Venue closures in Brixton and Sheffield take toll on Academy Music

One of Britain’s largest music-venue operators suffered a significant drop in admissions last year after safety concerns forced it to close two major premises temporarily.
Academy Music, part-owned by the global music behemoth Live Nation, operates 18 venues across the UK, from Bournemouth and Bristol to Newcastle and Glasgow.
Last year the company put on 2,500 shows, including by Little Simz, McFly and Maisie Peters, for which it sold just over 2.3 million tickets.
But this was down from 2022, when 3,000 shows sold nearly 3.1 million tickets. As a result, Academy Music Holdings’ revenues fell from £75 million to £61 million, and its profits from £8.1 million to £1.6 million.
The decline in business was largely attributed, in recently filed accounts for Academy Music Holdings, to the temporary closures of the O2 Academy Brixton and the O2 Academy Sheffield.
The Brixton venue was closed down in December 2022 after two fans died in a crowd crush at a sold-out concert by the Afro-pop artist Asake. It only reopened in April this year, after gaining approval from Lambeth council, and has since hosted performances by the likes of Janelle Monáe and Arcade Fire.
The O2 Academy Sheffield is still closed after a structural survey last September found that the building’s roof may include reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete (Raac), a lightweight building material that has been linked to risk of collapse.
Academy Music did not respond to a request for comment.