Paid live music added 4.2 million viewers in Catalonia in 2022 and unprecedented box office receipts: 86.5 million, according to data from the SGAE 2023 Yearbook consulted by ACN. In this way, it is once again slightly ahead of the Community of Madrid in terms of spectator volume (42,684 more) and even more widely exceeds its 75.1 million in revenue.
It is the macro festivals that tip the balance towards Catalonia, with 688,764 spectators, 62,000 more than in Madrid, although in recent years the difference has been narrowing. On the contrary, the balance of spectators at ordinary concerts and average festivals continues to be favorable to Madrid, which accounts for 25% of the concerts held throughout the State.
Catalonia hosted 13,642 concerts in 2022, a thousand more than in 2019. In this sense, it has more than recovered from the downturn of the pandemic and the low numbers of 2020 and 2021. However, it is still far from the Community of Madrid, which also surpasses its 2019 record and with almost 25,000 concerts practically doubles those held in the principality. It is not new that Madrid monopolizes this ranking, since this community historically hosts 25% of all concerts held in the State, one in four.
In terms of the number of concert spectators, Madrid also wins, but not in the same proportion, since the halls and venues with greater capacity in Barcelona (Estadi Olímpic, Palau Sant Jordi, Parc del Fòrum, among others) balance the balance and They allow us to add more audiences with fewer concerts. In this sense, last year the Community of Madrid registered only 20,000 more concert spectators: 3.53 million in Catalonia compared to 3.51 million.
But if we add to this audience those attending macro festivals (events with more than 10,000 spectators), then the total balance of live music spectators in 2022 (and the preceding years) becomes favorable in Catalonia: 2 million here and 4.16 million in Madrid, last year.
In recent years, the Madrid community has been growing in the number of festivals and capacity of some of those that already existed (MadCool, for example), and the difference in the audience of macro festivals here and there has become narrower, but the Large Catalan events—such as Primavera Sound, Sónar, Cruïlla and Barcelona Beach Festival, among others—still prevail in terms of attendance. Specifically, in 2022 (the year before Primavera Sound landed in Madrid and the festival's double weekend of concerts in Barcelona) the audience for Catalan macro festivals rose to 688,764 people, and that of Madrid, 626,358.
There are 62,406 spectators difference (10% more), which seems few compared to what happened in 2017, when the distance from Madrid was 241,000 spectators. That year, Catalonia achieved 827,000 spectators at macro festivals and Madrid remained at 585,000, that is, 30% less. As has been said, since then this difference has become smaller and smaller, particularly since 2018 when the MadCool festival changed the Caja Mágica for a venue with capacity for 35,000 more people per day.
It should be said that in the State as a whole, it is the Valencian Community that accumulates the most spectators at macro festivals. In fact, of the 5.5 million spectators that these types of events gather throughout the State in 2022, 1.03 correspond to Valencian festivals, that is, Valencia concentrates 2 out of every 10 spectators of macro festivals.
That is why in this territory the audience ratio for concerts and major events is distributed almost equally, while in Catalonia the latter represent only 16.4% of the total live music spectators, and in Madrid 15.1%. %.
The type of concert (in a hall, stadium or macro festivals) determines the final volume of the audience, but also its turnover. Many more concerts are held in Madrid than in Catalonia, as has been seen, but once again the weight of macro-festivals and concerts in large venues, with the high prices of their tickets and season tickets, increases overall turnover. Thus it is understood that with only 40,000 more spectators than Madrid (adding concerts and macro festivals), Catalonia will reach a box office collection of 86.5 million in 2022, while Madrid remained at 75.1 million, according to data from 'Anuario SGAE 2023 consulted by the ACN.
For the live industry in Catalonia, the 86.5 million is a historical record, which is more than 10 million euros above 2019, the last one before the pandemic and which was already the highest grossing recorded until then.
Catalonia and Madrid are, in this order, the communities with the highest revenue in 2022. Together they account for almost 36% of the turnover of live music throughout the State, close to 162 million euros. On the other hand, Andalusia, with a larger audience than anyone else (4.3 million and 17.7% of the total), obtains a lower turnover than the other two: 62.2 million euros.
Consulted by ACN, two of the festivals with the largest audience and history in Catalonia, such as Sónar and Primavera Sound, celebrate the good moment that the sector is experiencing and the recovery after the parenthesis of the pandemic. “2022 was a great year for everyone because everyone wanted to return to in-person; The pandemic has been a great validation of this model as a form of leisure, and this has not happened in all cultural industries,” says Sónar CEO Ventura Barba.
The association of Associated Music Festivals (FMA), at the state level, rejects talking about a “bubble” of festivals and large festivals, and points to the record collection of live music by ticket sales throughout the State in 2022, of 449 million of euros. "This makes us conclude that there is a wide demand," says FMA lawyer Belén Álvarez.
Now, Álvarez recognizes the need for the growth of large festivals to be “sustainable” and says that the FMA tries to “mark the roadmap” so that the large ones “have adequate venues enabled to hold events.” with a very massive number of attendees.” In this sense, the first edition of Primavera Sound Madrid this summer showed problems of mobility and also of management of the effects of the heavy downpours that fell in the Spanish capital.
"There are festivals because the public wants them to be," adds Primavera Sound's communications director, Joan Pons. Although it is the Catalan event with the largest audience (253,000 spectators in the last edition), Pons says that they understand the growth "in qualitative terms" and that they strive to make each edition better than the next.
From the Barcelona festival they value the role of theirs and other festivals as prescribers and promoters of the sector the rest of the year. “The essence says that the festival is the place that must maintain vitality during the rest of the year. The place to discover the artists who will come after. Furthermore, its presence puts the city on the map,” he reasons.
“There is an audience for everything and moments for everything. We must work together, I don't want to see it as a confrontation,” they point out from Sónar. The festival, which this year brought together 120,000 attendees, is recognized as a pioneer in the expansion of the current urban festival model. "30 years ago this model did not exist much, in that we were groundbreaking and later it has taken root." And regarding its size, Ventura Barba highlights that since the transfer of Sónar Día to Montjuïc in 2002, the festival has not grown in number of audiences, but it has grown with the international expansion of the brand with festivals and betting on the activity of Sónar D, the professional congress of art and digital culture held in parallel to the music festival.
