What it takes to bring Coldplay, U2, and Olivia Rodrigo to the Philippines

SUPPORTING good acts in trying to reach new audiences, and think- ing of more ways to amplify the con- certgoers’ experience, are the keys to tapping into the Philippines’ high potential for music tourism, said the executive of an international live entertainment giant.

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Rhiza Pascua, managing director of Live Nation Philippines, spoke to BusinessWorld about the company’s three years of bringing live events into the country — as well as how it fares in the context of the two decades beforehand that she had worked in the concert scene.

“In 2024, there were 224 live events,” Ms. Pascua said in the Zoom interview. “The music sector had a GDP (gross domestic product) contribution of P18.1 billion in total, of which P2.5 billion came from Live Nation. That's about 14%,” she explained.

“As long as we keep promoting good acts and giving ticket buyers good experiences, this growth will keep happening,” she added.

Ms. Pascua founded Music Management International (MMI) in 1996, a time when a lot of international artists would skip Manila while on the Asian leg of their concert tours.

Negotiating with artists, managers, and agents to put the Philippines on the global touring map eventually led to working with Live Nation to promote the Manila concerts of Madonna in 2016, Coldplay in 2017, and U2 in 2019.

“Those were the big three artists on my bucket list,” Ms. Pascua said.

In 2022, Live Nation acquired MMI, which she refers to as “a simple change of name and change of rules.” As managing director, her approach has remained fan-centered, with innovation as a motivator.

THE PURSUIT

One example of the perseverance required in the early days was Ms. Pascua’s dogged pursuit of Coldplay’s agent.

“For decades, I'd been almost begging them. I went to London four times to meet the agent and it was always hard. If you don’t have a relationship, they won't even reply to e-mails,” she said.

It took four tries across several years for a meeting to finally be arranged with the agent, which finally happened in their office in Los Angeles, coincidentally near where Ms. Pascua lived at the time.