With The O2 arena expected to deliver a record show count of around 237 performances in 2025, we caught up with The O2 and AEG Europe’s VP of venue programming Emma Bownes to discuss how it’s winning such loyalty from major acts while also supporting grassroots artists and venues.

How do you and the team go that bit further to win the business from promoters and artist who are faced with increasing number of options?

There’s a lot of focus on making the artist feel welcome and appreciated. We pay a lot of attention to backstage venue dressing and make sure we celebrate key moments. For example, following four nights at the venue earlier this year, Kylie [pictured] became the first female artist to join our exclusive 21 Club, which includes only three other solo music artists – Prince, Michael Buble and Drake. It was a huge accolade. We presented her with an engraved key to the venue, which she took on stage to show the audience. It was clearly a special and emotional moment for her.

It started many years ago with Prince’s 21 shows. Residencies have become a key element of The O2’s business, why are so many artists deciding to play runs of shows at The O2 rather than a stadium?

We’ve been extremely fortunate to have hosted some incredible residencies over the years. From Peter Kay entering the fourth year of his monthly residency this year to 10 show residencies with Queen and Adam Lambert (2022), Elton John (2023) and Usher (2025).

Just recently, we went on sale with a European exclusive run of 10 nights with Ariana Grande for Summer ’26, which sold out in record time and we’re so grateful that she chose The O2 for these shows.

I think there are several reasons why residencies at The O2 work well; obviously being situated in London helps. There’s a massive catchment area of avid music fans, and it’s easy to reach for fans travelling from the rest of the UK or Europe.  We’ve built an incredible legacy, and The O2 is an iconic venue where artists love to play.

To celebrate multi-night runs at the venue, we do everything we can to make the fans feel like they’re part of something really special and exciting from the moment they arrive. Whether that’s turning The O2 into The O3 for Drake with our naming rights partner VMO2, rolling out the purple carpet for Olivia Rodrigo fans last year or entertainment from Flipper’s roller skaters preshow for Usher – we want the artist and the fan to know how much we appreciate them coming to the venue, and give them a night that they’ll always remember.

How has this year been in terms of the number of acts making their debut appearance at The O2?

This year, we have welcomed a record number of first-time headliners, with more than 50 performing at the venue. The diverse programming has spanned a wide range of genres and generations; from Gracie Abrams, Sabrina Carpenter and Kehlani to Little Simz, Tyler The Creator, Doobie Brothers even President Barack Obama.

Pitbull is a good example of how social media has supported an artist. He performed for the first time in February and then sold out a further two shows in June. TikTok plays a big part in music discovery and fan-to-fan communications. Our social content for Pitbull alone reached more than 1million views on TikTok and Instagram.

“It’s really important for me and The O2 that we support both emerging artists and MVT.”

You are a board member of the Music Venue Trust, and clearly passionate about grassroots. How are you working at The O2 to support emerging talent?

It’s really important for me and The O2 that we support both emerging artists and MVT. There will be no future Olivia Deans at The O2 in years to come if venues such as the SJQ in Dalston, where she played her first London show, aren’t able to keep their doors open. In terms of supporting first-time headliners in practical terms, where we can, we try our best to clear weekend dates in the diary and are always open to a venue deal if a first-time artist has a low ticket price.

Will The O2 follow RAH in adopting the LIVE Trust across all shows?

It’s important every party in a tour that carries the £1 donation is fully on board, and encouragingly, more tours coming through The O2 are choosing to support it, including Radiohead, Katy Perry, Pulp and Mumford & Sons. We hope this momentum continues, helping to reduce the likelihood of a statutory levy being introduced.

We have been working with MVT for several years now and are hugely supportive of what the organisation does.  As a venue, we support them by giving fans the option to donate to them directly via the ticket purchase flow and by making our own direct contributions. We have plans to take our commitment a step further and will be sharing more on this in the coming months.

Are you noticing artists and managers taking the venue’s sustainability credentials into account when booking The O2?

There’s an increasing interest from productions on how they can be more sustainable when touring, and we often get requests regarding the sustainable initiatives we run at the venue. Our green rider is sent to incoming productions to raise awareness of our work and provide useful information to help support more sustainable behaviours.

It was great to see Billie Eilish bring her Overheated programme back to The O2 during her run of shows, where she worked with REVERB to make her tour more sustainable and encouraged fans to take action for the planet. The whole arena also went fully plant-based for all six shows.

At the highest level we are seeing an increase in shows by South Asian, African and K-pop acts, is that the case at The O2?

Genres that may have been seen ten years ago as niche have exploded over the past few years. The accessibility and globilisation of music through streaming platforms and social media have made it easier for artists to become global stars, and for artists from different genres to collaborate and expand awareness to new audiences.

We’ve seen artists from countries we’ve never had before. Babymetal were the first Japanese band to perform in the arena. We’ve had Chinese artists Zhou Shen and Eason Chan. JJ Lin from Singapore, Tarkan from Turkey and from South Korea Ateez, Tomorrow x Together, Enyhpen and our first ever K-pop festival, SM Town Live. All this sits alongside a rise in Latin, afrobeats and country artists populating our diary.

Beyond music, what trends have you seen in terms of the content booked and presented at The O2 this year?

We try and diversify as much as possible and have hosted some really cool one-off events such as the F1 75 Live event. The production on that event was one of the most incredible shows I’ve seen delivered in an arena with a one-day build.

In addition, sport has always been an important part of the venue programming and we were thrilled to see the return of UFC London back in March and we hosted AEW Forbidden Door for the first time over the summer. It was a great moment to host the Netball SuperLeague 2025 and of course boxing is part of the venue’s fabric, so we’re really excited for the upcoming Parker vs Wardley fight in October.

This article is included in the latest edition of Access All Areas magazine, available here.

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