Will Drive-In Events Endure in a Post-COVID World?

MarketScale
MarketScale
Feb 4, 2021
Concerts COVID Drive-In Encore Live Fighting live events Live Stream Metallica sports UFC Venue

The fans remember the highlights but the franchises remember the technology, data, and inventions that powered their season. Host Tyler Kern sits down with the innovators, leaders and founders that are taking sports into the future.

 

This summer, Encore Live held Drive-In Nights concerts around that nation. It was a natural pivot for the live event company during a time that live events couldn’t be held. The events quickly spread to over 300 venues across six time zones, featuring world-class artists like Metallica, Garth Brooks and Blake Shelton.

This week on Salary Capped, host Tyler Kern sits down with Encore Live Founder and CEO Walter Kinzie to discuss how what was once a pivot is now becoming a permanent shift in their business plan. Kinzie explained that their events have been so successful because, for most of the population, planning an hours-long trip to a major stadium to see an concert or sporting event is a big enough obstacle to deter them from wanting to make such a big time commitment.

But driving to a local venue to watch a live stream of the event is easy enough. Last summer’s most popular event was their presentation of Metallica, which gathered over 200,000 fans to watch the live stream of their concert. The average price of attendance was $17 per person versus over $200 a ticket at a traditional concert venue.

This pivot has turned into a revelation for the company that culminated in presenting the recent UFC 257 fights live. The summer concerts proved to be a perfect preparation for the UFC fights, which resulted in Encore Live being the only company broadcasting the fights live during the evening without any delays due to technical difficulties.

Due to the resounding success of their UFC presentation, Kinzie is planning a future where over a million UFC fans will be able to attend a fight through their venue partners.

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