Untitled Group Posts ‘Record-Breaking’ Result For Summer Season

As the pandemic drifts out of view and morphs into a pub quiz question, Untitled Group posts its biggest-ever year.

The Melbourne-based independent concert and events promoter wraps its 2023/24 festival season with over 500,000 tickets sold, a “record-breaking” result, reps say.

That’s well advanced on the 300,000 tickets sold in a typical, pre-COVID year.

During the hottest party months, Untitled produced upwards of 250 events and festivals, booked more than 1,000 artists across its range of fests, tours and clubs shows, and organised 99 artist tours.

All told, reads a statement, the scale and appetite for its summer season was “unprecedented.”

Broken down, Untitled’s New Year’s festival circuit was its most successful yet, raking in over 150,000 tickets sold across fests and sideshows nationwide, including its Beyond The Valley, Wildlands, and Sun Cycle brands.

Beyond The Valley

The first of those, BTV, lifts its game to a 35,000-ticket sellout – a milestone for the popular event, first held back in 2014.

For the most recent edition, the likes of Grammy Award-winners Rüfüs Du Sol and reigning ARIA Award champion Dom Dolla entertained the punters at BTV, spread across a four-day camp-out.

Rüfüs Du Sol headlined Wildlands, which enjoyed “its most prosperous year yet,” with 85,000 tickets sold nationwide, including legs in Brisbane, Perth and Adelaide.

Other highlights from the reporting period included shows by U.S. pop star Christina Aguilera, according to Untitled, and country hitmaker Zach Bryan, whose debut tour of these parts shifted 30,000 tickets in quick-time.

Dom Dolla’s homecoming dates at Sidney Myer Music Bowl in Melbourne was a floor-filler, reportedly moving 25,000 tickets in just five minutes.

Time stands still for no promoter. Untitled Group is back at the steering wheel for programming Finals Festival at the Australian Open this weekend, featuring headliners Groove Armada, Rudimental, Yaeji, Peach PRC, Tash Sultana, Ruel, The Jungle Giants, DMAs.

Next up, Pitch Music & Arts, spread over days at the Grampians this March.

The group was founded back in 2014 by the four managing partners, Michael Christidis, Nicholas Greco, Filippo Palermo and Christian Serrao.

The business has “grown a lot” since pre-health crisis, recounts Greco in a recent Fear at the Top podcast. And it was by design.

“We made a very conscious decision to bring everything in-house after COVID. It’s helped us to be really agile, move really quickly, all the marketing side, event operations. It’s allowed to build to the scale we’re at right now.”

Beyond The Valley

Christidis and Palermo were rewarded last year with selection in Forbes “30 Under 30” list for North America, and the company landed at No. 8 on the trade title’s AU/NZ Top Promoter list, based on box office results.

Further recognition came in late 2022 when Pollstar identified Untitled as the No. 2 Australian promoter (and No. 46 overall) in its Top Promoter List, and its directors earned nods for the Resilience Award in Smart 50’s 2022, and the Young Australian Entrepreneurs in 2021 and 2022, and earning Start-Up of The Year honours at Commbank’s Young Hero Awards.