CINCINNATI — When they were competing in 2018 for the right to build one music venue on the Cincinnati riverfront, PromoWest Productions and Music and Event Management Inc. (MEMI), each said they could bring at least 150 events to their facilities.
Four years later, that’s exactly what happened – with two venues instead of one.
Andrew J. Brady Music Center at The Banks delivered 81 shows in the 12 months since it debuted last July. PromoWest Pavilion at Ovation expects to close its first year with 70 concerts by the end of August.
“They split that pie,” said Scott Stienecker, regional vice president for PromoWest owner AEG Presents. “Everything that they’re doing, we’d be doing (if) they had allowed us to build at The Banks.”
As WCPO has previously reported, Steinecker first proposed a riverfront venue in 2016 - only to have the idea rejected by a civic panel that oversees development at the Banks. That led to a bidding competition which Steinecker lost in 2018.
Their year-one numbers show both venues can succeed, said Rosemarie Moehring, marketing director for MEMI, a for-profit subsidiary of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra.
“We set out to build one of the best state of the art music venues in the region (at the Andrew J. Brady Music Center) and I think we definitely accomplished that,” Moehring said. “We’ve had over 250,000 come through this venue. And the general overall feeling is, it’s great. The sound is pristine. Everyone loves it.”
Neither venue would disclose details on ticket sales and profitability.
Steinecker said the PromoWest Pavilion supplemented its concert revenue with $500,000 from 50 special events, including corporate meetings for Procter & Gamble Co. and St. Elizabeth Healthcare. The building also landed a naming-rights sponsor that will be announced in August, bringing total sponsorship revenue to $2 million annually.
“We’ll both be successful and we’ll both be here for a long time,” Stienecker said.
The WCPO 9 I-Team has been exploring the success of these two riverfront attractions because of their importance to the downtown business districts that surround them.
The Banks riverfront development district has struggled for most of its history to find reliable traffic generators despite billions of dollars in public investments – in sports stadiums, a museum, apartment buildings and a massive riverfront park. Newport’s billion-dollar Ovation project is likewise counting on PromoWest to feed hotel, office and residential towers next to PromoWest.
“COVID slowed it down. But it’s bringing crowds,” said Tom Banta, chief real estate officer at Corporex Cos. Inc., Ovation’s developer. “It’s constantly bringing people to the development.”
Industry sources show how the new venues compared to local and regional rivals. Pollstar’s “Year End Special Report” for 2021 ranked PromoWest Pavilion as the 59th largest theatre venue in the country, with 25,908 tickets sold for a combined $1.3 million in gross revenue. Brady Center ranked 74th among stadiums, with 21,025 tickets sold for $888,335.
Those numbers pale in comparison to the nation’s top 10 arenas – each of which generated more than $23 million in concert revenue last year. But they were respectable next to the 30,000 tickets sold at Columbus’ Schottenstein Center in 2021 or the 19,000 seats sold at Louisville’s Live on the Lawn.
Evenly matched in 2021, the Brady Center pulled away from PromoWest in 2022, according to data provided by StubHub. Stronger demand for Brady Center tickets meant higher prices for resellers. StubHub’s average ticket price was $149 dollars at Brady, compared to $119 for Riverbend Music Center and $74 for PromoWest.
“With a larger capacity and hosting bigger pop acts like Olivia Rodrigo and Louis Tomlinson, Andrew J. Brady has generated nearly double the ticket sales on StubHub over the past year,” said StubHub Spokesman Adam Budelli. “Rodrigo saw more than double the total sales of the Pavilion’s top-selling concert by The Killers on September 20th.”
Concert enthusiast Taylor Fox has been to both venues more than a half-dozen times each. But he finds it difficult to choose the better venue, saying it depends on the show.
“If you’re looking for going for a more theatrical feel, I think Brady is wonderful inside,” he said. “If you’re looking for more of a raw, pedestrian feel, then Ovation is slightly better.”
Fox is the program director at Inhailer Radio, an indie music station that’s available online and the HD3 Channel at WGUC-FM 90.9. Fox said both venues have expanded the roster of live music acts beyond the heavy metal and country bands that dominated local offerings for years. But he still finds himself driving to Columbus several times a year to hear bands he can’t find in Cincinnati.
“I’d like to see more acts,” he said.
Event producer Bill Donabedian said Cincinnati will continue to lose bookings to Columbus, Indianapolis and Louisville until it does something about Heritage Bank Center, an 18,000-seat riverfront arena built in 1975. Donabedian, who founded the Midpoint and Bunbury music festivals, supported PromoWest’s bid for a single concert venue at the Banks. But he now concedes both venues can survive long-term. And he thinks the region should turn its attention to a new indoor venue in downtown or the West End.
“We’re really lacking a modern arena,” Donabedian said. “We’re missing out on a lot in Cincinnati because we don’t have the strongest venue.”
Stienecker said more shows will come as the venues mature.
“It takes three years to get the market educated,” Stienecker said. “We’ll be doing 180 events, including concerts and special events, by year three."
Moehring said the Brady Center is still booking acts for 2022. It could reach 130 shows before the calendar-year closes. And some of those acts could be the kinds of shows that previously bypassed Cincinnati.
“We just announced a band, Paramore,” she said. “Sold out the venue in a few minutes. But it’s only like 10 cities that they’re doing. In addition to New York, Detroit, LA, they’re doing Cincinnati. So, I think that definitely says something that we are on the map now.”
