For the last two decades, the dominant concert promoter in Atlanta has been Live Nation, an international juggernaut of a promotion and ticketing company that also manages artists ranging from Billy Joel to Teddy Swims.
In metro Atlanta alone, the company is inescapable, operating five major concert venues including the area’s three largest outdoor amphitheaters: Ameris Bank Amphitheatre, Cadence Bank Amphitheatre at Chastain, Lakewood Amphitheatre. It also oversees the Roxy, the Tabernacle and Buckhead Theatre.
But Live Nation’s seeming supremacy didn’t deter two entrepreneurs from building a successful Atlanta promotion company appropriately called Rival Entertainment. In 2004, Josh Antenucci and Lucy Lawler-Freas began promoting major concerts, holding festivals and running three venues at the Midtown space Center Stage Atlanta: Center Stage Theater, the Loft and Vinyl.
Rival booked the first-ever concerts in Atlanta for Kanye West, Twenty One Pilots and Chappell Roan. It held a frenzied 6 a.m. album launch party for Jay-Z in 2006 at Center Stage. That same year, Elton John rented out Center Stage for two months to record an album. Rival organized both the OutKast reunion in 2014 at Centennial Olympic Park and multiple André 3000 concerts last year. The company also oversaw what would end up being Prince’s final concerts, at the Fox Theatre in 2016, before his unexpected death.
Credit: Ben Rose/ WireImage.com
Credit: Ben Rose/ WireImage.com
“We have had many successes and many near deaths, but we are still maintaining,” Antenucci, 50, told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution while discussing Rival’s 20th anniversary. “Somehow, 20 years crept up on us.”
He and Lawler-Freas, 49, have worked hard to generate goodwill among artists, managers and other Atlanta independent promoters who frequently coproduce shows with them.
“They were always down to grind it out with me,” said Richard Dunn, an Atlanta promoter with the Muddy Water Group who ran a record label with acts including PJ Morton, Aaron Shust and Anthony David. “I think collectively, we were all able to take some cool risks and learned a lot together.”
Craig Garrett, who coproduced André 3000′s shows with Rival in Atlanta as an independent promoter with Next Level Events, said, “Rival is a competitor on paper but, in reality, we’re more like partners who work collaboratively. They show you respect.”
If Garrett has a show that isn’t doing well, he added, “they give me ideas. They want you to win, which is why I go back time and time again. When you walk in, they hug you. That spirit is pervasive, from the production manager to the security guys to the folks in the box office.”
Brandon Mize, Rival’s talent buyer since day one, summarized the company’s basic philosophy: “If we can’t beat the big dogs, we have to at least treat everyone better than the big dogs.”
Credit: PHIL SKINNER/AJC
Credit: PHIL SKINNER/AJC
Lawler-Freas, a Gainesville native, began her career at a company that would eventually become part of Live Nation. As a college student, she started booking concerts in 1996 for Concert/Southern Promotions, learning the craft from legendary promoters Alex Cooley and Peter Conlon. In her early 20s, she got to book acts at the Cotton Club, the Roxy and the Tabernacle, such as the Foo Fighters and June Carter Cash, as well as at Music Midtown. But she didn’t like the work atmosphere there and left in 2000 for competitor House of Blues.
After the House of Blues booking operation dissolved, and Tom Cook, then leasing Center Stage, sought help filling that Midtown space, he recruited Lawler-Freas and Antenucci, who came from D.C. The trio saw a void in the market for an independent alternative to the big player in town at the time, Clear Channel, which would be renamed Live Nation in 2005. They cheekily dubbed their firm Rival Entertainment.
Credit: PHIL SKINNER
Credit: PHIL SKINNER
“We were being told at the time that we couldn’t do this,” Lawler-Freas said. “So, why don’t we call it Rival?”
Added Antenucci, “At first, I thought that was too in your face, but it stuck.”
Rival swung for the fences its first year. It sold out two Pixies reunion concerts at the Fox Theatre and a Beastie Boys show at Gwinnett Arena. Other efforts didn’t work. Lollapalooza, the legendary alternative rock festival, had to pull the plug on its Atlanta stop after poor ticket sales. And Rival’s two-day SoulFest in the parking lot of what was then Turner Field in late summer, featuring LL Cool J and Big Boi, was one and done.
