In July, heavy metal legends Black Sabbath will reform for a vast concert in their native Birmingham. They’re all in their mid-70s, and much-loved singer Ozzy Osbourne suffers from Parkinson’s disease.
Analysis in 2023 found that the average age of Glastonbury headliners rose from 26 to 49 in two decades, a figure that would be far higher had whippersnappers such as Adele and Stormzy not dragged it down. Paul McCartney was 80 when he topped the Pyramid Stage bill in 2022; this year’s event will be headlined by the comparatively sprightly Neil Young, 79.
A performer’s age has a material impact on what it costs to buy so-called “non-appearance” cover, a category of insurance that guarantees their fee if they can’t do a show due to illness or injury. The numbers are stark, according to insurance insiders. A young-ish DJ – a genre of musician usually cheap to insure as they don’t sing – might be charged 1.5 per cent of their promised fee by an insurance company for non-appearance cover.
So if the fee for performing is £100,000, then the DJ pays £1,500 for the policy. This rises to around 3 per cent for a band with multiple members. But for older artists in their seventies and above, the insurance can cost between 10 and 15 per cent of their performance fee, meaning up to £15,000 of their £100,000 income. For a big band earning £3 million for a stadium show, that’s an eye-watering £450,000 spent on insurance.
“Statistically, the older the artists get the more probability there is of medical issues causing them to be unable to perform. And that is what pushes the premium rates up,” says Tim Thornhill, managing director of Tysers Live, which offers music and live events insurance. “And it’s more of an issue when it is more than one individual in a band, so you’ve got the compound effect of having multiple people within a band.” (...)
A way of getting the cost down, Twomey says, was for stringent exemptions to be added to policies. These include stricter exclusion of any pre-existing medical conditions and restricting the policy’s timespan to the absolute minimum number of days. Insurance companies are also demanding comprehensive medical MOTs before a policy is offered.
“Insurance companies are insisting on full medicals beforehand, including blood and urine samples, which never used to happen in the old days. I started doing this type of insurance in the 1980s and in those days you had a one page tick-box form, and when you went to the doctor they just took your height and weight. That was it. Now it’s proper screenings,” Twomey says. From heart or plastic surgery to hair transplants, they want to know everything. Image-conscious, hard-living rock stars are reluctant to comply. “And which 70 or 80-year-old wouldn’t flag something on their blood or urine?” says Twomey. “It’s almost inevitable.” (...)
Then there are onerous “deductible” clauses on big tours. These mean that insurance companies don’t pay out until the second cancelled show (or third, fourth or fifth depending on the policy and star’s age). For the first cancelled show, the artist takes the financial hit. Deductibles are “the killer,” says Fish.
This being insurance, an ecosystem of workarounds has sprouted up. Some insurers offer no claims bonuses – effectively money back after a tour if a policy isn’t used. Then there’s the upfront no claims bonus – money earned at the start of the tour that’s clawed back if there’s a claim. Some performers use sponsorship money as de facto insurance, while others insist that promoters in different territories insure them separately, thereby slicing the risk into bitesize chunks and removing the need for deductibles.
The corollary of this minefield is that many ageing bands simply don’t bother with insurance. That’s right – in an act of rebellion that would put young acts to shame, older acts often tour with no cover at all. “Over the years artists’ appetite for buying this insurance has fallen away,” says Twomey. Performers simply absorb any losses themselves.
“Plenty of artists tour without insurance,” says Steve Howell, director of music at insurance company Howden’s Sport and Entertainment division. “I’ve got some artists who we quote for every year because their accountants say they should have it and the artist says ‘No, I’m not spending money like that. I’ve been touring for four decades’. So they self-insure on the basis that if they miss a show they will cover the wages of their staff and they would just miss out on that income. Some artists have got enough money.”
Put crudely, for a huge band that plays a 40-date stadium tour and stands to earn millions per show, it’s cheaper to suck up the losses from one missed show than shell out insurance for all 40 at 15 per cent (costing many more millions). Rather than the insurance company taking the risk, the artists shoulder it.
A tour promoter who’s worked for the world’s biggest concert companies can see why artists shun insurance. “Some artists make $8-10 million a night. They think, ‘That’s a million bucks a night to insure us in case someone’s ill.’ The reality is, if the drummer’s sick you just get a new one in.”
by James Hall, The Telegraph | Read more:
Image: Jim Dyson/Getty Images Europe
Image: Jim Dyson/Getty Images Europe
