Spectacle Live is Spectacular!

In 2012, Pete Lally founded Spectacle Live as a one-man company after working in various concert halls and cultural venues for 15 years. Since then, Spectacle has grown into a full-fledged concert promotion and venue management company with a wide reach across three states (MA, RI, NH), 11 concert venues and some 300 shows per year. 

As Spectacle enters its new season, we talked with Pete about the concert promotion business, concert halls, audiences and the musicians themselves. 

When you began Spectacle as a one-man operation back in 2012, did you imagine it would become what it is today? 

What I envisioned in the early days of Spectacle was not anything like what
we have grown into. We were not doing venue management in the beginning, just promoting shows in venues that we rented. But as we grew our footprint, we began to also grow our opportunities to expand our platform into management, which helped to fuel further growth on the promoting side of things. Our concert promotion business and our venue management business go hand-in- hand to support each other. 

What is the biggest challenge of continually attracting audiences and filling seats to these shows? 

The region has strong audiences, but it’s also a very competitive region because there are so many venues. Booking our venues with all of the acts we’d like to have is a challenge, no venue gets everything it wants. We work hard to identify shows and artists that have strong audiences and marketability and then try to make our best pitch to have them play our rooms. Marketing of events is also a constantly evolving science, so keeping up with what works for marketing is also a constant learning experience. 

In recent years Spectacle has emerged as a dominant promoter of Irish touring acts in the region. Was that a concerted effort on your part? 

Much of what we do when booking is to follow a “thread” or pattern of audience response. So, if we have success with a particular artist, we try to identity other artists and shows within a genre that might also be appealing to that particular audience. Having promoted Irish acts for many years, that is always a place that we feel we can meet audience demand. 

Spectacle’s Christmas shows are especially popular for families looking for a special night out during the holidays. What are some of the popular holiday shows coming up? 

The holidays are always a very busy time, and 2025 is no exception. We have upcoming date with The Irish Tenors, Lúnasa, Eileen Ivers, Celtic Woman (pictured below), Natalie MacMaster, Sean Heely, and more! It’s going to be a busy season, with lots of stellar performances. It’s terrific to be able to work with many of these artists each year as we bring them into our various venues. 

We’ve been to Spectacle shows where performers and audience get into perfect harmony and everyone leaves the venue dazzled and happy. How does that happen? 

Our role is to give great artists the opportunity to connect with their fans in high quality venues. The credit for the experience of the show goes to the amazing artists that we have the opportunity to work with. We are grateful for, and appreciative of their talents! 

Thank you, Pete! 

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