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Live Nation Entertainment Inc (LYV -0.07%)
Q3 2018 Earnings Conference Call
Nov. 01, 2018, 5:00 p.m. ET
Contents:
- Prepared Remarks
- Questions and Answers
- Call Participants
Prepared Remarks:
Operator
Good afternoon, my name is Abiny and I will be your conference facilitator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the Live Nation Entertainment Third Quarter 2018 Conference Call. Today's conference is being recorded. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speakers' remarks, there will be a question-and-answer period.
Before we begin, Live Nation has asked me to remind you that this afternoon's call will contain certain forward-looking statements that are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ, including statements related to the company's anticipated financial performance, business prospects, new developments and similar matters. Please refer to the Live Nation's SEC filings, including the risk factors and cautionary statements included in the company's most recent filings on forms 10-K, 10-Q and 8-K for a description of risks and uncertainties that could impact the actual results.
Live Nation will also refer to some non-GAAP measures on this call in accordance with the SEC Regulation G, Live Nation has provided full reconciliation of the most comparable GAAP measure in their earnings release. The release reconciliations and other financial or statistical information to be discussed on this call, can be found under the Investor Relations tab on investors.livenationentertainment.com.
It is now my pleasure to turn the call over to Michael Rapino, President and Chief Executive Officer of Live Nation Entertainment. Please go ahead.
Michael Rapino -- President and Chief Executive Officer
Good afternoon and welcome to our third quarter 2018 conference call. Live Nation had its best quarter ever, and we are on track to deliver another record year of results across revenue, AOI and free cash flow. For the quarter, revenue was up 11%, and AOI was up 16% and year-to-date revenue was up 11%, AOI up 17%, and free cash flow was up 22%. All our divisions, concerts, ticketing and sponsorship each delivered their strongest quarterly AOI results ever.
Our concerts businesses is our flywheel, attracting over 33 million fans to shows globally in the quarter, up 12% year-over-year, which then drove record results in our on-site ticketing and sponsorship business. Through October, we've sold 85 million tickets for concerts in 2018, up 6% year-on-year and we are on track to sell over 90 million tickets this year. With our strength in concert attendance growing, we're also seeing similar success in our on-site sponsorship and ticketing business, giving us confidence the 2018 will be another year of record results for Live Nation overall and for each of our divisions.
Starting with our Concerts division, it continued to show strong global demand for Concerts through the third quarter. We drove an 8% increase in attendance to 71 million fans attending over 24,000 shows across 40 countries, driving revenue up 11% and AOI up 29% year-to-date. We have also grown our show count by 17% year-to-date to 24,000 shows, at the same time we have increased the revenue generated by each show through pricing optimization. Across arenas and amphitheaters, our average ticket price is up 14% driven by front of house pricing, which is up 25%. Collectively these increases have grown artist revenue by over 300 million across roughly 6,000 shows.
This summer, we also saw growth on-site through our hospitality initiatives at our amphitheaters, increasing our average revenue per fan by nearly $3 to almost $27. This is an increase of more than $6 per fan over the past three years, as we have driven substantial improvements across our food and beverage, VIP and parking programs.
With the success of our Concerts flywheel, we are promoting more shows for more fans, more effectively pricing and selling tickets and delivering a better fan experience than ever before. As a result, we will spend over $6 billion producing concerts this year, making Live Nation far and away the largest financial partner to musicians. In our high margin sponsorship business, we have continued our double-digit growth this year with revenue up 11% and AOI up 12% year-to-date, as we delivered our best quarterly results ever for sponsorship business.
With a 1,000 sponsors across our on-site and online platform, Live Nation is the global leader in music sponsorship, providing brands for the opportunity to reach our core millennial audience as we again add new brand partners this quarter, including T-Mobile, Sony, Pennzoil, Sterling Wine and Subway.
Onsite continues to be a key growth driver and year-to-date our festival sponsorship business is up 12%, as we continue to find innovative ways to scale and connect brands with nearly 9 million fans attending over 100 festivals worldwide. Other key growth initiatives is deepening and broadening our strategic brand relationships, with now over 70 sponsors investing on our platform across multiple fronts. Collectively the committed spend by this group is up 13% to nearly $350 million for the year, accounting for approximately 75% of our overall sponsorship and advertising revenue. With over 95% of our expected sponsorship revenue for the year now contracted, we are confident we will deliver double-digit AOI growth for the year.
