UK tour ticket contributions raise £500k for grassroots venues and artists thank to Pulp, Mumford & Sons, and more

UK tour ticket contributions have raised £500,000 for grassroots music venues thanks to artists like Pulp and Mumford & Sons.

• READ MORE: 2025 could be a game-changer for funding UK grassroots music – but when will we see action and where will the money go?

It is the result of artists donating £1 from every ticket sold on the UK leg of their tours to the Live Trust – a new funding initiative from LIVE which was set up in the wake of last year’s CMS Select Committee investigation into the state of the grassroots.

The trust will offer vital financial support to those working across live music, and looks to support numerous corners of the live music ecosystem, offering backing to venues, artists, festivals and promoters.

David Martin of the Featured Artists Coalition told NME in January that he hopes a levy would be introduced by some artists to support the initiative; “what I would like to see happen is a £1 blanket levy on all gigs above a 5,000 capacity very quickly with that funding going to the Live Trust and distributed between venues and artists in parity, with some of the money going to promoters as well.”

Pulp were the first act to pledge £1 from each ticket towards the initiative, shortly followed by Mumford & Sons, Diana Ross and Hans Zimmer.

Now, the LIVE Trust has announced that it has already had more than £500,000 pledged in ticket contributions from UK tours of domestic and international artists such as those aforementioned.

Jon Collins, CEO of LIVE, said: “This is a welcome milestone for The LIVE Trust and marks a very significant contribution to the grassroots live music sector. What this demonstrates is that there is a real appetite from performers and their teams to support the wider live ecosystem and we applaud and thank those that have already taken this initiative.

“Whilst this is an excellent start there is still much work to do if we are to convince government that a voluntary rather than statutory levy is both workable and sustainable.”

It comes after a campaign by Music Venue Trust (MVT) for a levy on tickets to gigs at arena level and above, which was backed by the government last year. It would see the music industry adopt a ‘Premier League model’ with the top tiers of the live industry paying back into the ecosystem to keep the talent pipeline flowing, as they do in football.

It is hoped that the major companies of the live industry will take it upon themselves to act on a voluntary levy, with a deadline for meaningful decisions set for March before the government steps back in to consider making it mandatory by law.

Support for MVT’s levy has come from Coldplay, Sam Fender, Enter Shikari, Katy Perry and more, with the charity confirming that it has led to “over £580,000 already being reinvested into the grassroots network via 147 grants”.

Just last week, it was also confirmed that over 90 per cent of music fans are supportive of the £1 ticket levy to help support the survival of grassroots music venues.

The demand for large music venues to support their smaller counterparts comes amid starling figures about the UK’s live music scene in recent years. This January, for example, figures showed that the UK lost one grassroots music venue every two weeks in 2024 – with nearly half making a loss and 200 remaining in a state of emergency. In November, it was also reported that the country’s grassroots music scene is said to be facing “complete collapse” without urgent help and government intervention.

Recently, Creative Industries Minister Sir Chris Bryant MP spoke to NME about what MPs are doing in 2025 to try and protect the future of live music in the UK.

“You don’t get big venue success tours without small venue innovation and creativity,” he said. “We’re the first government that have made it very clear that we support the calls for a voluntary levy. If there isn’t a voluntary levy in short order, then we will take action. That would mean a statutory levy which would take time, so I’d much prefer a voluntary levy. I’m quite hopeful that we’ll have something in place soon, and I’m working quite hard on it.

“There’s nothing more special than going to a big arena show of an act that you first saw in a tiny, tiny venue,” he added. “If you don’t have any tiny venues then you’re never going to have the British success stories that the industry depends on.”

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