Credit: AJC
Credit: AJC
Despite a strong lineup and media and community support, SoulFest sales were soft and became “a near catastrophic financial failure,” Antenucci said. “It also ignited our passion for building live events from the ground up in public spaces. It taught us there’s more to a festival than a lineup.”
Rival hung on and rejiggered its energies to build out more venues inside the Center Stage building: Vinyl (capacity: 300) in 2004 and the Loft (650) two years later. The latter was in response to the closure of Midtown’s Cotton Club, which was of comparable size. These two extra spaces enabled Rival to more than triple the number of events in the building and give acts such as Marc Broussard and Sabrina Carpenter a chance to perform in bigger venues as they built fan bases.
“We knew we needed more than one room to be sustainable,” Antenucci said.
“It helps that this building is built like a bomb shelter,” Lawler-Freas said. “There is no [sound] bleed between Center Stage [with its 1,050-seat capacity] and these rooms.”
They also continued to present big shows outside of Center Stage when the opportunities came. One of their proudest moments: orchestrating OutKast’s reunion concerts in 2014 at Centennial Olympic Park.
“The city embraced it and showed the love,” Lawler-Freas said. “When the show went on sale, I was standing in our common space in our office downstairs, it sold so quickly, we couldn’t keep up with how quickly tickets sold. We immediately rolled into a second show. By the end of the afternoon, we rolled into a third show. We sold 75,000 tickets over three days.”
She was pregnant with her first son and remembered gazing at the crowd from the stage, taking in the positive force of energy. “It was magical,” she said. “We knew we created something epic.”
Today, Rival has a dozen full-time employees and more than 100 part timers. It books 450 acts a year in its building as well as one or two bigger acts a month at larger venues. Recent shows the firm produced include Morrissey, Samara Joy and John Legend at the Fox, and Straight No Chaser at Gas South Arena.
She and Antenucci also organize occasional festivals including Candler Park Music Festival from 2011 to 2023 and last fall’s resurrection of 99X’s Big Night Out at the Old Fourth Ward Skatepark featuring the band Cake. That sold-out event drew 6,500 people. Rival plans to do Big Night Out again later this year.
Credit: RIVAL ENT
Credit: RIVAL ENT
“Old Fourth Ward Skatepark is not an area that is necessarily suited for a concert,” said Steve Craig, program director for 99X, who has known Lawler-Freas for more than a quarter century. “But they created a great game plan to ensure a wonderful fan experience from the layout to the sight lines to the VIP area.”
Rival pulled it off despite Hurricane Helene flooding the park two days before the concert. With pumps and dryers, they got rid of what looked like a lake 55 hours earlier.
“The grass wasn’t even moist,” Craig said. “It was a crowning achievement for them after 20 years. It went off without a hitch.”
NOTABLE RIVAL ENTERTAINMENT MOMENTS
2004: Two sold-out shows at the Fox Theatre for the Pixies reunion tour (first Rival-produced concerts)
Credit: CONTRIBUTED
Credit: CONTRIBUTED
2006: Elton John rents Center Stage for two months to record “The Captain & the Kid”
2006: Jay-Z promotional concert at 7 a.m. at Center Stage
Credit: Robb D. Cohen
Credit: Robb D. Cohen
2009: Katy Perry and Lady Gaga perform at the Loft within a week of each other
Credit: Robb Cohen
Credit: Robb Cohen
2011: Three nights of Duran Duran at Center Stage
2014: OutKast reunion concerts, Centennial Olympic Park
2016: Final concerts of Prince’s life at the Fox Theatre
Credit: MTV@
Credit: MTV@
2018-2019: Three seasons of Nick Cannon’s long-running TV series “Wild ‘n Out” at Center Stage
2019: Foo Fighters at Georgia State University’s Center Parc Stadium
Credit: CONTRIBUTED
Credit: CONTRIBUTED
2020: Teddy Swims at the Loft
2023: Chappell Roan at the Loft
2024: Big Night Out with Cake at Historic Fourth Ward Skatepark
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