Ticketmaster continues building its position as a global ticketing marketplace leader, with 15% growth year-to-date in global fee bearing GTV, driving revenue growth of 13% and AOI growth of 11%. Ticketmaster will deliver almost 500 million tickets worth approximately $31 billion GTV across 28 countries this year, making it the world's largest such marketplace. And the success of our marketplace is stronger than ever, as all three quarters in 2018 have been amongst the top five quarters ever for recognized GTV.
During the third quarter, we continued our Presence digital ticketing rollout to NFL stadiums, and many Live Nation buildings, bringing the installed base to 177 venues. In the third quarter, at these venues, we held over 1,500 events with over 3 million fans using mobile tickets for entry. We proved out the scalable capability of mobile ticket in the quarter with as many as 97% of the fans for some NFL games entering via mobile. For the fourth quarter we expect digital ticketing growth to continue with another 10 million fans across 2,000 events approximately 5 million of whom will enter using mobile tickets. The move to digital ticketing has meant that sports teams, venues and artists have much greater control over the ticket, enabling them to better control distribution and ultimately the chain of custody for the tickets.
Overall, Ticketmaster's results are validating our dual strategy of delivering a great marketplace for fans to buy tickets while providing the greatest enterprise tools to venues, teams and artists, looking to control their tickets and maximize the value of their events. By continuing to do both effectively, I expect us to deliver high single-digit growth in ticketing AOI this year.
As we approach the end of 2018, we are confident that our strong performance will deliver another record year of top line AOI and free cash flow. All of our businesses concerts, sponsorship and ticketing had delivered growth year-to-date, and based on this key operating metrics we expect each to deliver record revenue and AOI for the full year.
As we look forward, we see tremendous opportunity to continue the global consolidation of our concerts and ticketing businesses and further growth in sponsorship and ticketing on the concerts flywheel.
With that, I will turn our call over to Joe, to take you through more additional details on the divisional performance.
Joe Berchtold -- President
Thanks, Michael. Looking at our business segments, first, concerts. Live Nation concerts revenue in the third quarter was up 12%, and AOI was up 30%. This was the best quarter in Live Nation Concerts history with 33 million fans attending 7,700 shows delivering fan growth of 3.6 million in this quarter alone, and bringing our fan growth for the year-to-date of 5.4 million.
Overall, our ticket sales for shows this year has accelerated over the past three months, increasing from 4% growth back in July, now being at 6% growth through October. All parts of this business continue to do well, led by our top global tours including five tours that have each sold over 1 million tickets this year, Beyonce and and Jay-Z, (inaudible), Justin Timberlake, Pink and Bruno Mars.
And for the quarter, our arena and amphitheater shows were the largest growth driver, each adding approximately 2 million fans in the quarter. At the same time, our show counts in fan base all grew at our festivals and theaters and clubs while we had our second strongest stadium year ever trailing only last year.
Looking at the fourth quarter, we see continued strong performance in our North America Arena and theater and club shows, while internationally we are comping a very strong Q4 last year, that had unusually heavy touring activity with U2, Coldplay, and Bruno Mars all out.
Turning to our sponsorship and advertising business. Sponsorship and advertising revenue for third quarter grew by 8% and AOI was up 8% as well. Our growth for the year has been strong across both sponsorship and online advertising businesses, with both growing revenue and AOI in the double-digits year-to-date. And from a geographic perspective, both our North America and international markets have contributed similarly to our sponsorship growth, while North America has driven our online advertising growth.
Finally, Ticketmaster. For the quarter, Ticketmaster revenue was up 8% and AOI was up 1%. Global GTV was up 3% for the quarter and 7% year-to-date, driven by fee-bearing GTV which was up 13% and 15% for the quarter and year-to-date respectively. Primary GTV was up 13% for the quarter and 14% year-to-date and secondary GTV was up 11% for the quarter and is now up 22% year-to-date. As in the past, concerts and particularly Live Nation Concerts, are the largest growth driver of our ticketing business. Ticketmaster remains first and foremost of world's top ticketing marketplace for artists, sports teams and venue and sell tickets for their fans, with primary ticketing representing over 90% of our global GTV, and only approximately 2% of our concert tickets and 4% of our sports tickets are resold on our secondary platform.
