Music Industry Moves: Oak View Group Pacts With Ticketmaster for New Arenas

Oak View Group — the venue-development, advisory, and investment company for the sports and live entertainment industries founded by Irving Azoff and Tim Lieweke — has announced a long-term partnership with Ticketmaster, the Live Nation-owned largest ticketing company in the world, covering six of OVG’s new arenas. Those include New York’s UBS Arena, Seattle’s Climate Pledge Arena, Austin’s Moody Center, Coachella Valley Arena in Palm Desert, Calif., Savannah Arena, and Co-op Live in Manchester, England.

“OVG is setting a new standard for arenas with world-class hospitality and state-of-the-art technology. Their portfolio boasts some of the most modern and progressive new venues in the world,” said Ticketmaster president Mark Yovich. “Through our leading-edge ticketing technology, Ticketmaster will help OVG deliver premium fan experiences for sports fanatics and music lovers.”

Continuing a longstanding NHL partnership, Ticketmaster will expand its relationship with the New York Islanders as they make the move to UBS Arena. Ticketmaster will further extend its NHL support by partnering with the league’s newest expansion team the Seattle Kraken at Climate Pledge Arena. OVG and Ticketmaster will broaden their partnership further across a number of music-forward facilities including Coachella Valley Arena, which is also home to a future AHL Palm Springs team; Moody Center, Austin’s multi-purpose arena specially-designed for headline entertainment; and Savannah Arena, a music, sports and entertainment destination that will be home to a future ECHL hockey team. Ticketmaster will also support OVG’s international growth by providing digital ticketing technology at Co-op Live in Manchester, the largest arena in the UK, set to open in 2023.

“Ticketmaster is the best ticketing system in the world, and we’re pleased to offer their industry-leading technology across all of our world-class venues,” said Leiweke. “We know what a strong partner Ticketmaster is when it comes to bringing that premium ticketing experience to fans, and we look forward to partnering with them to bring the biggest artists and sporting events as we return to live.”

+ BMI has promoted Shouvik Das to senior VP of distribution, publisher relations & administration services, and Misha Hunke to VP of administration & publisher relations.

According to the announcement, these new roles will streamline the reporting structure of the distribution and administration departments, which previously reported as separate entities to executive VP Alison Smith. Both departments will now function under the leadership of Das, who will continue to report to Smith, with Hunke now reporting directly to Das.

Das will continue to work closely with Smith to manage the relationships with BMI’s publishers, emphasizing customer service strategy while overseeing the company’s domestic and international royalty distributions and administration services. Hunke will also take on a more expansive role in leading business areas of the department, including Affiliation, Agreements, Royalty Assignments, Research, Publisher Customer Services, and Online Services. She will also continue to supervise the business team responsible for Songview, the searchable data platform developed with ASCAP that currently features copyright ownership information on over 20 million works.

“Shouvik and Misha consistently go above and beyond to serve our songwriters, composers and music publishers,” said Smith. “In the past year alone, they’ve overseen multiple initiatives including processing nearly two trillion performances, launching phase one of Songview and the early distribution of royalty payments to BMI’s affiliates during the first two quarters of the pandemic.”