Promoters of Performing Arts, Sports, and Similar Events (U.S., NAICS 7113)

NAICS = North American Industry Classification System, the U.S. government's standard code for grouping businesses by activity. This is a four-digit industry group. It contains two five-digit industries, 71131 and 71132. This primer rolls them up: it leads with how the two differ, then covers the group as a whole. Figures for this level come from federal statistical sources; company- and trade-sourced figures are drawn from the two child primers and clearly marked.

1. Overview

This industry group is the business of putting on live events — concerts, festivals, sporting events, combat-sports cards, touring theater, and state and county fairs — as a for-profit promoter. It splits on a single question: does the operator also run the building? [1]

• If yes, it sits in 71131 — with facilities: arena, stadium, amphitheater, theater, and fairground operators who both stage events and manage the venue.
• If no, it sits in 71132 — without facilities: asset-light promoters who book the talent, rent someone else's room, take the financial risk, and sell the tickets.

Live entertainment has been one of the more resilient corners of consumer spending — a concert or a game can't be pirated, and demand for in-person experiences has grown even as goods spending softened. But the two halves of this group earn their keep in very different ways: one owns bricks and staffs them; the other owns relationships and underwrites risk. The single most important fact about the group is that one company, Live Nation, is the largest player on both sides — which is why the group's defining regulatory story is a single antitrust case [6][10].

2. What's inside — and how the two halves differ

NAICS 7113 contains two five-digit industries, each with a single six-digit child, so 71131 ≈ 711310 and 71132 ≈ 711320. The rollup value here is the contrast between them. On our federal figures the two are nearly the same size by receipts but almost mirror images on labor, concentration, and business model:

(CR4 = four-firm concentration ratio, the share of receipts held by the four largest firms; HHI = Herfindahl-Hirschman Index, a single-number concentration measure that sums squared market shares — economists treat ~1,500+ as "concentrated.")

Read the table this way. The two halves are close in dollars but opposite in shape. With-facilities is a labor- and capital-heavy business — you run a building, so you employ four out of five workers in the whole group (mostly part-time ushers, security, concessions, and ground crews at ~$34,000 a head), and ownership is fragmented because arenas, fairgrounds, and amphitheaters are scattered and many are city-, county-, or authority-owned. Without-facilities is a risk-bearing, thin-headcount business — a promoter's assets are relationships and capital-at-risk, so it employs only one in five workers (at roughly double the pay) yet its top is twice as concentrated, because national touring is effectively a Live Nation/AEG duopoly [5][9]. The one thread tying the two together: Live Nation is the #1 firm in each, which dilutes measured concentration in the with-facilities half and dominates the without-facilities half. For the full scope, exclusions, and company detail, see the two child primers.

3. Size (this level's rollup figures)

These are our ground-truth U.S. federal statistics for NAICS 7113. They combine reference years (receipts and firm counts are 2022; establishments, employment, and payroll are 2023) and should be read as a footprint, not a single-year financial statement. The two children add up cleanly to these totals. [2][3]

• Average pay works out to roughly $42,000 per worker [3] — a blend of the low-paid, part-time venue staff that dominate 71131 and the smaller, better-paid promoter workforce in 71132.
• Concentration for the group as a whole: the top four firms hold 33.9% of receipts (CR4), the top eight 37.8% (CR8), the top twenty 45.1% (CR20), and the top fifty 55.4% (CR50); the HHI is suppressed in the federal file and so cannot be reported here [2]. The group-level CR4 sits between the two children's — above fragmented 71131 (23%) and below concentrated 71132 (52%) — precisely because the same leader spans both.

Undercount caveat (important). The $40.9 billion is a floor, not a ceiling, on the live-events economy, and the gap is largest exactly where small and individual ownership dominates:

• Public ownership. Many major arenas, stadiums, and convention centers are city-, county-, or authority-owned; their operations show up (if at all) as government activity, not business receipts — a big omission on the with-facilities side.
• Revenue booked elsewhere. The largest pools — ticketing fees, sports-team gate and media money, and international touring — land under other NAICS codes; much promotion is also done in-house by leagues, teams, venues, and artists, classified under their own codes.
• Nonemployers excluded. The establishment, employment, and payroll figures count only employer establishments; the many one-person promoter shops and volunteer-led fairs with no paid staff are left out. As a scale-of-coverage warning (not an estimate for this code), nonemployer businesses were about 91% of all Arts, Entertainment & Recreation establishments in 2016 [13].