Michael gave you an update on the success we're having with our digital ticketing rollout. At the same time, we're continuing to see an overall shift in ticket sales through our mobile platform. We sold 45% of our tickets in the third quarter on mobile, with sales up 37% year-on-year as we increased mobile visits by 27% and grew our app downloads by 30% to over $50 million. These results make it clear that the ticket has made the shift to mobile, giving us even greater confidence that digital ticketing will be rapidly adopted.
Finally, our open distribution strategy continues selling more tickets for clients off platform, up 23% with almost 12 million tickets sold year-to-date. And while margins move around quarter-to-quarter, we expect full year margins for ticketing to be in line with last year.
In summary, we're confident that 2018 will be another year of record revenue and AOI results, overall and for each of our businesses. On FX, Q3 revenue and AOI were negatively impacted by about 1% with the strengthening of the US dollar and for the full year, we expect the impact to be less than 1%.
Looking at Q4, we expect another strong concerts on sale for next year, which we project to drive up to $10 million in advertising expense growth, along with increased deferrals in Ticketmasters' recognition of Live Nation concert tickets.
And I'll now turn the call over to Kathy to go through more on our financial results.
Kathy Willard -- Chief Financial Officer
Thanks, Joe and good afternoon everyone. Our key financial highlights for the third quarter of 2018, our revenue was up 11% to $3.8 billion. AOI increased 16% to $386 million and free cash flow adjusted was $307 million, up 21%, all compared to the third quarter of 2017. As of September 30th, our deferred revenue related to future shows was $759 million. Revenue growth was driven by all our segments, with the majority of the growth coming from concerts up 12% from higher attendance and increased show counts primarily in amphitheaters and arenas. Our AOI growth of 16% for the third quarter was also driven by the concert segment, which delivered 30% AOI growth.
Operating income was $234 million, an increase of 16% compared to the prior year and our net income for the quarter was $173 million, up 27% over last year, both driven by the growth in AOI. For the third quarter, the impact to earnings per share from the accretion of redeemable non-controlling interest was $21 million, consistent with the same period last year. For the nine months of 2018, revenue was up 11% to $8.2 billion. AOI increased by 17% to $761 million and free cash flow adjusted was $529 million, up 22% compared to the prior year.
Revenue growth for the nine months was driven by solid growth across all our segments. Concerts grew by 11%, again delivering the majority of the revenue growth due to increased amphitheater and arena activity along with the higher onsite spend per fan in our amphitheaters. Sponsorship and advertising also grew by 11% and ticketing revenue was up 13%. AOI through September was up 17%, as each segment delivered double-digit growth. Operating income was up 24% to $363 million, driven by the increase in AOI but also impacted by slightly higher depreciation and amortization expense.
Net income for the nine months was $208 million, up 13% due to our growth in operating income after higher interest expense from our debt refinancing. For the nine months, the impact to earnings per share from the accretion of redeemable non-controlling interests was $54 million and we currently estimate that the impact for the full year will be approximately $77 million.
Moving to our balance sheet, as of September 30, we had total cash of $1.9 billion, including $734 million in ticketing client cash and $553 million in net concert event related cash, with free cash of $613 million. As you look at our working capital accounts on the balance sheet, the growth over December 2017 is driven by the normal seasonality of the business at this time of year and a bit higher, given the overall growth of the business since last year.
Net cash provided by operating activities for the nine months was $256 million compared to $418 million in 2017. The main changes to working capital were the receivables increase, driven by the higher concert activity in the third quarter and accrued liabilities were down because of the payment of a legal settlement accrued last year. Free cash flow adjusted through September was $529 million, an increase of 22% over last year. Our total capital expenditures were $169 million for the nine months, of which 53% was spent on revenue generating items. We currently estimate the total capital expenditures for 2018 will be approximately $250 million, roughly half of which will be spent on revenue generating CapEx. As of September 30, our total net debt was $2.8 billion and our weighted average cost of debt was 4.1%.
For the fourth quarter of 2018, we currently expect that stock-based compensation expense and acquisition expenses will be in line with the third quarter of this year. Thank you for joining us today.
Operator, we will now open the call for questions.
