AAA White Paper The political economy of informal events, 2030 | Page 50

Key
Employment and its growth, 2011-17:
strongly events-orientated sectors
(thousands)
Performing arts
Support to performing arts
Operation of sports facilities
Activities of sports clubs
Other sports activities
2011-17 rise, per cent
Thousands
of jobs
5
197
200
188
179
150
10.4
50
96
96
100
55
52
105
46.1
76
68
0
59
55
64.3
24
14
23
0
2011
Chart 14
DCMS, Table 55:
Employment by Standard
Industrial Classification
(SIC), 2018
2015
2017
once we factor in UK Music’s estimate of musicians’ exports, £978m,
the picture improves.
That figure covers both the sale of music rights abroad, but also
live events abroad. Now, suppose that foreign tours supply all British
musicians with just over half of their total export revenues. That
would give British musicians foreign tour revenues of about £500m.
Alternatively, note that, in 2018, just seven British acts grossed
enormous revenues from tours done both in Britain and abroad: Ed
Sheeran (£332m), Roger Waters (£101m), the Rolling Stones (£91m),
Sam Smith (£65m), Depeche Mode (£61m), Harry Styles (£47m) and
Elton John (£43m). That makes a total of £740m of business through
tours. Now take just over half of that total tours business as stemming
from simply the foreign gigs played by these seven acts: call that
£400m, which compares reasonably with our guess of £500m of live
exports from all British musicians.
In summary, then, the broad evidence suggests that UK export
revenues from both organising live music gigs (£80m) and playing
them (£500m) already run at getting on for £600m. Indeed, the
real figure could be considerably higher.
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