With stadium tours from Taylor Swift and Beyoncé breaking records and dominating pop culture, it seems there’s a bottomless appetite for spending big on live music. The $2-billion-plus Sphere in Las Vegas just opened with a residency from U2 and rapt crowds. Despite fan complaints about high prices and fees, Live Nation’s most recent quarterly revenue soared 32% to $8.2 billion, with year-to-date revenue up 36% to $16.9 billion.

Post-pandemic, the live music industry has roared back to life. It’s the closest tribal casino-resort to L.A., but on a Wednesday night, it wasn’t even at capacity for Sheeran’s gig. The theater, opened in 2022, still had a new-construction smell - great acoustics, perfect sightlines and a short elevator hop to the rooftop pool and spa. “My boyfriend found these tickets and he was like, ‘It’s a smaller venue.’ But this is way smaller.”įlores caught the “Shape of You” singer, who sold out the 81,000-capacity SoFi Stadium in Inglewood in September, in a room just a bit bigger than the Wiltern. She drove in from Roswell, N.M., to see Sheeran at Yaamava’, a resort run by the San Manuel Band of Mission Indians, in October. “I was going to see him when he played a stadium show in Las Vegas, but it got canceled,” said Flores, 31. She was about to watch one of her favorite singers, the British pop superstar Ed Sheeran, in a 3,000-capacity nightclub. On the floor of the Yaamava’ Resort & Casino in San Bernardino County, amid the clangs and howls of thousands of slot machines, Shelby Flores knew she’d just gotten extremely lucky.

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