Are Live Events Coming Back This Summer?? (RIP the Blackout Tour)
Today's episodes we talk to Barstool's own Riggs, and live event planner, Lisa. The three talk about how the idea of the Barstool Classic was brought to life, everything that goes into planning a big Barstool event, and how we were still able to make this a sell-out event in the matter of a couple days...despite a pandemic. Before we get into their conversation, let's talk about our history of live events, where we're going with them, and how we're amping up to get them back.
So. The Barstool Classic is the biggest and longest running Barstooll tour (after the Blackout Tour, which we were recently informed that we settled some lawsuit on this week. Hallelujah. We love dealing with the lawsuits from 2009) Anyways.
One of the things we've been thinking about is how do we grow a live events business in a semi post pandemic world?
The touring business with the Blackout Tour has always been part of Dave's DNA. We all know that Dave is one of the best promoters out there. The Blackout Tour was something that ran for years across college campuses all across this country. We have dialed that up. We've professionalized it. We've brought on brands like Truly and others to be a part of it. We've tackled golf, we've tackled hockey. We have more plans for sporting events, coming in the future. But obviously, one of the things that we're looking at is when and will live events come back?
It is seeming more and more likely that we're going to get into a Roaring 20s type of moment this summer where people, who have been so cooped up, depressed, and isolated for the last 12 months, are going to be ready to party. When you talk to the live events people, they think that concerts are going to come back as soon as July. Something that will be really interesting to see is what type of tours and live events really emerge this summer. Not sure if people above 40 and 50 will be going out to these events like they were pre-pandemic, but there's going to be a huge market for 20 & 30 year olds to go out to these live events.
No denying that there's something special about live events. And certainly in our case at Barstool, the idea of bringing hockey fans together for a roller hockey tournament or bringing KFC Radio fans back together for a live show at Carolines, or taking the Barstool Classic and bringing it across 30 stops in the country. The live event business, the touring business, the fan business demands that you have an in-person connection. I think a big part of our brand is the fun and the experience you can create around personalities and people who are relatable to you, yet you don't know.
It'll be interesting to see how long it takes people to come back. Who ultimately ends up going and what type of companies create events? Music events are very obvious, but you don't see a lot of other media companies thinking about their live events. One advantage that Barstool has is that we never stopped and that we still kept the muscle memory on how to create live events, how to adapt live events to covid, and how to make people have fun at events, even when the environment has to be a little different. Anyway. We talk more with Riggs & Lisa about how much time & effort goes into the Barstool Classic and events in general on today's episode. Watch it here:
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