Questions and Answers:
Operator
Thank you. (Operator Instructions) And we will take our first question from Brandon Ross with BTIG. Please go ahead.
Brandon Ross -- BTIG -- Analyst
Hi. Thanks for taking the questions. I have a few. For Michael, you mentioned ticket pricing optimization in the prepared remarks. I guess, the expansion of platinum ticketing and price increases were a big part of the strategy this year. Do you expect this is something that we're going to see a lot more of in 2019? Is there still lot of room there? And what has been the feedback from artists and fans, then I have some follow-up.
Michael Rapino -- President and Chief Executive Officer
Thanks, Brandon. Yeah, we believe that we kind of had this theme which has been talked about for a while on tickets continually be probably the most inefficiently priced product in the world. I mean, there is literally no other product in the world that is worth more than it's sold the second later. Generally what you do is you increase your price, but we know we have this balance of the artist, this incredible brand manager, and he has to find that fine line of what does Bruce Springsteen charge for the front row versus what the market will bear. So we know that we don't expect the business to be completely efficient, marketwise, because it will probably be a contradiction to maybe what the artist stands for.
But we do know that $8 billion number-is that they throw around on the size of the secondary market of the price gap. We do know every year the artist is looking more and more at -- I have to figure out through VIP platinum P1, how to charge more for the front, because I can't continually it just be sold on the secondary market. So we think we're in that first second inning of that game, we think there's a long great path forward where the artist will continually look to increase the pricing.
Now the advantage is, we get to decrease the pricing in the back part of the house. Generally our problem in any concert, we never have the back sold but not the front, as you know, the house usually is the front is sold and we are trying to fill the rest of the house. So the lower we can price the back end and the higher we can price the front end is the optimal (ph) pricing for both the gross and for sell-through. So this is just a new kind of concept of dynamic pricing and increasing the pricing on front. We are in the first or second inning; we think we have lots of pricing opportunity for years to come.
Brandon Ross -- BTIG -- Analyst
Great. And then, I was wondering if you could unpack your outlook for especially ticketing a little bit. How will the timing of on sales this year versus last impact the phasing of AOI at Ticketmaster between Q4 and 2019 and maybe how accounting changes here and abroad, may also impact AOI and ticketing?
Joe Berchtold -- President
Yeah, Brandon, I'll take at least the first part, this is Joe. Our expectation is the next year is going to be another very good year, as I said in some of my comments. We see a strong setup of on sales in Q4, the benefit of which is certainly on the ticketing side with Ticketmaster recognizing a number of those tickets, particularly the non-Live Nation side of any tickets that get sold in Q4. Part of the impact is also on the concert side through the accounting, you expense your advertising for an on sale in the period it takes place. So our large on sales that we'll have as we do particularly stadium big arena tours will be recognized in Q4 in our concerts -- in the concerts part of the business. And I'll let Kathy speak to what the accounting means for some of the recognition.
Kathy Willard -- Chief Financial Officer
Yeah and it's less about changes next year versus this year on the accounting, it's more just the fact that we're seeing -- expecting more of those tickets to be sold for Live Nation events by Ticketmaster and because of that for the tickets we control, we defer those to next year. So that's what Joe is addressing in his prepared remarks on that.
Brandon Ross -- BTIG -- Analyst
Great. And then just one more. Your acquisition strategy has generally been to use cash to fund your inorganic growth and as rates come up and the environment changes a little bit, do you expect to only continue to do cash acquisitions or would you consider starting to use your stock a little more as well.
Kathy Willard -- Chief Financial Officer
So we absolutely consider both and we'll look depending on the size of the acquisition and obviously our cash. We're pretty happy with our debt structure right now. We have room in our leverage ratio. We're in pretty comfortable space, so we will look at overall the AOI that will be coming in and certainly consider at least a combination of cash and stock on bigger deals.
Brandon Ross -- BTIG -- Analyst
Thanks.
Operator
And our next question will come from David Karnovsky with JP Morgan. Please go ahead.
David Karnovsky -- JP Morgan -- Analyst
Thank you. With onsite you've had tremendous growth over the past few seasons. What further opportunity do you see at the North America amphitheaters and then just beyond that what's the opportunity to take those best practices from the amphs to the festivals and then maybe to the clubs and theaters as well?
