This website uses cookies so that we can provide you with the best user experience possible. Cookie information is stored in your browser and performs functions such as recognising you when you return to our website and helping our team to understand which sections of the website you find most interesting and useful.
Business News Digital Gigs & Festivals Live Business
Grateful Dead finale a big pay-per-view event too
By Chris Cooke | Published on Friday 24 July 2015
Those big finale-come-reunion shows from Grateful Dead in the US earlier this month were not only a rather big success story in terms of ticket sales, but the pay-per-view live streams available via YouTube and a bunch of cable TV companies also constituted “the largest syndication of a live music event in history”.
Well, that’s according to the company behind the pay-per-view web and broadcast of the ‘Fare Thee Well’ concerts, but there were over 400,000 streams, which is impressive for a pay-per-view concert via either web or cable networks.
Billboard notes that only the Backstreet Boys previously reached a six figure audience with a similar pay-per-view concert broadcast in 1999 (they got 160,000 paying viewers, and the Grateful Dead figure could still rise because the content is available via a watch-again option).
Given the concerts were available via cable TV services, the assumption is that the audience tuning in to the live recording was actually way higher, given it’s thought plenty of bars and such like were screening the shows.
