live music industry magazine IQ interviewed Neo Salas, Radiohead's promoter in Spain since 1997.
relevant excerpts:
Doctor Music founder/CEO Neo Sala says the Spanish live music market “has never been as healthy” after Radiohead’s four-night Madrid stint crowned another memorable year for the company.
The venerable promoter staged Radiohead’s 4-8 November stint at Movistar Arena to kick off the band’s 2025 European tour. A total of 68,737 tickets were sold for the in-the-round run, as per Pollstar.
With Radiohead announcing their live comeback just two months prior to the show dates, Sala – who began promoting the group in Spain back in 1997 – says their first tour in seven years came as a pleasant surprise.
“The four Madrid shows were phenomenal, a truly unique musical and atmospheric experience. One of a kind,” Sala tells IQ. “I felt very lucky when I heard Spain was going to be one of only five countries they would play in Europe on this tour. And the fact that it started in Madrid made it even more exciting.
“They are superb musicians, really nice guys and they have an outstanding team around them. It was a pleasure to work with them all.”
Allowing for additional seating capacity, the in-the-round format helped the group break Metallica’s record for the highest ever attendance within The O2 four times over for their subsequent London concerts, pulling in 22,355 fans for their last date at the venue on 25 November.
Sala explains how the production obstacles were navigated for Radiohead’s stay in the Spanish capital.
“There were certainly special requirements for a full 360º stage placed right in the middle of the arena, which is not very common – completely surrounded by large translucent screens around the entire perimeter,” he says. “The production design definitely helped create a very intimate atmosphere inside the venue and the audience was almost hypnotised from the very first minute.”
Special measures were implemented to clamp down on touts and bots in an effort to ensure tickets got into the hands of real fans.
“We have developed solid tools to monitor the on-sale process, and we applied all of this know-how with the support of Radiohead’s management, who also had their own system,” says Sala. “I cannot be more specific about this as, of course, we do not want scalpers to know how we do it.”
As a founding director of the Face-value European Alliance for Ticketing (FEAT), Sala has been a staunch opponent of secondary ticketing abuse and applauds the UK government’s plans to make it illegal for tickets to concerts and other live events to be resold for more than their original cost.
“We hope that many countries will follow the recent UK prime minister’s policy,” says Sala. “Promoters must also be provided with the technical tools that allow them to remove any unauthorised ticket listings very quickly – within hours – when they’re resold without the promoter’s approval, as this is the only way to guarantee resold tickets are properly reissued and fraud prevented.”