UK charity the Music Venue Trust has been calling for the owners of the largest venues to do more to support the grassroots sector. Now one of those companies has stepped up to the challenge.
ASM Global owns UK venues including OVO Arena Wembley, OVO Hydro in Glasgow, the Sage Arena in Gateshead and First Direct Arena in Leeds (as well as other arenas, stadiums and theatres around the world).
ASM will now be providing donations, training and marketing support via the Music Venue Trust. It will kick off the partnership by matching British band Enter Shikari’s £1-per-ticket donation to the Trust from their Wembley Arena concert next February.
The news follows ASM’s commercial director and SVP Europe Tom Lynch becoming one of the Trust’s patrons. Earlier this year, the charity reported that the value of the grassroots music venues sector was £500.3m in 2022, but warned that the number of events these venues put on has been falling.
“We cannot go on building more and more arenas with no plan of how to fill the stages they create in five, ten or twenty years time and without these new facilities playing their part in helping protect the grassroots eco-system,” said its CEO Mark Davyd at the time.
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