SGAE Last Tour dispute

An aerial shot of Bilbao, Spain, including the San Mamés Stadium. Photo Credit: Mikel Arrazola

Several months later, the ugly royalties dispute – complete with a multimillion-dollar lawsuit – between the Sociedad General de Autores y Editores (SGAE) and Bilbao-headquartered promoter Last Tour is showing few signs of resolving.

Though it hasn’t received a ton of stateside media coverage, that dispute has apparently been ramping up for some time. Back in April, for instance, regional outlets reported that SGAE had officially filed a suit against the Bilbao BBK Live organizer Last Tour.

As summed up by Europa Press, the complaint centers on allegedly due performance royalties from concerts delivered between 2022 and 2024. In short, SGAE claims that Last Tour is obligated to cough up approximately €2 million (currently $2.3 million) for Taylor Swift’s two May 2024 Eras Tour shows in Madrid – plus another €2 million for other performances, according to the same source.

While it probably doesn’t need saying at this point, Last Tour is on a completely different page. Per Google’s translation of a Spanish-language statement, the promoter supports “fair remuneration for rightsholders” but vehemently opposes the “abusive nature of SGAE’s rate.”

“SGAE intends to apply a rate of 8.5% [for Swift’s Madrid concerts], while the rate applied in the artist’s country of origin is limited to 1.15%,” Last Tour’s translated retort reads in part, emphasizing also a purported discrepancy between the ticket-sales value used in SGAE’s calculations and the actual eligible revenue.

Without diving too far into the multifaceted subject here – we’ve seen separate disagreements about this topic in the past – Last Tour is underscoring the substantial amount of revenue attributable to VIP upgrades (which should allegedly be omitted from the calculations) as opposed to tickets’ cumulative face value.

And among other things, the company maintains that it itself didn’t even receive the VIP revenue and that its (presumably smaller) royalty payments for Swift’s Lisbon stops went through without issue.

Of course, there are two sides to every story, and the ongoing suit should provide clarity about which party is in the right. More immediately, however, evidence suggests that an amicable resolution – or at least a media truce – isn’t in the near-term cards.

Per IQ, SGAE has now “pulled out of” Last Tour’s BIME Bilbao happening, which features a networking/educational component in addition to live music and is scheduled to wrap today.

In a statement, the society described the maneuver as “an ethical and legal obligation” owing to the alleged failure to pay due royalties. At the time of this writing, Last Tour didn’t appear to have commented publicly on the withdrawal.