The Stage

Straight talking - ATG’s Howard Panter

Published Friday 27 November 2009 at 11:05 by Alistair Smith

Alistair Smith speaks to Howard Panter, joint chief executive of the Ambassador Theatre Group, about the company’s £90 million deal to become the largest theatre group in the UK, its future plans and monopoly concerns within the industry

Earlier this month, the Ambassador Theatre Group completed a £90 million deal to take over 16 of Live Nation’s UK venues. The agreement made the newly enlarged ATG by far the largest theatre group in the UK - with nearly 40 sites across the country - and sparked fears of monopoly among some independent producers and theatre owners, who feared the move might be anti- competitive. Last week, as revealed in The Stage, the Office of Fair Trading announced it was to look into ATG’s acquisition, a move which is routine when it comes to sales of this magnitude, but could lead to the sale being referred to the Competition Commission. This week, The Stage speaks to Howard Panter, joint chief executive of Ambassador Theatre Group, about his plans for the company and the concerns of the wider industry.

There are some fears in the wider industry that, following the sale, ATG will be such a dominant market force that it will be able to dictate terms to independent producers. Are those concerns fair?

I don’t think we are dominant. There are something in excess of 950 theatres in the United Kingdom. With Aylesbury, we will have 40 venues, which is obviously not a dominant position in terms of the definition of dominant. I think that there are many different layers of buildings that we have - from Wimbledon Studio, which is 100 seats, right the way up to the Edinburgh Playhouse, which is over 3,000 seats. So it’s an enormous spectrum of venues, taking different types of work into them.

In really simple terms, our track record is that we work with many different organisations, many different partners and producers, whether they be from the private sector, public sector or mixed sectors. We work with them all the time, want to work with them and will continue to work with them all the time. And we’ll have to have a method of operating where we are both feeling that the arrangements we come to - on a case by case basis - are fair to both sides. We won’t be able to operate if we don’t have a system which is fair and reasonable for all sides.

And we are theatre people. We do produce ourselves, we do understand the problems of producing, we do co-produce with people, we co-venture with people and we will continue to do that. Our basic proposition is we hope that we will be able to grow the theatre cake and therefore create more audiences, by investing more in marketing, more in educational activities, more in outreach, more in the buildings, more in the infrastructure. We hope to increase the number of people that come to the theatres, the number of productions. We’ll obviously be investing heavily in productions and co-productions, development, new writing, all the rest of it. We hope this will make the theatre industry more vibrant, more viable, more sustainable.

So you won’t be working less with independent producers?

We’re going to be doing more shows, either directly with people or just with people using the venues we’ll be operating, building on the excellent record of Live Nation with their first-class staff, their good relationships with audiences. We want to build on that and it’s just common sense that we will be doing work with more independent producers, not less.

There has also been some concern that, with the major involvement of a private equity company - Exponent - in the acquisition, this could lead to a change in operation for ATG.

As with ATG before this transaction, we have a variety of shareholders and investors, as does pretty much every production. Just as public bodies have a variety of stakeholders, so do we in the new enhanced ATG. This includes existing independent shareholders, new independent shareholders, Exponent have joined us and a bank are financing us. This is just as with any large company in the UK. It’s perfectly normal - we had bank finance with ATG before, Live Nation had bank finance, Key Brand [the other bidder for Live Nation’s theatres] had bank finance. Most large companies have a degree of bank finance - especially when there are buildings involved. So there’s nothing unusual in any of that.

It is necessary for them [Exponent] to make British theatre work in the same way it is necessary for us, as the management, to make British theatre work. They have no other agenda other than to have a successful, thriving British theatre sector as a whole, of which we are a part. There’s not other logic to the investment that they and others have brought to the deal.

We’ve gone into this, as Exponent have, wanting to have a successful theatre company. It will continue to be run and operated by the same people and others who are joining us, such as Greg Dyke, to make a successful theatre company. There is no change in management other than the addition of Greg Dyke, which we think is very positive.

There are no new constraints, there are no new edicts being handed down. Everybody’s interests are aligned to create the most successful theatre business that we all can.

In the same way that investors in any production back the producer, director and creative team to make the production work, the investors that Rosemary [Squire, Panter’s wife and joint chief executive of ATG] and I have brought into the enlarged ATG back the theatre people - Rosemary and I and the team - to make this business work. They don’t want to run it, they don’t know how to run it and they know if they tried, it wouldn’t work. And if Rosemary and I fell under proverbial buses, they would find other people who know about theatre to run it, because they want to have a successful theatre business.

Have there been talks about building the company up to sell it off?

We haven’t spoken about it in any direct way. It’s no different to investors in a production wanting to see a profit. But it is a theatre company, it will always be a theatre company and it may be, as the years progress, owned by different people. There might be different people running it. One day, even I might retire. There will be different managers in Woking and Glasgow, etc, there will be different actors on the stage, different writers, different directors, but it will always be a theatre company. As far as the theatre industry is concerned, that’s the important thing.

Of course, any enterprise in the theatre could be sold, or if it’s in the public sector, transferred to a trust. Nothing is for ever, but the objective at the moment is not to sell, it is to make the company successful, build up the viability, build up the value of the company, as any producer would want to build up the value of his productions, as any venue in the subsidised sector would want to build up its value for its stakeholders. It’s a proper thing to do with something you are responsible for.

What about your plans for Ambassador Tickets?

We’re still evolving the ticketing plans. We have a very successful company in Ambassador Tickets. We are looking at ways of making the ticketing service better, more effective. It’s a marketing and promotional tool, it’s no longer passive. Our ticketing is proactive in terms of selling more seats and bringing more audiences into the theatre.

But in terms of the fear, expressed by some producers, there could be a monopoly on ticket sales in your regional venues?

Ticketmaster has an allocation of our tickets, other ticket agents have an allocation of our tickets. We - like the producers we work with - want to sell our tickets in as many different ways as we possibly can. If we can find another company to work with that sells our tickets in a more effective way and reaches customers we can’t reach, we’re going to go with them because it sells more tickets. We’re going to continue working with Ticketmaster in many buildings, we’re engaged in discussions with Ticketmaster and other ticketing companies about creating new bespoke theatre ticketing systems and we’re looking at ways of selling tickets more effectively and engaging with more customers.

I don’t think there’s any issue of us not working with other people. The reverse is true, we work with everybody and anybody we think will help us reach more customers. It’s all common sense. We’re talking to all these people because we certainly don’t have a monopoly of wisdom, or a monopoly of ticketing. It all goes back to the basic common sense of what works best.”

Are you planning to make any redundancies in the company?

Nobody has tenure for life - I don’t have tenure for life - but we have no plans along those lines. We are looking at ways we can grow the company, because that makes economic sense. I’ve known many of the fantastic staff at Live Nation for many, many years - they are a very high quality of staff. A number of the staff stayed with Live Nation with its music business - in HR, in finance, in IT, for example. On a theatre by theatre basis though, the theatres transfer across and the staff that run those theatres transfer across. Really, it turned out to be a very fair division.

What else would you say to people in the industry who have concerns about the acquisition?

We have to make it work as a theatre business and that is the bottom line. The best way of doing that is pulling all the best people to work together and doing that in a good and coherent fashion. It really is common sense. One understands why there might be some concern about change, but we think it’s change for the good and we believe that time will prove that to be the case.