Agents Jbeau Lewis of UTA, Cristina Baxter of THE•TEAM, Robby Fraser of WME, Jarred Arfa of Independent Artists Group, Josh Mulder of TBA and Shirin Nury of CAA joined the Billboard Live Music Summit at the 1 Hotel in West Hollywood, California, on Tuesday (Nov. 10).
Moderated by Billboard senior editor Taylor Mims, the panel spanned how the middle class of touring has been getting squeezed in recent years, rising production costs, smart tour packaging, and how far in advance tours are being booked.
Baxter spoke of how rising tour costs and larger production has created a fine line on becoming profitable, with artists wanting to present their all but needing to be mindful of budget. For artists performing clubs and theaters, those challenges are even more apparent.
“The margins are just so razor thin now,” Baxter says. “Whether a tour is profitable or not and becomes a successful, sold-out tour, can come down to just a couple of decisions, such as the number of days and the cost of a certain element in production.”
Arfa added, “There are situations when making money may not even be the goal. Maybe an artist is trying to ascend to a new level, and the conversations are how to break even.”
As ticket prices continue to rise, those on the panel also noted that concerts may be considered a more luxury experience. Following the COVID pandemic, touring experienced a boom with more artists on the road and more tickets sold than ever before. Now, those in the live industry are seeing that growth has begun to slow, with 2024 and 2025 experiencing a plateau in ticket gross, according to Billboard’s 2025 year-end touring report.
“There’s been a sea-change in our business post pandemic,” Lewis said. “We saw a dramatic rise and change in the model and behavior of consumers. Expecting it to rise consistently is unrealistic. I think we’re probably there now.”
Despite this, tours are being booked further in advance, with some agents already looking to 2028 and 2029. As they look ahead, agents note the need for flexibility.
“You need to be ready to route and reroute many times,” Baxter says.
Nury added, “I think we’re living in such an interesting time, with so much volatility in the label system. I think the rest of the industry is really looking to agents to act as the architects for a rollout.”
Lewis noted, “We’re going to keep booking ahead as far as we can, but it’s going to come with challenges.”
While looking to the future, the agents suggested that technological advancements and artificial intelligence don’t seem to pose a massive threat to their careers.
“AI pulls from a certain data set that’s available to it to make decisions, but there’s so much more that goes into the way a tour is routed and the reason you choose a timeframe,” Baxter said. “A lot of that is not publicly available information… I don’t see it impacting [touring and booking] the same way as some other industries.”
Nury concluded, “We have the great privilege of being in a human industry, a social industry.”
