Analysis: Why Britain’s live music venues are fighting for survival

I promoted my first gig at Nottingham’s Old Angel when I was 21. I retired from promoting in October last year, three decades later, much older, considerably more tired and carrying a collection of stories that probably explain why my hearing isn’t what it once was.

During those 30 years I put on hundreds of gigs in pubs, clubs, theatres and community halls across Nottingham and beyond. I worked with bands who would go on to bigger things and plenty who wouldn’t. I dealt with broken PA systems, disappearing headline acts, bar managers having nervous breakdowns over ticket sales and the eternal challenge of persuading people to leave the comfort of their homes on a wet Wednesday evening.

What always struck me was how fragile the ecosystem was. Audiences saw the show. Musicians saw the stage. Promoters saw the crowd. Behind the scenes, however, there was always a delicate balancing act involving rent, wages, business rates, insurance, utilities and a hundred other costs that most gig-goers never thought about.

That balancing act has become significantly harder.

New research from TicketSource suggests Britain’s live music and entertainment venue sector is approaching a critical point. Since 2015, almost as many creative venues have disappeared as survived. Of the venues founded during that period, 3,956 remain active while 3,677 have closed. Nearly nine in ten venues that fail do so before reaching their fifth anniversary, while the median lifespan of a dissolved venue is just over two years.

I bowed out of promoting last year with a sold-out show at The Old Cold Store

The headline numbers are not entirely bleak. New venues are still opening. In fact, the number of venue companies founded annually has risen from 424 in 2015 to 799 in 2025. Yet beneath that growth sits an uncomfortable reality. Last year there were around 15 new openings every week, but 11 closures at the same time. The sector remains in growth, but only by the narrowest of margins.

Anyone who has spent time around grassroots music will not be surprised. Running a venue has never been a route to easy riches. Most operators do it because they believe in live music, their local community or the simple idea that cultural spaces matter. Unfortunately, passion does not pay electricity bills.

Esther Wood, partner at Goodman Jones, believes many venues are now being squeezed from both sides.

“Many music and entertainment venues are facing increasing pressure from rising operating costs at a time when consumer spending remains uncertain,” she says.

“This combination of rising fixed costs and less predictable revenue makes it increasingly difficult for venues to plan with confidence and maintain long-term commercial viability.”

That uncertainty is perhaps the defining challenge of the modern live music industry. Demand for live entertainment remains strong, but audiences are behaving differently. People are booking later, thinking harder about discretionary spending and often spending less on food and drink once they arrive. The appetite for live experiences has not disappeared, but the economics of delivering those experiences have become far more difficult.

The consequences extend well beyond the venue itself. As Wood points out: “When a venue closes, the financial impact extends well beyond the business itself. Live events generate spending across the local economy, with audiences often visiting nearby restaurants, bars and hotels before or after a show.” She warns that the loss of those venues weakens not only local economies but also the talent pipeline that supports Britain’s wider creative industries.

That talent pipeline matters because every major artist starts somewhere.

Nobody goes straight from a bedroom to Wembley Arena. Every successful band and singer learns their trade in smaller rooms, often playing to tiny audiences before they ever dream of selling out arenas.

Mark Davyd, founder and chief executive of the Music Venues Trust, believes policymakers are beginning to recognise that reality.

“It is good to see some early signs that the new government is alive to the challenges and opportunities in the grassroots sector,” he says.

“Strengthening community ownership support, removing pre-profit taxation, improving access to funding, and tightening up planning and licensing so that we can remove barriers to music and place obstacles in the way of shutting venues down: these are the big opportunities on the table for real growth in our night-time economy.”

Laia Gasch, director of the World Cities Culture Forum, captures the wider significance of the issue.

“Small music venues are critical to UK’s cultural life. Every major artist, from the Rolling Stones to Adele and Dave honed their craft on a small stage before filling arenas,” she says.

“When these venues close, we lose more than a building; we dismantle the pipeline that keeps Britain’s cultural music scene alive and globally competitive.”

Her conclusion is difficult to argue with.

“Small venues are the sun in the music ecosystem.”

That observation resonates strongly with me. When I started promoting in the mid-1990s, Nottingham alone had a network of small venues that allowed emerging bands to develop. Some were excellent. Others survived largely through stubbornness and cheap beer. Collectively, however, they created opportunities for young musicians, technicians, promoters and audiences.

