Inside the Growing World of VIP Concert Experiences, From Soundcheck Access to Immersive Pre-Parties 

For Wu-Tang Clan superfans with cash to burn, snagging a top class price tag for his or her then excursion gained’t simply purchase killer seats, however acquire them access to an unique pre-party providing an immersive have a look at the kung-fu and iconography of the famed Staten Island hip-hop collective.

“We’re really being thoughtful from a pricing perspective,” Ben Duvdevani, co-founder of One Extra Occasion VIP, says of the Shaolin Temple Preshow Birthday party price tag package deal, which do business in access to a occasion capsule-style showcase showcasing uncommon Wu-Tang fan memorabilia and 3-D video projections of vintage motion pictures like The thirty sixth Chamber of Shaolin and 5 Disastrous Venoms that impressed albums like Input the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers) and Wu-Tang Ceaselessly.

“Packaging premium seats with these programs is enticing for the fan and helps push inventory. It helps push the bots out of purchasing premium inventory” and, he provides, “helps conversion for VIP.”

The Shaolin Temple package deal is only one instance of the profitable VIP live performance trade in 2025, which is i’m ready for a comeback due to a pristine time of enthusiasts having a look to put money into artist-centric studies.

“There’s a ton of business out there because there are so many artists on the road right now, and so many artists at all levels trying to create something memorable for their fans,” provides Duvdevani, whose corporate is handing VIP programs for approximately 300 excursions this 12 months together with Shaboozey, Sabrina Carpenter, Teddy Swims and HAIM.

It’s an important feat for an business clash sun-baked by means of COVID-19. The VIP trade used to be born within the Nineteen Nineties thank you partially to the paintings of Fresh Yorker Shelley Lazar — the loved “Ticketing Queen” who satisfied iconic artists just like the Rolling Stones, Paul McCartney and The Who to let her create out top class choices for diehard enthusiasts she got here to grasp on a primary identify foundation — and it persisted to develop within the pristine millennium as traveling exploded. Via the early 2000s, maximum artists have been providing enthusiasts some form of VIP product, from meet and greets to vacation spot live shows, facilitated and produced by means of a pristine time of VIP firms with names like Pristine Beats and CID.

Starting in 2017, most of the VIP firms began to consolidate. A number of of them got here underneath the NFL-backed company OnLocation, which used to be bought in March 2020 by means of Enterprise — simply weeks prior to the live performance trade close ill for greater than a 12 months right through COVID-19. All over the pandemic, one prevalent U.Ok. VIP and hospitality corporate, Pollen, used to be pressured to document for chapter and upcoming pushed aside maximum in their workforce.

Many VIP executives old the pandemic length to let fall Enterprise and start serving out their non-competes. Via 2022, a pristine abridge of businesses based by means of those professionals began shooting up, together with One Extra Occasion, which gained the commitment to create the Shaolin Temple Preshow Birthday party for Wu-Tang Extended family’s then Ultimate Bankruptcy North American area excursion. “It’s a bespoke preshow activation, where there’s going to be some surprises and a really special experience for fans,” Duvdevani tells Billboard of the showcase that used to be created for the crowd’s 27-city excursion. The Shaolin Temple pre-party is being packaged with entrance category ground tickets and priced at $740 a work all-in.

VIP conversion has change into increasingly more familiar as extra artists include platinum price tag pricing and better costs for entrance row seating stock as a reaction to secondary ticketing costs. Coupling those high-end tickets with VIP add-ons has change into an remarkable solution to journey aggressively priced stock.

That want has led to 1 main trade in how VIP programs and fan golf equipment are operated. Previous to the pandemic, many VIP firms operated ticketing techniques that pulled tickets off the Ticketmaster or AXS platform, a convention that has in large part ended.

“We want to put our best foot forward to make sure everyone’s winning, so we’re not taking anything off platform,” Duvdevani says. “Promoters are still getting the sale, and we’re also being mindful of that inventory. We don’t want to hold up a sell-out.”

Eddie Meehan were given his get started working VIP get right of entry to corporate A Glorious Union within the early 2000s prior to sooner or later promoting to OnLocation and due to this fact launching Please & Thank You. Meehan mentioned his pristine corporate’s purchasers come with Backstreet Boys, Alice Cooper, Melissa Etheridge and Peso Pluma.

“You have to be creative because many artists simply aren’t interested in doing meet and greets, it’s very taxing,” says Meehan, noting that he’s discovered luck developing activations for artists like Aimee Mann, who presented VIP package deal holders a preshow soundcheck efficiency with songs now not carried out right through the live performance. Fanatics of any other Please & Thank You shopper, *NSYNC, have been invited to a cafe for a personal dumpling making get together.

“We’ve had a lot of success bringing in brands to underwrite some of these events, which means more money in the pocket of the artist,” says Meehan, who has struck do business in with Amazon Tune and eBay Motors. “I tell brands they won’t get the same exposure to 600,000 fans they would get on a tour, but they do get access to 3,000 diehard, loyal fans who will evangelize your brand.”

Duvdevani added that VIP choices shouldn’t be restricted to established artists, pointing to newcomer Jessica Baio, a 23-year-old singer-songwriter who rented One Extra Occasion to run a VIP meet and greet program for her first headliner membership excursion.

“I feel like such an important part of going and performing live is also getting to meet people face to face,” Baio tells Billboard. “It’s something I wanted to offer to people and it’s just one of my favorite parts of the night, getting to physically hug people and meet them in person and allow them to share why my songs have touched them.”

Hour younger artists like Baio have discovered luck with a meet and greet program scaled to suit their excursions, VIP business luminary Dan Berkowitz, who’s well known with having helped build the VIP trade thru his company CID, which he bought in 2016, says artists must simplest deal VIP studies to enthusiasts if the ones studies advertise an “authentic connection.”

If the artist is dedicated to creating the enjoy paintings, says Berkowitz, who introduced his pristine corporate, 100x Hospitality, in 2022, there’s at all times attainable for luck.

“There is always going to be a strong demand for compelling experiences and people are always going to want to feel connected to the music that they love and to each other,” he says.