Joe Berchtold -- President
Sure, this is Joe, David. As we said, we're at about $27 per fan right now when we benchmark the sports teams there in the '30s so we think there continues to be good opportunity for continued growth over the next several years by further honing the offer, the VIP offer, all of the other ancillary services that we have, so we're very optimistic. We think the organizational change we put in place at the end of last year to get more focus on execution of the amphs has helped a lot this year, and the continued growth there.
So we think there's quite a bit more to continue to move and absolutely we're taking learnings that we're getting here, we've brought them into the theater and club business particularly in North America already, very focused on the VIP offerings there, focused on our beverage service where we have our point of sale, our mix and so on. And I think festivals are more individualized, given the thematic of the festival but absolutely starting to roll some of that out there too.
David Karnovsky -- JP Morgan -- Analyst
Okay. And then just regarding your commentary for concerts in Q4, I think you mentioned North America would be strong but measured against international tough comp, I mean is there any way you can sort of frame your outlook for concerts in the aggregate for Q4?
Joe Berchtold -- President
No, nothing more than we've already given.
David Karnovsky -- JP Morgan -- Analyst
Okay. Thanks.
Operator
Our next question will come from Amy Yong with Macquarie. Please go ahead.
Amy Yong -- Macquarie -- Analyst
Thank you. So two questions. First, I was wondering if you can talk a little bit more about your acquisition pipeline. It looks like you acquired an asset in Brazil this quarter. Are there any other geographic markets that you're focused on either on the events or ticketing side? And my second question is, there's been a lot of questions I think from investors on the upcoming FTC Workshop in Ticketing. Can you just talk through some of the details around this, whatever you're willing to share either the process with some of the issues that they are pressing on? Thank you.
Michael Rapino -- President and Chief Executive Officer
Thanks, Amy. We continue as we have historically. We think there are lots of great bolt-on acquisitions that are generally accretive as we're buying them. We're in over 40 countries now. So we look at building on where we already have a business. So in those 40 countries, we're always looking for ongoing festivals or established promoters or music venues that can build on our business and grow our core business. So we kind of look at it on a global basis and have a running acquisition list of things we're exploring.
I'd say all the -- there is no one country that's more important than the other. We see growth in all of it. U.S. as you've all seen in the last few years has been growing and we think the U.S. has lots of growth left. We have a lot of markets where we are under-developed still, in cities Miami and Florida, Los Angeles, Denver, Seattle, we've lot of markets where we can still grow our business. Canada is a big opportunity, Australia, South America, as you've seen us move over the last few years. So what we love about this business is actually the global opportunity, bolt-on strategy with really no regulations on a local basis.
So it allows us to move into these countries like Argentina and Brazil and Milan and Cape Town and if there is a great international promoter or festival we can instantly buy that and build that into our global platform and power accretively instantly. So we have a long list of businesses that we look across the globe. We think that we will keep -- you will keep hearing about an ongoing story of the bolt-ons that keep building our business.
Joe will fill you in on the TM, yes.
Joe Berchtold -- President
Yeah. So Amy, on the FTC Workshop, just to be clear, the FTC in our conversations with them have told us this workshop has been long in the works, well predates any of the press cycles that existed around various assertions, that is we've answered with the Senate and elsewhere where we're largely misleading at best, but the FTC Workshop to our understanding is going to focus on a wide variety of practices in ticketing. It's going to focus on speculative ticket sales which is basically ticket sales that where the ticket doesn't actually exist.
It's going to focus on fraudulent advertising and the use of misleading websites. It's going to focus on the use of box, all three of which, to be clear, Ticketmaster doesn't participate in. We're the only secondary major secondary site that doesn't do selling, doesn't -- we certainly don't use fraudulent advertising, and our policy is not to allow bot, is first to try stop bots and secondly, do not let people who use bots post their tickets. So we think there's going be a whole host of topics and we're going to fully participate. We applaud the fact that the workshop is taking place and we think that there'll be a lot more transparency and accurate information coming out of it.
Amy Yong -- Macquarie -- Analyst
Great. Thank you.
Operator
We'll take our next question from Ryan Sundby with William Blair. Please go ahead.
