| Steve Chilton is starting to book concerts at his rock club in Phoenix for later this year. But he doesn't have a marketing person to promote them, or the money to pay the acts. Chilton, like hundreds of other venue owners, has been waiting on relief from the government, which in December passed a bill that set aside $16 billion in grants for venues that host live events. Eligible applicants include concert halls and theaters. But more than five months have lapsed since the bill created the Shuttered Venue Operators Grant program, or SVOG, and venue owners still haven't received any money. The Small Business Administration took four months to open the portal that allowed eligible businesses to apply. The portal then shut down just four hours after it opened. When the portal reopened in late April, venue owners thought they'd finally reached the promised land. Only now they are being told they have to wait until late May, at the earliest, to get their money. "I am just hearing a lot from venues freaking out," Chilton told me this past week. "Not at all fun right now." Time is of the essence for many of these clubs. After a year in hibernation, the live music business is expected to come roaring back. Outdoor venues are planning to open back up again in the summer, while indoor arenas aim to open in the fall. Promoters, venue owners and agents all believe the concert business will come back stronger than ever. Most people who bought tickets to shows postponed by the pandemic have held onto those tickets. Big acts like Bad Bunny are selling out new shows within minutes. "There's a tremendous amount of pent-up demand with fans," Dan Beckerman, the chief executive officer of the second-largest promoter in the U.S., Anschutz Entertainment Group Inc., told me. "There's a lot of pent-up supply as well from artists who want and need to get back on the road. It's going to be an incredible return in the next 18 months." As Beckerman noted, there is a huge backlog of acts looking to tour. The acts that were supposed to tour in 2020 still want to go on the road, and all the acts that had planned to tour in 2021 are also looking to perform. Touring is how most of these artists make money, and their tours employ thousands of additional crew. Between artists, managers, bookers, crew, promoters and venue staff, there are hundreds of thousands of people waiting on the return of live music. Yet most venues can't just reopen at a moment's notice. They need money to pay back rent, rehire staff and make upgrades to their facilities to prepare for live music post-Covid. To make matters worse, insurance companies are jacking up the prices. "They are taking advantage of a difficult situation," says Gregg Perloff, the head of San Francisco-based promoter Another Planet Entertainment. "The rates for insurance have more than doubled in the past three years." The setback is the latest in a year of pain for music venue owners and their staff. Many clubs have closed for good. Most have cut back on staff. The largest promoters like Live Nation and AEG have been able to raise money via debt, stock or asset sales. Despite losing billions of dollars during the pandemic, Live Nation's stock has flirted with all-time highs. Here's a graph of its share price since the start of 2020.  But independent venue owners have just had to keep telling banks to wait and wait and wait. In addition to co-owning the Rebel Lounge, Chilton owns a business promoting concerts at clubs across Arizona. Sales for his promotion business fell 99.6% during the pandemic He and his partners reopened the Rebel Lounge as a pop-up coffee shop that makes just 4% of the revenue it does as a live music venue. "We are surviving on massive debt," says Chilton. "Our landlord has been working with us, but he is expecting the SVOG comes through and we can get caught up. It would take forever to dig out of last year if not for aid coming. We're in more debt now than when we opened the place." -- Lucas Shaw The best of Screentime (and other stuff) | 
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