Los Campesinos! publish their tour accounts: an 11-date North American run lost money until the merch table

On 5 May 2026 the indie band Los Campesinos! did something artists almost never do: they published the accounts for a whole tour. The post covers 11 North American shows in June 2024, from Brooklyn to Los Angeles, and lists every fee, deduction and cost. Stereogum ran it the same day as a guest essay by frontman Gareth David. The short version: the tickets didn't pay for the tour. The T-shirts did.

What did the tour earn and cost?

The band played guarantee-versus-percentage deals, with guarantees ranging from $5,500 to $17,100 a night. Every show but Boston sold out, Stereogum reports, and standard tickets were $27.50, with 5% of tickets held at $10. Gross show fees came to $149,037.74. After a 10% booking agent's commission, withholding tax and some unbudgeted production costs, the band received $127,729.53, which it converts to £99,738.05.

Against that, the band lists costs of £101,827.95. The biggest single item was a sleeper bus at £45,850.07, followed by crew wages of £18,596.42 for four crew. Visas cost £5,415.82, and 11 return flights for the band, their sound engineer, two children and a carer cost £7,237.30, before anyone had played a note. Per diems were $20 a day.

Ticket income minus costs: a loss of £2,089.90.

How did merch change the result?

Merch sold $111,978 gross. After manufacturing, card fees, a point-of-sale commission and shipping, the band puts merch profit at £40,336.54. That turns the tour into a profit of £38,246.64.

Two details matter more than the total. First, none of the venues on this run took a cut of merch sales. The band says cuts typically run from 10 to 25% and that it avoids booking venues that charge them. Second, the £38,000 wasn't split among the seven members. As NME notes, the band is self-managed and runs its own label, and the money goes towards the next tour or project. Most costs are paid long before any income arrives, so a band needs capital up front. David argues that this favours major-label acts and bands with money behind them.

The band also points out, in a footnote, that merch can be sold from its web store without touring at all. That is a fair caution against reading this as "tour to sell shirts".

Why do venue merch cuts decide this?

Run a hypothetical 20% venue cut over this tour. On the band's own conversion of merch gross (about £88,600), that would have taken around £17,700, close to half the tour's final profit. That is our arithmetic, not the band's, and real cuts vary by venue and by what they apply to. The direction is clear, though: a venue cut comes straight out of the one line that turned a loss into a working budget.

The cuts are well documented. A 2023 Pitchfork investigation put standard venue merch cuts at 10 to as much as 40 percent, depending on venue and on clothing versus records. It also told the story of Wednesday, opening for Beach Bunny at Oakland's Fox Theater, where staff refused to negotiate and singer Karly Hartzman said the venue took $300 from a band that was barely breaking even. The same piece noted that some venues dropped cuts under public pressure, and that a Chicago venue justified its 10 percent by supplying sellers and handling merch logistics.

Working musicians say much the same. One recent r/TouringMusicians thread calls venue merch cuts indefensible and argues for boycotting venues that take them. Another asks touring acts how much merch matters to their tour income. We could only read these threads through search-index snippets, not in full, so treat them as a signal rather than a survey. The signal agrees with the Los Campesinos! numbers: for small and mid-sized acts, merch is often where the money is.

What we think

This post is more useful to working musicians than most industry reports, because it is a full set of books rather than a single headline number. It shows exactly where the money goes: a bus, a crew, visas and an agent's tenth all come before the band. It also shows that the margin sits in a line item the venue never paid for. Bands planning a first US run can now check their own budget against a real one. We'd like more acts to do the same. Even a handful of published tour P&Ls would shift negotiations, because promoters and venues already know these numbers and artists usually don't.

The second-order point is about who carries the risk. Los Campesinos! could absorb a £2,000 ticket loss because they are established, sell out rooms and have members with jobs outside music. A newer act on the same route, with thinner merch sales and a venue taking a quarter of them, isn't looking at a small profit. It's looking at debt. That act is usually the support band, with the least leverage over the contract.

So the most winnable fix is narrow and specific: no merch cut for support acts, written into the offer. The UK's Featured Artists Coalition already lists this as the first of its four principles. Its other principles are that artists can sell their own merch, rates are agreed up front, and every show is open to negotiation. The coalition says more than 700 UK venues charging zero commission have signed up to its 100% Venues directory, and it extended the campaign to North America with the Union of Musicians and Allied Workers in November 2022.

Venues have real costs, and some provide staff and logistics for their cut. But openers rarely use those services, and a venue that takes nothing from the support act gives up very little. Agents should ask for the clause by default, and headliners with leverage should make it a rider condition. Fans can check the directory before buying a ticket.