunch of different problems for the music industry which are, frankly, much harder to deal with than a voluntary levy.”
The Department of Culture, Media & Sport declined to provide comment for this piece, but pointed towards Bryant’s speech at ILMC, where he said: “I hope we’re going to have progress on [the grassroots levy] soon.”
And Jon Collins, CEO of touring sector trade body Live Music Industry Venues & Entertainment (LIVE), is confident the industry is making enough headway to keep the government happy at this stage.
“There was never going to be this big bang moment where it just appeared on every tour, because that’s not a voluntary process and we’re in a voluntary process,” he tells Variety. “There are tours being announced that don’t carry the pound [levy] and we sincerely wish they did. We hope that, the next time those artists come to the U.K., it does become part of what they do. But there’s real positive momentum and we’re looking forward to announcing more tours [featuring the levy] in the very near future.”
While almost everyone in the live business favors a voluntary, industry-led scheme, that will only hold if almost every show signs up to it.
“Our argument is that, if it’s not a blanket [scheme], then there’s no compulsion,” says Martin. “We would much prefer the industry to lead this. We’ve been told that a statutory levy will take too long and the crisis is so acute it has to be solved now, but here we are: 12 months on from the select committee, with no funding distributed to artists.”
While gigs announced earlier have seen donations made to the Music Venue Trust, the official levy scheme will be administered by The LIVE Trust, set up by LIVE. The proceeds will be paid into the Trust, which will then fund programs such as MVT, FAC or the Association of Independent Promoters (AIP), which will in turn take applications from individual venues, artists and promoters.
Estimates of how much money could be raised, were the levy to appear on every arena and stadium ticket sold in the U.K., range between £8 million ($10.2m) and £30m ($38.3m).
“It’s intangible at the moment because the Trust hasn’t delivered anything yet,” says Collins. “But when we’re talking about this in a year, we’ll be able to go, ‘All these artists came on board, all of this money was raised, this is how it helped venues and artists’ – and that should make it easier for people to get behind it. We can all see there’s a huge collective win if we deliver it correctly.”
Precisely how to do that, however, is a matter of some debate. While all parties agree all parts of the ecosystem need to benefit, the devil may be in the detail. Martin believes artists and venues should receive an equal proportion of the fund (with “another, not necessarily equal, proportion going to promoters”), while Davyd is not concerned about percentage splits, so long as all funded programs comply with the scheme’s “core aim” to “reverse the decline in the number of trading grassroots venues.”
With other groups also eyeing possible applications, and the entire grassroots sector desperate for funds, it’s perhaps no surprise that a few cracks seem to be appearing in the united front that has propelled the scheme this far.
“There are tensions, there’s no point in pretending there aren’t,” says Davyd. “There are organizations that have seen the fund and would like some of it to go to certain places, but haven’t yet thought through what the fund is actually for, and how whatever they’re going to propose will achieve that outcome.
“MVT is not precious about this at all,” he adds. “If somebody can explain to me how investing in, say, roadies is the way to stop venues from closing down, then let’s do that. We know what the fund is for, and the things that we will bring forward will certainly stop venues closing.”
An earlier comment from Martin in NME that the problem would not be solved “by propping up venues that people are nostalgic about” also angered some venue owners. He rows back from those comments in conversation with Variety, but maintains that the solution to the crisis lies in the big picture.
“It’s no good to us if new promoters can’t thrive, or if promoters that have thrived can no longer sustain themselves,” he says. “It’s no good to us if venues that are otherwise sustainable, but for market failure, can’t survive and there is nowhere else to play. We have to focus on supporting artists at the early stages of their careers. It’s not us or them, we have to lift all ships at the same time.”
Despite a number of tours signing up, some details of the scheme are yet to be confirmed. For example, it’s not yet clear if the levy will be subject to VAT or a PRS contribution (in which case it would need to be more than £1 to cover those elements), or if it will be regarded as a charity donation.
But what is not in dispute is the potential impact of the scheme on all sectors of the grassroots touring business. It might not fix all the problems overnight, but it would certainly help make a start.
“If we use it sensibly,” says Davyd, “It will not just turn around this collapse in local live music, we can start looking at how to build back the bits we’ve lost.”
That’s a potentially huge prize for the U.K. industry, with almost every world-renowned British act having graduated from the country’s unique network of small pub and club shows.
But, somewhat ironically, the scheme’s success might hinge on more of the big American artists and managers buying into it whenever they appear on the U.K.’s lucrative arena and stadium circuit.
“Those artists benefit from the British music culture that breeds such brilliant fanbases,” notes David Martin. “But, if we’re not winning the moral and ethical argument with them to support this ecosystem, the practical element is that government looks very minded to legislate in this area [if the voluntary scheme does not succeed]. And, if they legislate, it will become a greater expense for you.”
“I’d urge U.S. managers and agents who are hearing about this for the first time, to think back through your own career and talk to your artists about where they started,” says Davyd. “Then just think about an 18-year-old living in a community where the music venue was closed down. Don’t you want that person to have access to music? How would [they] even become a live music consumer, let alone the next Ed Sheeran, or the manager of the next Ed Sheeran, or the person who does the lights for Glastonbury or the sound for Coldplay? It’s the oldest cultural maxim there is: you cannot be it if you cannot see it.”
