Geoff Jones confirms he’s staying at TEG

Geoff Jones is recruiting for a new CEO at live entertainment and ticketing giant TEG. But he explains he’s not leaving the business he loves.

TEG CEO Geoff Jones. Picture: Supplied

Kylie Minogue sold out TEG’s Qudos Bank Arena for the first three nights of March.

While it will be a special memory for Kylie fans, it’s one more tour for the group of entertainment businesses in the TEG family that chief executive Geoff Jones has been running since 2011.

The group manages Qudos, and a string of other venues, plus sells the tickets. Lots of tickets. Its ticketing business sold over 30m tickets worldwide last year, including the sold out Taylor Swift Australian stadium tour.

Mr Jones has worked under a number of owners. Nine Entertainment sold what was then called Nine Live in 2015 for $640m to Affinity. It went from one private equity player to another when Silver Lake took it on in 2020 for $1.3bn.

There has been speculation that TEG has been recruiting for a new CEO, but Mr Jones is not going anywhere. “I’m a shareholder in the business and I love it,” he told The Australian. “I’ll stay as chair of South By Southwest [SXSW] and I’ll be chair of the whole TEG business.”

As chair of SXSW, Jones is introducing a number of changes. Colin Daniels has stepped away as SXSW Sydney MD. He remains on the SXSW Sydney board and becomes founding partner of TEG’s boutique live business, Handsome Tours.

In his place, TEG’s head of commercial, Simon Cahill and SXSW Sydney’s GM Jono Whyman have been appointed co-managing directors for SXSW Sydney.

To further enhance the bottom line of the sprawling festival of creativity, Jones said they are making a number of key changes to SXSW 2025.

“Instead of having to buy a ticket for the whole week, we’re going to have conference day passes,” said Mr Jones. “We’re also going to have single movie screening passes.

“We are going to make SXSW a lot more accessible for people who are time poor and just can’t manage to get to every day. With up to 75 different sessions on some days, there will be plenty to choose from.”

Cost of living pressures are uppermost in the minds of the company that calls on people to spend on entertainment.

“People find money for the big artists who are their favourites,” said Mr Jones, pointing to tier one talent like Kylie Minogue who might only tour every four years.

Acts with smaller followings can be more challenging. He also pointed to another area: “Musical theatre is more of a discretionary spend.

“But sport is particularly resilient. Particularly big sports like AFL, rugby league, rugby union, cricket, soccer … they’re all doing really well.”