Swedish Entertainment Company Pophouse Entertainment said on Tuesday (July 14) it acquired 50% of British heavy metal icons Iron Maiden‘s band members’ stake in the publishing and master music rights, and name, image, and likeness (NIL) rights.
Formed 1975 by founder and bassist Steve Harris in London, Iron Maiden remains one of the most enduring and influential bands in music history with 100 million records sold, 17 studio albums and major honors including Grammy, Brit and Ivor Novello awards. Terms of the deal, which Pophouse says was structured and developed over the last year with the band’s co-manager Andy Taylor, were not disclosed. BMG, which has worked with Iron Maiden in the United States since the acquisition of Sanctuary Records in 2013, retains its ownership stake in the band’s catalog.
“We are 50-50 partners with the band, and the plan is that we’re going to work together turbo charging Maiden’s plans for the future,” Jessica Koravos, CEO of Pophouse, which owns music rights of KISS, Cyndi Lauper and Tina Turner, tells Billboard. “With Pophouse, we’re always thinking around the visual identity and … there’s lots of world building that’s possible both in [Maiden’s] artwork, but also in the storytelling within the songs. The heavy metal genre, especially with the addition of Eddie, lends itself to a treatment potentially in the world of horror.”
Established by ABBA member Björn Ulvaeus and Conni Jonsson, founder of global private equity behemoth EQT AB, Pophouse is best known for its affiliation with ABBA Voyage, the London show where avatars of the ABBA members in their prime perform the band’s greatest hits. Koravos said Pophouse is collaborating with Iron Maiden on a film of its Run For Your Lives World Tour and other plans around interactive fan experiences and a digital universe centered around Eddie, Maiden’s longtime ghoulish mascot and a central part of the band’s imagery. The acquisition includes a stake in the rights relating to Eddie, alongside trademarks, personas and other associated IP covered by the NIL rights.
“I am very excited about our relationship with Pophouse and the ability we now have to pursue, facilitate, and finance our many plans and dreams quicker than we ever hoped,” Iron Maiden’s manager, Rod Smallwood, said in a statement. “The interest in the band has never been bigger and [with] this strategic partnership … the fans can be assured there is a great deal more to come for Maiden, and Eddie will rule, OK!!”
A mainstay heavy metal act for more than 50 years, Maiden has had four albums reach the top 10 of the Billboard 200 chart: Senjutsu, which in 2021 became Maiden’s highest-charting album debuting at No. 3, The Book of Souls in 2015, The Final Frontier in 2010, and A Matter of Life And Death in 2006. Maiden’s 1986 album Somewhere In Time notched the No. 11 spot on the Billboard 200.
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From Madonna to the Rolling Stones, the catalogs of legacy acts typically generate less revenue from streaming and more from physical sales, airplay spins, concerts, merchandise sales and licensing their music for other media, like concert films, video games and comic books, all of which Maiden has done. It’s latest film, the documentary Iron Maiden: Burning Ambition, came out earlier this year alongside news that the group will be inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in November.
According to Luminate, the Iron Maiden catalog averaged about 191,000 album equivalent units over the past four years in the United States, of which album sales totaled about 136,000 units while streaming averaged almost 172 million on-demand streams annually. However, outside the U.S. where Iron Maiden has a large and growing audience, the group averaged 1.055 billion on-demand streams annually.
The band’s live presence is legendary, and Koravos says they have no intention of cribbing the band’s ability to tour.
“One of the attractions of this catalog is the incredible fandom that surrounds them, and they’ve done the most incredible job over the years of giving those fans amazing shows every single time,” said Koravos, whose husband, Stuart Galbraith, CEO of KMJ Entertainment Group, was the promoter of Maiden’s recent Eddfest shows in Knebworth, United Kingdom. “I have a deep understanding of the Maiden fan, and I think the band would say they’ve brought us on board to turbo charge them, [not] to help them hang up their boots.”
Iron Maiden has played more than 2,500 shows in 64 countries worldwide, according to Pophouse, touring the world in a personalized Boeing 747 piloted by frontman Bruce Dickinson. (Dickinson is a licensed commercial airline pilot who used to fly with the British charter line Astraeus and once flew a group of Royal Air Force pilots home from Afghanistan in a flight chartered by the British Ministry of Defence.)
Touring that much is lucrative. For the 745 shows for which industry sources reported figures to Billboard Boxscore charts, the band has sold 10.5 million tickets and grossed $681.1 million since 1984. Those numbers are incomplete, as boxscore data is subject to data submitted by official industry sources, and it does not include merchandise sales.
The group draws massive audiences in Latin America, particularly in Brazil where Maiden played their first Rock in Rio festival in 1985. In late November, 2024, Maiden sold 119,000 tickets to their double-header at Santiago, Chile’s Estadio Nacional, making that stop the group’s best-selling concert stop, according to Billboard Boxscore.
The group also draws large crowds across Europe, particularly in their hometown of London where they played their highest-grossing show on June 28, 2025, at London Stadium grossed $8.9 million from 75,000 tickets. That show, part of the group’s 50th-anniversary Run For Your Lives World Tour, helped make Iron Maiden the 14th highest-grossing touring act in 2025, with 59 shows and more than 1.5 million tickets sold grossing nearly $151 million, according to Boxscore.
Catalog investors consider acts that are currently touring more appealing than artists who aren’t because those live shows activate the band’s fanbase, with ticket and merch sales providing current data to measure consumer demand and drive new fans to stream their music.
Eric Frankenberg and Ed Christman contributed to this report.
‘ The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties ’
‘ Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.billboard.com ’