Treat this level's official size as the measured for-profit footprint of live-event promotion, not the full scale of live entertainment.

4. Investable universe (where value concentrates)

Value in this group concentrates in a very small public set sitting on top of a mostly private and government-owned base — and it concentrates differently on each side.

• The one name that spans both children is Live Nation Entertainment (ticker LYV) — the #1 live-entertainment company at about $25.2 billion FY2025 global revenue [6]. It both operates venues (71131) and promotes tours it doesn't house (71132), and it owns Ticketmaster, which is why it is simultaneously the sector's most valuable business and its biggest regulatory target.
• On the with-facilities side (71131), the cleanest public pure-play is Madison Square Garden Entertainment (MSGE), a venue-portfolio operator [7]. The largest owners underneath are private — AEG, Legends Global, Oak View Group, Delaware North — or public/quasi-public authorities and fair boards.
• On the without-facilities side (71132), the nearest second public name is TKO Group Holdings (TKO), which owns the UFC and WWE (and, since 2025, PBR and On Location) [8]. Everything else worth owning is private: AEG Presents (the world's #2 concert promoter, owner of Coachella), the boxing promoters (Matchroom, Top Rank, PBC, Golden Boy), Feld Entertainment, and most festival and fair operators [9].

There is no dedicated live-events exchange-traded fund (ETF); passive exposure comes bundled inside consumer-discretionary and communication-services funds. Full company tables, tickers, and private-owner profiles are in the two child primers, section 4.

5. How the money works

Neither half gets rich on ticket face value — the gross ticket price is split with artists, teams, and venues, which is why the group's payroll ($7.7 billion) is small against its receipts ($40.9 billion). The profit sits in two different places on the two sides:

• With facilities (71131): a venue is a fixed-cost asset — lease/mortgage, staff, insurance, and maintenance run whether the lights are on or not — so profit turns on event-days and utilization. An empty night is pure cost; a sellout drops nearly all incremental revenue to the bottom line (high operating leverage). The real money is per-fan ("per-cap") spending — food and beverage, premium seating, suites, parking, merchandise — plus sponsorship, naming rights, and, for an integrated player, ticketing fees [6].
• Without facilities (71132): the promoter is a risk underwriter — it pays the act a guaranteed fee and covers production, marketing, and insurance before a ticket is sold, keeping the upside on a sellout and eating the loss on a flop. Promotion itself is low-margin; the profit is made on the assembled crowd through sponsorship, ticketing fees, VIP/premium packages, food and beverage, and merchandise, and increasingly through site fees paid by host cities that absorb the risk [5][6].

The common thread: thin margins on the ticket, real margins on everything around it — and for the integrated leader, on the ticketing layer itself.

6. Demand drivers

Both halves ride the same top-line forces, which is why they move together over a cycle:

• Discretionary income and the "experience economy." Live events are a want, not a need, but the long-run shift toward experiences over goods has raised the demand floor.
• The touring supply cycle. A year with many megastar stadium tours lifts the whole group; a light year pulls it down. Operators can't manufacture the supply — and because streaming pays artists little, touring is now musicians' primary income, continuously feeding new tours [12].
• Sports and the mega-event calendar. League schedules, playoffs, and hosting rights anchor and fill venues; the FIFA World Cup comes to North America in 2026 and the Summer Olympics to Los Angeles in 2028.
• New venues, sponsorship, host-city money, tourism, and seasonality. Marquee buildings expand the premium market; outdoor amphitheaters, festivals, and fairs concentrate revenue in Q2–Q3 and carry weather risk. Premium events can stay strong while smaller local events weaken, so a healthy headline market can mask stress lower down [12].

