UK grassroots venues by the numbers: 30 closed, 801 still open, and what the £1 arena levy has paid so far

The UK lost fewer grassroots music venues in the year to July 2025 than in any year since 2018. That is the headline of Music Venue Trust's 2025 annual report, and it is true. The rest of the report explains why "stabilising" is not the same as "safe", and why the industry's answer, a voluntary £1 on big-show tickets, needs to grow much faster than it has.

How many venues closed, and how many are left?

MVT counted 810 grassroots venues trading on 26 July 2024 and 801 on 31 July 2025, a fall of 1.2%. The net figure hides more movement than it suggests. Over the year, the report says, 30 venues closed permanently, 48 more stopped operating as grassroots venues, and 69 were newly recognised as ones. MVT credits its own emergency casework, more than 200 cases in the year, with part of the slowdown.

The ones still open are working harder for less. Total sector turnover rose 6.3% to about £558.5m and average attendance per venue rose 13%, yet 53.8% of venues reported no profit in the previous 12 months and the average margin was 2.5%. Live music itself lost money: venues took £179.2m from it and spent £255.9m on it, a gap of £76.6m that the report calls the sector's subsidy of live music, or an average loss of £95,685 per venue. Non-ticket income made up 67.9% of what venues took in. The average ticket price barely moved, from £11.48 to £11.56.

Where did the cost pressure come from?

Mostly from tax and payroll. MVT estimates the April 2025 rise in employer National Insurance would have added £15m to the sector's bill had staffing stayed at 2024 levels. Venues didn't absorb it; they cut staff. Employment fell from 30,865 to 24,742, down 19.8%, the sharpest fall since MVT began collecting the data. Contractors per venue fell from 20.7 to 7.6. Business rates relief in England dropped from 75% to 40% the same month, which MVT puts at another £7m.

The touring map shrank too. MVT says 59% of venues, 475 of them, now see no major promoter activity, and that audiences in more than 175 towns and cities, home to 35 million people, no longer have reliable access to national touring artists. For artists, that is the number that matters most: fewer rooms where a band on its second or third tour can play to strangers in a new city.

One quieter trend points the other way. By year end 38.1% of venues were run as not-for-profits, up from 33% in 2024, and operators who made the switch reported better access to grant funding.

How does the £1 levy work, and how far has it got?

The idea is simple: for shows with a capacity over 5,000, a voluntary £1 per ticket goes to the LIVE Trust, a charity set up by the live-industry body LIVE, which grants it to grassroots programmes. MVT's report traces it from a 2018 "Pipeline Investment Fund" proposal through Enter Shikari committing £1 a ticket on their 2023 arena tour, to the Trust's creation in 2025.

Uptake is the problem. In November 2025 the culture minister Ian Murray set a milestone of "at least 50% of tickets on sale for stadium and arena shows in 2026" carrying the levy by 31 December 2025, the report records. In 2025 itself, despite Coldplay, Ed Sheeran, Radiohead, Sam Fender and others signing up, only 8.8% of tickets at that level included a version of it. On 20 January 2026 the LIVE Trust said 2026 ticket contributions had topped 3 million, listing acts from Biffy Clyro to The Cure. It did not say what share of 2026 arena and stadium tickets that is, so whether the 50% milestone was met can't be checked from what has been published.

The money has started to flow since. On 28 January 2026 the Trust paid out its first £500,000 across seven programmes; Music Week's breakdown put £200,000 with MVT for venue support, £125,000 with the UK Artists Touring Fund run by the Featured Artists Coalition, Music Managers Forum and Musicians' Union, and £75,000 with an independent promoters' bursary. In July the Trust announced £1m more across ten programmes (Music Week also covered it), taking the total distributed to £1.5m, and said the first round had reached 372 venues, 211 shows and 81 festivals. It also said it had secured more than 6 million ticket pledges since launching in January 2025.

Some of each pound doesn't arrive. LIVE's chief executive Jon Collins told Far Out that "for every £500,000 received, £125,000 will have been taken in Vat", and the magazine reported that the government has declined to remove VAT from the contribution.

What we think

The levy is working as a proof of concept and failing as a policy, and the numbers above show both at once.

It works because the plumbing now exists: a registered charity, named partners, grants that reached hundreds of venues within months, and an artist touring fund that puts money straight into the shows emerging acts need. That is real, and the artists who opted in deserve credit for doing so before anyone made them.

It fails on scale. Our arithmetic, not MVT's: £1.5m distributed is about 2% of the £76.6m venues lost on live music in a single year, and MVT's £200,000 share works out to roughly £250 per venue if spread across all 801. At 8.8% coverage the levy depends on which headliners choose to join, which means the grassroots circuit's income rises and falls with the touring calendar of a few dozen stars. A pipeline that feeds the whole industry shouldn't be funded at the discretion of the acts at the very top of it.

The gap between "6 million pledges" and "£1.5m distributed" also deserves a plain explanation from the Trust. Pledges for future tours, VAT and timing could account for much of it, but readers shouldn't have to guess.

Three things would make this credible. First, the LIVE Trust should publish its denominator: the share of 5,000-plus-capacity tickets carrying the £1, every quarter, so the minister's 50% milestone can actually be checked. Second, the Treasury should stop taking a quarter of what's received in VAT on a contribution the government itself asked the industry to make. Third, if coverage is still far from 50% a year after that deadline, the government should do what it has signalled it could and act. The headliners who opted in have shown the £1 doesn't break an arena tour. Making it the default would put fairness to artists at the bottom of the ladder on the same footing as the ones at the top.

Sources

• Music Venue Trust, Annual Report 2025
• LIVE Trust, 2026 Ticket Contributions Top 3 Million (20 Jan 2026)
• LIVE Trust, LIVE Trust Distributes First £500,000 In Funding (28 Jan 2026)
• LIVE Trust, LIVE Trust Announces £1 Million in Additional Funding (23 Jul 2026)
• Music Week, Landmark moment for grassroots music: Breaking down the first £500,000 funding from ticket levy (28 Jan 2026)
• Music Week, LIVE Trust reveals £1 million funding boost for UK grassroots live music (13 Jul 2026)
• Far Out Magazine, Has £1 got what it takes? The future of the grassroots music industry explained (13 Jul 2026)