Live Nation Latin America president Bruce Moran says the territory has been “on fire” since returning from the pandemic, with fans buying tickets at an unprecedented pace.

Moran recently spoke to IQ about Coldplay’s record-shattering Music Of The Spheres World Tour, which has 37 dates confirmed in the region so far, but says he is witnessing strong results across the board.

“We’re having just a remarkable year,” he says. “We started the year with 11 Coldplay shows, six sold-out Metallica stadium shows and five great shows with Maroon 5. And then we have 12 sellout shows with Harry Styles and seven with Dua Lipa coming up, as well as 11 with Rosalia.

“We can be a bit of a backwater, I suppose, but in my opinion we have some of the greatest fans in the world. Certainly, the bands love the reaction they get and we want every band to experience some of the wonderful fans in Sao Paulo, Buenos Aires, Mexico City and more.”

New York-based Moran admits to eagerly awaiting Backstreet Boys’ concert at Sao Paulo’s Allianz Parque in January 2023, since the gig was originally planned for March 2020.

“LATIN AMERICA IS ON FIRE RIGHT NOW AND WE NEED THE MUSIC INDUSTRY TO TAKE NOTE”

“The very last show that we cancelled as the pandemic hit was the Backstreet Boys,” he tells IQ. “We were sold out at the football stadium in Sao Paulo and I was on the phone with the manager the night they played Rio [Jeunesse Arena, two days earlier]. Everything was getting shut down around us and I said, ‘I don’t think this is a good idea.’ But I said, ‘Let’s postpone and not cancel.’

“Well, we finally did set the date, happily, this year and they’re coming back next year. So the fans will have bought tickets in 2019 and they’ll finally see the Backstreet Boys in a sold out stadium in 2023.  Of course, we’ve added yet another stadium show in Sao Paulo to go with it and it’s doing great, along with two other dates in Brazil, so it’s a nice closure. It brings the pandemic full circle.”

The company is also working with Primavera Sound on the Barcelona festival’s inaugural Brazil edition in Sao Paulo in November, topped by Arctic Monkeys, Bjork, Travis Scott and Lorde. And Moran suggests that, unlike some of their European counterparts, Latin American music fans have shown little or no hesitance in getting back in the swing of things.

“We opened up in March of this year and the reaction of the fans has just been heartwarming,” he reports. “They have embraced the reopening of live entertainment and voted with their feet. They’re in line buying tickets for shows at a rate that we’ve never seen before and we hope to maintain that and try to capitalise on this momentum for years to come.

“The success has been great and has enabled us, certainly in the case of Coldplay, to add additional shows. We’re selling tickets at a pace we’ve never seen before. Latin America is on fire right now and we need the music industry to take note.”

IQ’s full market report on Latin America will be published in the next edition of IQ Magazine.

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