Counterforces: household affordability, competition for leisure time, cancellations, weather, safety concerns, and an oversupply of new venues.

7. Regulation

• Antitrust is the dominant story — and it targets the one firm spanning both children. In May 2024 the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) and dozens of states sued Live Nation and Ticketmaster. In March 2026 the DOJ settled (a 15% cap on ticketing fees, "open ticketing," and a limited amphitheater-booking divestiture — but no forced Ticketmaster break-up), with final court entry expected around September 2026; separately, a states' jury found unlawful monopolization in April 2026, with the remedy phase still outstanding [10]. The outcome reshapes the sector's most valuable profit pool — ticketing — which is why it matters to both halves of the group.
• Consumer-protection / pricing. The Federal Trade Commission's (FTC's) "junk fees" rule took effect May 12, 2025, requiring live-event sellers to show the all-in price up front, mandatory fees included [11].
• Ticketing, safety, and sport-specific rules. The federal Better Online Ticket Sales (BOTS) Act limits ticket-buying bots; the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) governs ticket sales and seating; state athletic commissions and the federal Ali Act govern boxing and mixed martial arts (MMA); and because so many venues are publicly financed, the with-facilities half also intersects with municipal-bond finance, zoning, noise ordinances, and crowd-safety codes. Detail in the child primers, section 7.

8. Consolidation

The group's defining structural feature is vertical integration: Live Nation combines promotion, venue operation, artist management, ticketing, and sponsorship under one roof — the flywheel that made it dominant on both sides of this group and made it the antitrust target [6][10]. National touring is effectively a Live Nation/AEG duopoly, and the majors have spent two decades rolling up regional promoters and festivals (many "independent" festivals are in fact Live Nation– or AEG-affiliated). Sports IP has consolidated (UFC and WWE under TKO) even as boxing stays rivalrous, with Saudi money increasingly setting terms. On the with-facilities side, asset-light venue-management roll-ups have built national scale (Legends Global, Oak View Group), while a new-venue arms race is the current frontier. Beneath the giants, the low measured concentration of 71131 (CR4 23%) reflects thousands of independents — the long tail that survives on local knowledge and niche audiences [4][5][9].

9. Risks

• Regulatory / antitrust overhang — the ticketing remedy is the single biggest swing factor for the listed names, since ticketing is the group's highest-margin pool [10].
• Content and talent concentration — a weak touring year or a star's cancellation dents grosses across both halves, and a few artists, teams, and leagues capture a rising share of the take.
• Fixed costs and guarantee risk — with-facilities players carry long leases, venue debt, and maintenance that stay high when volume falls; without-facilities players make fixed talent guarantees before sales are known.
• Consumer-discretionary sensitivity, event risk, and private-market opacity — live spending is resilient but discretionary (lower-income fans cut back first); crowd incidents, weather, and cancellations carry large liabilities; and most of the real ownership is private, which limits diligence. The 2020–21 pandemic showed revenue can go to zero overnight.

10. How to invest & outlook

Public exposure is a small, heterogeneous set of three overlapping names — LYV for broad integrated exposure across both halves (with the antitrust risk attached), MSGE as the cleanest with-facilities venue pure-play, and TKO for sports/combat promotion on the without-facilities side. All three are partly conglomerates and should be modeled by business segment, not with a generic "entertainment" multiple; there is no dedicated ETF, so passive exposure comes bundled inside broad consumer-discretionary and communication-services funds. Only in this section do market multiples matter — review current price, dividend and free-cash-flow yields, and enterprise value to earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization (EV/EBITDA), normalizing first for tour-year strength and event timing.

Private routes hold most of the real ownership. On the with-facilities side that means private-equity and infrastructure stakes in AEG, Legends Global, Oak View Group, and Delaware North; direct venue real estate; and municipal bonds tied to publicly financed arenas. On the without-facilities side it means direct stakes in boxing, festival, and regional promoters, and the ancillary services (ticketing, hospitality, production) that feed events.

