started a joint venture<\/a> with Abu Dhabi-based event management and venue operator Ethara. Live Nation, for its part, has been working in the Saudi Arabia for the last nine years. And with FIFA\u2019s World Cup slated for Saudi Arabia in eight years, radia already has a tall order to fill.<\/p>\n\u201cWe\u2019ve talked at length about commercial sustainability and how we make sure these venues, many of which will be used for the World Cup in 2034, are sustainable post World Cup,\u201d OVG\u2019s Granger said. \u201cIt\u2019s been a very deep, methodical, thought-provoking and strategic conversation over the past two-plus years. I can\u2019t think of a better team to attack this than SURJ, OVG and Live Nation.\u201d<\/p>\n
A key aspect to radia\u2019s business model is bringing in quality live events and concerts, which its partnership with the world\u2019s largest promoter should facilitate.<\/p>\n
\u201cLive Nation has been working and investing in Saudi Arabia since 2017, and this partnership builds on that long-term commitment,\u201d said Live Nation\u2019s Chairman EMEA John Reid in a statement. \u201cBy bringing our expertise in programming venue operations and live events, we\u2019ll help build venues and experiences that work for artists, athletes, audiences and the wider industry.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019re fantastic,\u201d says SURJ\u2019s Townsend when asked about seeing concerts in Saudi Arabia. \u201cIt\u2019s no different from going into any other venue, in any other country in the world. What people probably don\u2019t know is that Saudi is a very young culture. Eighty percent of the population is under 40 so it\u2019s a vibrant emerging youth culture that naturally gravitates to music, sport and entertainment. We\u2019re fortunate that we\u2019re at that stage of the country\u2019s development cycle that we\u2019ve got young audiences craving live entertainment. Radia has the ability to serve that pent up demand.\u201d<\/p>\n
When asked of his favorite concert in the Kingdom, Townsend mentions a certain superstar who one wouldn\u2019t necessarily expect to see perform in the Saudi Arabia.<\/p>\n
\u201cEminem was amazing,\u201d he says. \u201cThere is a major music festival called Soundstorm, which he played at.\u00a0 It\u2019s a huge festival that I think has over 100,000 people a day. It\u2019s a huge event on the calendar, and he played that. It was absolutely fantastic. \u00a0Some people think there is a different sort of vibe here around music. It\u2019s certainly no different to any other developed music marketplace. Music and other entertainment are emerging as key pillars of the Saudi culture.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n
\u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source news.pollstar.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"From left: John Reid, Chairman LiveNation EMEA, Danny Townsend, CEO SURJ Sports Investment\u00a0, Chris Granger, CEO, Oak View Group\u00a0at the signing ceremony for radia, a joint venture to develop sports and entertainment in Saudi Arabia. (Courtesy OVG) SURJ Sports Investment, Live Nation and Oak View Group (Pollstar\u2018s parent company) today announced the formation of radia, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2505168,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25172],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2505167","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-entertainment"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/OVG-Live-Nation-SURJ-Sports-Investment-Announce-radia-JV-To.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2505167","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2505167"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2505167\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2505169,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2505167\/revisions\/2505169"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2505168"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2505167"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2505167"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2505167"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}