WASSERMAN'S WOWS: CHAPPELL, DRAKE, FRED (AGAIN!)

Chappell Roan, Drake, Fred again..

For Wasserman Music, the instantly classic drone shot of 110k people rocking out to Chappell Roan at Lollapalooza in August summed up a year of massive artist development, continued global growth and festival flexes that were the envy of the biz.

To wit, those eye-popping Chappell crowds, which dominated the chatter around Governors Ball, Outside Lands and Austin City Limits and were the most high-profile Jackie Nalpant and Kiely Mosiman-booked performances to date for an artist who quickly found herself in the vanguard of (fun, meaningful) queer-leaning pop.

For a fourth year in a row, Wasserman led the agencies in Coachella bookings and claimed the biggest tally of festival bookings worldwide. It's doubled the revenue generated for clients since 2022.

Meanwhile, Drake (Brent Smith) wrapped his It's All a Blur Tour in April with grosses of $320m, the biggest ever for a hip-hop tour.

Wasserman kept it youthful with modern-day troubadours Noah Kahan and Tyler Childers, who both leveled up to amphitheaters and arenas, while its A&R spidey sense was right on the nose with the emergence of Fred again.. (Ben Shprits, Evan Hancock), who sold 77.5k tix as a headliner at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, and John Summit, who went clean at Madison Square Garden and Kia Forum.

No one was happier on that front than new Wasserman Music President and EDM lifer Lee Anderson, himself still the agent of record for genre titans Skrillex, Disclosure and Zedd.

Warhorses Ed Sheeran (Marty Diamond), Imagine Dragons (Corrie Martin) and the Dave Matthews Band and Phish (Mike Greisch) kept on rockin' in what's left of the free world, while Kenny Chesney (Mike Betterton) sizzled through another stadium summer, grossing more than $160m, per Pollstar.

New signings included Future, who filled arenas with Metro Boomin. GloRilla, Sean Paul and D'Angelo also joined the family, the latter having only played live twice since 2016. Could a return to concert duty be in the offing?

The company's new Orchestral division got off to a quick start in 2024 thanks to successful tours behind Frozen and Final Fantasy VII IP, and the burgeoning Brand Partnerships unit enjoyed double-digit growth courtesy of $100m in client offers—among them, Kahan and Amex, SZA and Mastercard, Jack Harlow and New Balance and Tyla and Coke.

But perhaps most importantly of all, no you CANNOT have the Friends & Family form for Kendrick Lamar and SZA's Grand National extravaganza, which will drop jaws in stadiums next summer. And, oh yeah—that Kendrick fella is also headlining the Super Bowl Halftime Show, 2/9 in New Orleans.

Ed Sheeran, SZA, Kendrick Lamar