Base case: constructive but selective. The structural case — a durable shift toward scarce, time-specific experiences — is intact, with the 2026 World Cup and 2028 LA Olympics as multi-year catalysts, but growth has normalized to measured, uneven levels after the post-pandemic surge. Value will accrue disproportionately to scarce venues, diversified operators, premium hospitality, and the ticketing layer — against a lumpy content cycle and a regulatory cloud sitting squarely over the one company that dominates both halves of the group. For the full how-to-invest checklists and outlooks, see the two child primers, section 10.

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Sources

1. U.S. Census Bureau. "2022 NAICS Definitions — 7113 Promoters of Performing Arts, Sports, and Similar Events," with children 71131/711310 (with facilities) and 71132/711320 (without facilities). census.gov. https://www.census.gov/naics/
2. U.S. Census Bureau. "2022 Economic Census — Concentration Statistics, NAICS 7113" (receipts ~$40.93B; firms 7,874; CR4 33.9%, CR8 37.8%, CR20 45.1%, CR50 55.4%; HHI suppressed). Ground-truth federal file for this level.
3. U.S. Census Bureau. "County Business Patterns 2023, NAICS 7113" (establishments 9,305; employment 184,353; annual payroll ~$7.70B; Q1 payroll ~$1.79B). Ground-truth federal file for this level.
4. Histometrics child primer — NAICS 71131 (Promoters … with Facilities): receipts ~$21.6B; employment 144,748; payroll ~$4.97B; CR4 23%, HHI 192 (2022 Economic Census / 2023 CBP). primer-71131-DRAFT.md.
5. Histometrics child primer — NAICS 71132 (Promoters … without Facilities): receipts ~$19.29B; employment 39,605; payroll ~$2.74B; CR4 52%, HHI suppressed (2022 Economic Census / 2023 CBP). primer-71132-DRAFT.md.
6. Live Nation Entertainment / Music Business Worldwide. "Live Nation annual revenues top $25B in 2025" (FY2025 ~$25.2B revenue; venue operation, promotion, and Ticketmaster). Live Nation Newsroom, Full Year and Fourth Quarter 2025 Results. https://newsroom.livenation.com/
7. Madison Square Garden Entertainment Corp. "Fiscal 2025 Results"; StockAnalysis.com, MSGE overview. https://stockanalysis.com/stocks/msge/
8. U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. "TKO Group Holdings Form 10-K" (UFC, WWE, PBR, On Location; Endeavor voting control). https://www.sec.gov/
9. Wikipedia, "Anschutz Entertainment Group" (AEG Presents as #2 promoter, owner of Coachella; privately held); Boxing Social / Forbes, valuations of Matchroom, Top Rank, PBC, Golden Boy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anschutz_Entertainment_Group
10. U.S. Department of Justice, Antitrust Division / CNN. "U.S. and Plaintiff States v. Live Nation Entertainment, Inc. and Ticketmaster L.L.C." (May 2024 complaint; March 2026 DOJ settlement — 15% ticketing-fee cap, open ticketing, amphitheater-booking divestiture, no Ticketmaster break-up, Tunney Act entry ~Sept. 2026; states' April 2026 jury monopolization verdict, remedy phase outstanding). https://www.justice.gov/atr/case/us-and-plaintiff-states-v-live-nation-entertainment-inc-and-ticketmaster-llc
11. Federal Trade Commission. "FTC Rule on Unfair or Deceptive Fees to Take Effect on May 12, 2025" (all-in upfront pricing for live-event tickets). https://www.ftc.gov/
12. Pollstar. "2024 and 2025 Year-End Business Analysis" (Top-100 grosses; touring as primary artist income; ~71% growth since 2019; "A Return to Earth"). https://news.pollstar.com/
13. U.S. Census Bureau. "Nonemployer Statistics and County Business Patterns Data Tell the Full Story" (nonemployers were ~91% of Arts, Entertainment & Recreation establishments, 2016 — sector-wide coverage note, not a 7113 estimate). https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2018/09/three-fourths-nations-businesses-do-not-have-paid-employees.html