
The Music Venue Alliance saw its membership drop from 835 trading venues to 810 in 2024, indicating 25 music venues closed last year
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Four in 10 grassroots music venues operating at a loss
The Music Venue Trust’s annual report reveals grassroots music venues experienced a year-on-year decline in the number of live music shows and ticket revenue last year, with a venue being forced to close its doors around once a fortnight.
More than 40% of the UK’s grassroots music venues operated at a loss last year, according to findings in the Music Venue Trust’s (MVT) 2024 Annual Report.
A survey of more than 800 grassroots venues belonging to the Music Venues Alliance (MVA), MVT’s association of grassroots music venues, found they hosted a combined 162,000 live music events last year featuring almost 1.5 million artists performances and welcoming over 19.4 million audience visits.
The report reveals that despite contributing £526m to the UK economy last year, these grassroots venues are operating at an average profit margin of 0.48%, with 43.8% reporting annual losses.
Venues with a capacity less than 400 were most likely to be making a loss in 2024, the report adds, alongside those situated in areas with a population under 200,000. Those with a total turnover under £500,000 were also more likely to have a negative profit margin.
More than three-quarters (78.4%) of income across these venues came from food, beverage and other income streams last year, compared with 21.6% generated through ticket sales encompassing both live music and non-music events.
The report adds that when considering the expenditure and income related solely to live music provision, the average grassroots music venue incurred a yearly loss of £198,956 last year.
Fewer tour dates
The report also reveals a decline in touring circuit stops, with the average tour in 2024 consisting of 11 dates in 12 major cities, compared with 22 dates across 28 locations in 1994.
MVT says this decline has wiped a score of major towns and cities, including Bath, Bedford, Cambridge, Hull, Leicester, Portsmouth and York, off both the primary and secondary touring circuit.
This drop in touring dates has contributed to a 8.3% year-on-year decline in live music shows and a 13.5% reduction in ticket revenues across these grassroots music venues.
MVT’s report says this downward trend is forcing grassroots venues to decrease their live music offer, running fewer shows at a higher cost. In 2024, the weekly number of events staged by the average grassroots music venue fell by 11% to 3.8.
25 venue closures
The MVA saw its membership drop from 835 trading venues to 810 in 2024, indicating 25 music venues closed last year.
Of the venues forced to close their doors, the report says nearly half (44.2%) cited financial issues, 27.8% mentioned operational issues and 14% attributed the closure to eviction or redevelopment.
While the rate of closure, now averaging around one a fortnight, represents a slowdown on the rate that grassroots music venues were closing in previous reports, MVT saw a 18.9% increase in venues reaching out to its emergency response service last year.
MVT says the 200 emergency response cases it dealt with in 2024 equates to 24.9% of its total membership facing a threat of permanent closure.
The service, which offers financial, planning, licensing, noise, acoustics and legal advice to grassroots venues across the UK, achieved a 97.7% success rate in disputes relating to planning issues last year.
‘Action not words’
While the statistics highlight the ongoing challenges facing the grassroots sector, the report also brings attention to positive action that supported grassroots music venues in the last year.
This included publication of the Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee’s recommendations for supporting grassroots music and the continued success of the Music Venue Properties scheme which, after launching in 2023, secured the ownership of its fourth and fifth music venues.
Work on introducing a ticket levy on each ticket sale for arena and stadium-level tours to put towards a fund supporting the UK’s grassroots music ecosystem also progressed, with Arts Minister Chris Bryant recently setting out a timescale for the levy’s implementation.
MVT CEO Mark Davyd says the report recognises a very broad consensus has been built among politicians, industry, artists and the public that grassroots music venues must be protected, supported, encouraged and nurtured.
“In 2025, we have to see that consensus bring forward positive, practical interventions in the real world,” Davyd added.
“Venues, despite all the very welcome good intentions and acknowledgements they are receiving for their vital work, are still closing, still under extreme and totally unnecessary financial pressures, still failing to be recognised, as everyone agrees they should and must be, when government designs policy, taxation, and legislation.”
“It isn’t good enough to keep saying how much we all value them, we’ve got to practically do something about it. We need action not words.”
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