Without those venues, many artists who went on to bigger success would never have had the chance to develop.

It’s the same in the West Midlands.

Sarah Moorhouse

“Traditionally, the Black Country has been a significant breeding ground for new bands and musical talent, and this is something we want to continue,” explained Sarah Moorhouse, CEO of the Black Country Chamber of Commerce.

“These venues are an important part of the fabric that makes up our town and city centres, helping to drive tourism and attract investment from local people and visitors from outside our great region.

“We echo Richard Parker’s comments on calling for a dedicated Minister for the Night-Time Economy. The Mayor of the West Midlands has been a passionate advocate of the sector, and we join with him in making this plea to the new Prime Minister.

“A vibrant entertainment and music scene will create jobs and profile, but to make it work we need a joined-up policy on transport, licensing, business rates and taxation.

“We have some amazing entertainment venues in the Black Country – the University of Wolverhampton at The Halls, The Grand Theatre and the Digbeth Dining Club at the Waterfront to name just a few. They deserve dedicated support to ensure they thrive.”

Harry Leckstein, director of industry engagement, employability and alumni relations at the London College of Contemporary Music, argues that rebuilding the sector requires investment from the ground up.

“The UK needs to wholesale reinvest in its music, entertainment, hospitality and live events industry from education at grass roots, schools and university levels, through to local authority incentivisation, to better support live music and entertainment businesses,” he says.

A similar warning comes from Matias Puga, chief executive of School of Rock UK.

“The closure of grassroots venues across the UK isn’t just a loss of physical spaces – it’s a loss of an entire pipeline that turns young people into working musicians,” he says.

“Every closed venue is somewhere that a first gig can’t happen, and that has real consequences for the future of British music, and for the local economies that depend on a thriving night time culture.”

How the upgraded Donkey in Leicester will look

His organisation is backing those words with an £800,000 investment in a new London facility designed to help nurture future talent and connect students directly with the live music circuit. Puga argues that the answer lies not just in protecting venues but also in investing earlier in the schools, rehearsal rooms and stages where musicians are first developed.

The conversation is not solely about venues. João Guarantani, executive director of business at Bow Arts, argues that artists themselves need access to affordable, long-term creative spaces if the wider sector is to thrive. He believes creative infrastructure should be treated as essential social and economic infrastructure rather than something temporary and disposable.

Despite the challenges, there are still reasons for optimism.

Leicester’s Donkey offers one such example. Rather than joining the list of closures, the venue is entering a new chapter under Jonathan and Ollie Wainwright, who have taken on the lease and committed to restoring the venue while preserving its identity.

“The Donkey has been part of Leicester’s musical story for decades,” says co-owner JJ Wainwright.

“This project isn’t about reinventing the venue. It’s about protecting its legacy and investing in its future.”

Crucially, he understands what has made the venue special for so long.

“We love the name. It has decades of history, memories and affection attached to it, we would never want it to be called anything different.”

In an age when too many venues are disappearing altogether, protecting that history feels increasingly important.

That, ultimately, is what this debate is really about.

Successful music venues are not simply businesses and they are certainly not just buildings. They become repositories for memories. People remember the first band they saw there, the friends they met there and the nights that helped shape their lives. Those experiences are impossible to measure on a spreadsheet, yet they are often what give a town or city its character.

Recent business rates support for pubs, clubs and live music venues has been welcomed by many operators, although few believe it will solve every problem. Terry Rosoman of TicketSource notes that one entertainment venue closes somewhere in the UK every 16 hours and argues that even relatively modest financial support could make a meaningful difference to independent operators fighting for survival.

“Let’s hope this is just the beginning of longer-term support for the sector that is clearly suffering,” he says.

After spending 30 years in grassroots music, I remain cautiously optimistic. Live music has survived recessions, technological disruption, changing consumer habits and a global pandemic. People still want the shared experience that only a live performance can provide.

The challenge is not creating demand. The challenge is ensuring there are still enough venues left to meet it.

Because every time a grassroots venue closes, we lose more than a stage. We lose opportunities for young artists, income for local businesses, jobs for skilled workers and spaces where communities come together.

Most importantly, we lose the places where future stories begin.

And once those stories are gone, they are remarkably difficult to replace.