The Music Venue Trust has announced its latest tie-up with Ticketmaster, which is set to invite ticket-buyers to donate to the organisation via a charity upsell option which will appear on the ticketing firm’s UK site for a month.
The fundraising scheme will kick off next week alongside MVT's Venues Day event, which is also sponsored by the Live Nation-owned ticketing company. Ticketmaster has pledged to match all donations received through the initiative and also confirmed that it will run the one month charity upsell scheme on an annual basis.
“This upsell provides a practical method for fans to support grassroots music venues and we are incredibly grateful to the Ticketmaster team for putting it in place”, says MVT CEO Mark Davyd. “Ticketmaster matching all fan donations is a powerful message for the whole industry about the support our sector needs and the will of the music community to provide it".
Noting the challenges currently being faced by the grassroots venues that MVT supports, he adds: “127 grassroots music venues have closed in the last twelve months - more than one is permanently closing every week. We believe that live music fans understand exactly how vital these venues are to the future of our whole music ecosystem and how much financial difficulty they are currently facing".
“Ticketmaster has been a long-term and committed partner of MVT", he continues, "and their core support has been vital in developing us as the authentic voice of grassroots venues, artists and fans".