Ryan Sundby -- William Blair -- Analyst
Yeah. Hi. Thanks for taking my question. Just wanted to ask on Presence. So Q4 10 million fans expected to enter 5 million on mobile, is there -- what's the, I guess the barrier there to getting that 5 million up to a higher number at some point?
Michael Rapino -- President and Chief Executive Officer
Is the question barrier.
Joe Berchtold -- President
Well it's not -- I mean, it's Joe, it's not really the reason why it's 5 million versus 10 million is the decision by teams whether or not paper tickets for season ticket holders are also issued in addition to the use of the mobile tickets. There are some teams that have already switched to mobile only, with the exception of people that have indicated an issue. That's what we talked about, up to 97% of the people entering the game on a mobile ticket. So it's our expectation that these teams get more comfortable with the technology, they see it working, they see other teams that are the leaders able to get 97% plus in without any issues. You'll have more and more teams adopting use of all mobile.
Ryan Sundby -- William Blair -- Analyst
Got it. Okay. Yeah, that makes sense. And then I guess following up on Brandon's question on pricing. Are you seeing kind of pricing across the board with all artists so everyone taking a little bit more pricing equally or are there couple of artists that are kind of pricing much closer to market value and then you've got a kind of a pool of artists that you need go back and address in the future?
Michael Rapino -- President and Chief Executive Officer
No, it's across the board. There would be -- generally every artist is probably underpricing his product. Might just be the one front row or it might be the first 17 rows, depending on how big you are if you are in an arena or a stadium, but generally artists are underprice their product and all have opportunity to increase their pricing.
Ryan Sundby -- William Blair -- Analyst
Okay, great. And then I guess back to the digital ticketing, as you -- as your data kind of improves on who's coming to shows and their behavior there, when you think about sponsorship and advertising, the 70 partners that drives 75% of the revenue, how has that changed. Do you think there you have room for more partners that drive a big chunk like that or is it those 70 spend even more?
Joe Berchtold -- President
I think it's both. I think those 70 absolutely have already shown their commitment to music and to our business reaching these millennial fans and when they can get an even tighter connection they will absolutely be spending more, because they will be getting the results from their sponsorship. And there continue to be a number of categories and markets where we have sponsorship opportunities. And I think this just makes our product all the more attractive in general for all of those potential sponsors.
Michael Rapino -- President and Chief Executive Officer
And I'm just going to jump on it. The core of the digital ticket unlocks multiple revenue avenues for us as well as just a better way to do business. Right now we have -- as we've talked about, we have 16,000 barcodes locked in the arena. I don't know who those barcodes generally are if they changed hands. In the future, we're going to have 16 digital tickets walk in that building that are scanned. So we're going to know who those 16,000 people, we're going to have a one-on-one dialog with them. So, yes, our data increases tremendously on knowing all about the customers that go to our shows. So that's obviously very valuable for sponsors, but two, we also get to talk to the fans at the show. It really opens up the -- how do you correspond with these 16,000 people that walk in a concert.
The upsell of them when they're walking in, you know which seats they are in are they getting the beer or are they buying a T-shirt. So it really brings to life those 90 million customers that go to the Live Nation show we talk about. But, generally we haven't been able to actually sell once they walk in the door. We're good at getting them to the door. We are good at talking to them weeks before the show. We haven't had any technology to date that let's just talk to them while they are at the most important place, the show, the festival, the pre-show, the aftershow. So we get to talk to them while they're at the show, provides incredible revenue opportunities. Also just you're at a country show, we can talk to you about, if you want to go next Friday, we have tickets available for another show. So the dialog that we get to create with this engaged customer base when a digital ticket turns the customer or turns the barcode into a customer, both before the show and at the show, provides incredible opportunities for our concert division and our sponsorship division.
Ryan Sundby -- William Blair -- Analyst
Great. Thank you so much.
Operator
Our next question will come from David Joyce with Evercore ISI. Please go ahead.
David Joyce -- Evercore ISI -- Analyst
Thank you. Could you please talk about the Ticketmaster margins. I know you've already guided to similar margins to last year and also in the past you've talked about obviously margins that can -- managing to cash flow growth instead of the margins themselves. But could you please discuss what the impacts are on the margins from the mix of international ticketing businesses which are typically lower and from the investment level on continually redeveloping Ticketmaster. Just help us think about what the impacts are there and why the impact of higher volumes are not resulting in higher margins. Thank you.
