NIVA ‘25 — the fourth annual conference for the National Independent Venue Association, slated to take place June 22-25 in Milwaukee — is happening against the backdrop of some of the fiercest ticketing battles heating up around the country. According to NIVA executive director Stephen Parker, this year alone throughout the U.S., there have been nearly 70 bills introduced in almost 30 states pertaining to ticketing, and the conference is set to address the good, bad and the ugly amid the fight.
“Ticketing continues to be the singular focus,” Parker tells Billboard. “Ticketing is turning into the proxy battle in legislatures — federal, state and local — for the future of live performance.”
The conference will include panels such as “Battling Scalping Goes to Washington, D.C.”; “Turn the Tables: Make the Ticket Resale Market Work For You”; “How We Solve a Problem Like Chargebacks”; and ticketing network sessions, all of which will focus on different ticketing issues facing independent venues. The subject of ticketing will also be part of conversations about local and federal regulations and be weaved into various other panels.
“This conference is an opportunity and a catalyst for us to come together, assess what’s happened this year — our wins and losses in states fighting against predatory resellers,” Parker continues, “and come out of this conference with a plan to make sure that any sort of anti-consumer policy that’s being pushed by predatory resale platforms and brokers, we have a renewed strategy to address it and make sure that the freedom that fans should have from deception and fraud continues to reign supreme.”
Poor ticket buying experiences are impacting fans’ desire to attend more shows and hiking prices so high that many can only afford a limited number of shows each year. And on the venue side, credit card chargebacks have become a major issue.
One of the conference discussions will be “what can we do to make sure that that credit card chargebacks don’t take us down,” Parker says. “Especially given that most of those chargebacks, it seems, are coming from predatory resellers that have sold the tickets and are just trying to maximize their profits that they’re making off the backs of small venues and independent artists.”
While the subject of ticketing will take center stage at the conference — which is being held across the city at different independent venues — the conversations will touch on many other topics. After every conference, NIVA reaches out to its 1,500 members and asks them what subjects they would like to see represented at the following year’s gathering — and the organization, through programming director Jamie Loeb, has managed work more than 100 issues that affect independent venue owners into this year’s program. Among them, NIVA ‘25’s programming will also address declining alcohol sales, the purpose of middle agents, the performing rights and licensing landscape, marketing, and breaking through in the attention economy.
“If I were to say what the theme of this conference [is], it’s ‘How do we break through?’” says Parker.
One of the key methods for breaking through is telling the story of independent venues and the impact they have on local communities, as well as globally. During the conference, NIVA plans to unveil extensive data on the economics of independent venues, which the association hopes will help tell that story.
“I can tell you that it’s a mixed bag,” Parker says of the data. “There’s such promise and optimism and potential growth for the sector, but that growth and optimism is suppressed by the continued threats of predatory resale and monopolies and inflation. We’re going to talk about what we do moving forward in terms of how we address those monopolies.”
Attendees will be able to learn about best practices for dealing with government entities, from city councils to state legislatures, as well as hear about how other countries are moving to save their own cultural spaces.
The association will also use the conference to detail the expansion of its collective bargaining agreements. While NIVA introduced its collective bargaining program nearly 18 months ago, its efforts are continuing to expand.
“At least a quarter of our members have taken advantage of this program, either for discounts for food, discounts for equipment, discounts for sound and lighting. We’re thinking beyond just the physical and going to services and fees and things that every venue has to pay every day,” says Parker. “We will be announcing some exciting new opportunities for our members on that front to try to make the cost of doing business lighter for them.”
NIVA ‘25 kicks off this Sunday with an opening keynote from My Morning Jacket’s Jim James. Other discussions will include producer Jimmy Jam, former Capitol Music Group CEO Michelle Jubelirer and High Road Touring founder Frank Riley. For more information on NIVA ‘25, head here.
