A TASTE OF RAINMAKERS 2024: JAMES KING

As the CEO of European Festivals at AEG Presents, James King oversees the strategy, development, and execution of some of the continent’s biggest musical gatherings, including American Express presents BST Hyde Park, Luno presents All Points East, Forwards Festival, and Rock en Seine. King, a graduate of Liverpool's John Moores University, founded LS Events in 2004, and has helped push AEG Presents to the forefront in recent years.

Under his direction, BST Hyde Park came out of the pandemic remarkably strong, booking The Rolling Stones, Elton John, the Eagles and Pearl Jam in 2022 and two shows each from Pink and Bruce Springsteen in 2023. This past year turned out to be one of his greatest yet, with Morgan Wallen staking out space alongside Stevie Nicks, SZA, Kylie Minogue, Andrea Boccelli, Kings of Leon, Shania Twain, Robbie Williams and K-poppers Stray Kids.

King describes the Wallen show as “a pivotal moment for us, the first true country act to headline Hyde Park, on July 4th, no less.”

How did Hyde Park become the crown jewel (no pun intended) in your festival portfolio?

Hyde Park had been a Live Nation contract for many, many years, and it was coming up for renewal. This is 2011, ’12. And I said to [AEG Presents chief] Jay Marciano, “If we’re serious about being in the music industry in London, we should be operating serious events, and there’s nothing more serious than operating and producing the outdoor series in Hyde Park.” And he said, “Great, let’s get some time and tell me what your vision is for it.” Which I duly did, and I remember it very clearly to this day: I did a short presentation deck, and we were idly chitchatting through the first two slides, and then my computer froze. It just froze up, and Jay could see me increasingly and aggressively trying to push the button, over and over again, to no avail. Finally he just said, “Okay, okay, forget the deck, just pitch it to me.”

So what had Hyde Park been, and what was on your vision board for Jay?

Well, ever since the Stones played there in ’69, it had been the home of some amazing concerts—Pink Floyd and Queen and everybody in between. But I just felt that the time was right for a re-imagination of what live music in London could be. I wanted there to be unbelievable hospitality, great food and beverage. But more than anything, I wanted it to be an amazing production. I did some very basic sketches for Jay that eventually evolved into the Great Oak Stage. Glastonbury had the Pyramid Stage, and I’ve always been inspired by the environment at Coachella. I felt strongly that London deserved nothing less.

I’ll never forget the first time I presented it. Jay said, “I think it’s great, but I think it could be better here and here and here.” Jay is one of those people who sees the big picture and helps you realize your own vision. And then [artist and stage designer] Es Devlin took my very rudimentary sketch and turned it into something far more impressive than I ever envisaged it could be.

How did you get into the concert business in the first place?

The first show I ever promoted was at the Palmers Green Athletic Social Club. Sold tickets at school, three pounds a ticket. At the end of the night we counted out; I think we had about 300 pounds on my mum’s kitchen table, all in coins. We thought we were the richest people in the world!

I then went to university in Liverpool, and within a couple of months there I met one of my great friends to this day, James Barton. James was a DJ and club promoter. We were all going to the Haçienda Club in Manchester and were inspired by what Tony Wilson and everybody was doing there. In Liverpool, there were a lot of empty garages, empty warehouses, and you could put things on for cheap. James started a club called Cream in 1992, and because we were friends and because I was doing a business studies degree at university, I was tapped to run the guest list, the coaches, the memberships. Anything to do with computers. And Cream, and the club scene in the U.K., was really taking off. Soon, on a Saturday, there’d literally be 3,000 people trying to get into a 600-cap club. It was groundbreaking. It was our punk.

Creamfields came from that mindset. We were asked to do the very first Creamfields, in 1998, by a big festival organizer, Mean Fiddler, which became Festival Republic. We’d done arena-size shows before, but nothing of that scale. It was 28-30,000 people. But the relationship with Mean Fiddler didn’t work out. And to James’s credit, he said, “We should just do this ourselves.” We got a site in Liverpool, which was the famous old airfield where The Beatles landed after conquering America. At that point it was derelict. So 1999 was the very first year that we ran Creamfields, and the first year I ran a major festival. It was the single most terrifying experience I’d ever had.

When did AEG enter the picture?

I worked with Cream until about 2004. And even after that, I still produced Creamfields for a number of years through my own company, Loud Sound. I began to produce other festivals, including Bestival on the Isle of Wight and RockNess in Scotland, with Fatboy Slim. I eventually sold RockNess to AEG, and that started my relationship with them. And here I am, 14 years or so later.

Describe a typical day for you and your team.

We have 17 or 18 people who work in the European festival division. It’s not that many people for the volume of activity that we do. At this moment we’re in launch mode, so we spend a great deal of time reviewing our sales counts because we want to know if our pricing is right. We have a variety of different ticket types—standing, VIP, hospitality—and we want to make sure that we’re managing the inventory to suit the fan demand. So every morning, we’re monitoring our sales data, and we’re also doing a great deal of marketing analysis to make sure that our messaging is working effectively.

We do as much data analytics as we can, to allow the team to make good decisions. We want them to have the right information so that they’re confident to go out and be creative, to take risks, to be entrepreneurial.

And we spend a great deal of time on the customer experience. Everything we do is about that. It’s about trying to understand the fans: what they want, what we hope that they’ll want, and trying to marry those up.