Joe Berchtold -- President
Yeah, I mean David just again, to make sure we frame this, year-to-date, our revenue is up 13% and our AOI is up 11%, and I indicated that for the full year, our margins are expected to be flat. So that's the overall context of a very stable business. And yes, we continue to make substantial investments in areas like digital ticketing, which is as Michael just went through for a lot of reasons, massive change in the ticketing business that will have a dramatic benefit on concert side of the business, on our sponsorship side of the business. So it flows through elsewhere. So part of it is divisional accounting, may track costs in one area and benefits in another on some levels.
But it's also -- yes, our investments on ticketing throughout the world. International ticketing continues to grow well, which as we've talked about is generally a lower margin. We're continuing to focus and invest in our theaters and clubs. Do-it-yourself business where we have 25,000 shows, 25 million fans a year which we think is very important to continue to develop high quality tools for the artists. Those tend to be lower margin tickets due to their general simplicity relative to what exists at the arena amphitheater or stadium level. So we'll continue to grow the business across all fronts and I think continue to deliver strong AOI growth against them.
David Joyce -- Evercore ISI -- Analyst
All right. Thank you.
Operator
We'll take our next question from Doug Arthur with Huber Research. Please go ahead.
Douglas Arthur -- Huber Research -- Analyst
Yeah, thanks. Just continuing on the margin theme, I mean on the flip side, the really impressive margin improvement in the huge concert segment, and I know you've talked about the pricing in the house and the revenue per attendee going up, scheduling improvements, but what's sort of driving that overall and how much more progress can you make on margins in the concert segment?
Joe Berchtold -- President
Yeah, Doug this is Joe. I think you gave the two big drivers, which is as we continue to grow the high-margin food and beverage ancillaries per fan that flows through very well and then, secondly pricing inherently flows through very well also. So those are the two biggest drivers. I don't -- for all the reasons that we've talked about before not being margin obsessed, I don't think we're focused on what exactly can that be, because we will continue to grow our business in stadiums and arenas and other buildings that may be more traditional margins, as opposed to our buildings, which will be higher margins. We'll have different mix year-to-year. We thought this year is a heavy -- heavier amphitheater mix, with also good arena growth. So those fluctuations and the fact that we're overall just focused and obsessed on growing the business and growing it profitably, means that we're not going to be as deterministic about that margin number.
Douglas Arthur -- Huber Research -- Analyst
Well, you had cited earlier in the year that the big stadium show mix would be not as great in this year's third quarter. I think you cited in this release, specifically internationally. Does that help your margins when that's true?
Joe Berchtold -- President
Well on a relative basis your amphitheaters are going -- because of your average per fan revenue we get from the onsite is going to be your highest margin customer, if you will. So in a year where you've got relatively more amphitheaters, then yes that's going to help your margin.
Douglas Arthur -- Huber Research -- Analyst
Right. Okay, great. Thank you very much.
Michael Rapino -- President and Chief Executive Officer
But Doug we've always talked, we're growing our business. It's more important on our scale flywheel to grow than for me, just to select amphitheater shows that are higher margin and at the expense of stadiums or other shows, right. So we know that if we get 98 million -- 90 million customers in our flywheel, on a positive basis that we can sell them more food, we can sell more sponsors, we can sell them more ticketing services all the other higher margin businesses than the low margin flywheel. So our first goal is continue to grow the global market share of our -- of the live business, which we still have great opportunities in, with that then we'll also be able to grow across our businesses that we scale from that flywheel.
Douglas Arthur -- Huber Research -- Analyst
Got it. Thank you.
Operator
And there are no further telephone questions at this time. This does conclude today's conference. Thank you for your participation, you may now disconnect.
Duration: 39 minutes
Call participants:
Michael Rapino -- President and Chief Executive Officer
Joe Berchtold -- President
Kathy Willard -- Chief Financial Officer
Brandon Ross -- BTIG -- Analyst
David Karnovsky -- JP Morgan -- Analyst
Amy Yong -- Macquarie -- Analyst
Ryan Sundby -- William Blair -- Analyst
David Joyce -- Evercore ISI -- Analyst
Douglas Arthur -- Huber Research -- Analyst
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