New figures suggest much of the UK is becoming a ‘touring desert’

New figures from the Music Venue Trust have revealed that the touring circuit has been shrinking due to bands increasingly skipping towns and cities.

As reported by Music Radar, artists and musicians are playing roughly 11 shows on average on the grassroots circuit in 2024 versus the 22 that used to be done in 1994. The statistics come from industry stakeholders, promoters and artists alike.

The situation has been described as a “spiralling crisis” for all aside from the biggest artists and promoters by Sam Duckworth – the Noughties singer songwriter Get Cape Wear Cape Fly – who works for the Music Venue Trust.

Duckworth also spoke at the Beyond The Music conference in Manchester last week and shared: “My first major tour was 54 dates. There’s no way I could do a 54-date tour now. What it really means is that fans in certain parts of the country have now either got to travel long distances or hope to be the one non-major city on a tour.

“So not only are we seeing a crisis in economics, we’re also seeing a crisis of access. There are vast swathes of the country where your only option is to travel an hour and a half. Then you factor in that the cost of everything has gone up. The train tickets have gone up. The ticket prices have gone up. The cost of your life has gone up.”

The Music Venue Trust also revealed that usually its members expect to sell roughly 20 million gig tickets yearly but this year, that number is expected to drop down to about 15 million tickets, signifying that everyone in the industry is struggling.

“We hear tales of international artists skipping the UK or saying, I’ll play London because it’s London, but instead of doing six shows in the UK, I’m going to do two,” Jon Collins, Chief Executive of the live music trade body Live said.

He continued: “When it comes to programming tours, you’re thinking, does it make sense to play Manchester? Does it make sense to play Birmingham? If I do those two, does it make sense to play Leeds and Liverpool, or are they just too close and actually we’re just going to have to get fans to commute across? The risk is that we end up with a truncated touring route, which becomes a spine of the country – London, Manchester, Birmingham, Glasgow – and then large swathes of the country are missing out on seeing those artists.”

Last year, the Music Venue Trust shared their full report into the state of the sector for 2023, showing the “disaster” facing live music with venues closing at a rate of around two per week.

Recently, Coldplay announced details of huge stadium shows in London and Hull for next year – marking the band’s only UK and European shows of 2025 and promised that 10 per cent of their proceeds would be donated to Music Venue Trust.