Music Venue Trust Annual Report 2025 Warns Grassroots Sector Remains ‘Financially Fragile’
New data Shows Grassroots Music Venues in 175 UK Towns and Cities Lost to Local and Visiting Artists as Touring Circuit Continues to Shrink.
MVT sets out £2m Intervention Plan and Calls for Urgent Government Action
Music Venue Trust (MVT), which represents hundreds of UK grassroots music venues (GMVs), has published its Annual Report 2025, revealing a grassroots music sector that contributes over £500m annually to the UK economy but remains structurally fragile, with venues operating on average profit margins of just 2.5%.
More than half (53%) of the UK’s GMVs showed no profit at all in 2025, with UK Government changes to national insurance and business rates resulting in a loss of 6000 jobs (a 19% contraction in the overall workforce) as venues struggled to meet unsustainable tax burdens. According to the report’s headline findings, the majority of GMVs are now one financial shock away from crisis, while the national touring circuit continues to contract. Over the past year alone, 30 GMVs permanently closed, and 175 UK towns & cities, home to an estimated 25 million people, no longer receive regular touring shows by professional artists.
MVT warns that this collapse in touring access is starving emerging artists of essential development opportunities, undermining the talent pipeline that underpins the wider UK live music and recording industries. The charity identifies financial viability as the primary cause, concluding that current economic models for grassroots live music are no longer working.
Speaking at the launch for the Annual Report held at V&A South Kensington, Mark Davyd, Music Venue Trust’s CEO, laid out a comprehensive plan of action, moving decisively from crisis response towards sector revival.
While expanding its frontline Venue Support Team and Emergency Hardship Relief Fund to prevent avoidable closures, MVT will also invest £2 million immediately into a number of targeted programmes designed to permanently reduce costs and improve sustainability.
These projects include Venue MOT, Off The Grid, Stay The Night and Raise The Standard, which focus on infrastructure resilience, operational improvement, energy efficiency, and enhanced artist and audience experience. Collectively, these initiatives aim to reduce operating costs while strengthening venues’ long-term viability.
A centrepiece of the plan is the development of Liveline, a fully funded national touring programme in partnership with Save Our Scene and Association of Independent Promoters, designed to address the root causes of the touring crisis. By covering venue costs, reducing promoter risk and guaranteeing artist fees, Liveline aims to restore a viable touring network to towns that have been excluded from professional live music, reconnecting artists with audiences across the UK.
Mark Davyd, MVT CEO and Founder
For ten years Music Venue Trust has explored the best ideas from around the world, worked with our sector to understand what would make the biggest difference to them, and brought forward innovative, groundbreaking ideas that we can now deliver practically.
This is no longer just about rescue, it is about working with our partners and colleagues, including the crucial role to be played by the LIVE Trust, to deliver investment and reform that restores the infrastructure that music careers are built on.
We have reached the limits of what venues can absorb on margins of 2.5%. This sector has done all it can to keep music live in our communities, it now needs permanent protection, structural reform, and leadership that recognises grassroots venues as essential national infrastructure. That obviously needs to come in the form of a coherent strategy from government, but they are not the sole solution. The music industry itself is in the last chance saloon with regards to the levy; if voluntary industry action does not deliver by June 2026, the government must legislate.”
Alongside its own interventions, the Charity has also set out a clear set of demands for government action, calling for fundamental tax reform to address pre-profit taxation, permanent legal protection for venues through enshrining Agent of Change in law, and the creation of a permanent Live Music Commission to implement the Fan-Led Review and provide national leadership.
The charity also makes clear that if a voluntary industry contribution mechanism cannot be proven to work by June 2026, the government must legislate a statutory Grassroots Levy to secure sustained investment into the sector.
Additional recommendations arising from the report include reforms to unlock investment via tax reliefs, coordinated action to reduce post-Brexit touring barriers, and ensuring that public funding schemes, including the Music Growth Scheme, explicitly support the grassroots talent pipeline they ultimately rely on.
The Music Venue Trust Annual Report 2025 can be viewed in full here.
To hear in more detail about how challenges facing the grassroots music sector are being responded to please listen to ‘The Last Safe Space’, the Music Venue Trust podcast, below.
