Stuart Galbraith has ushered a rebrand for Kilimanjaro Live, saying that “expansion has become a natural and healthy evolution” for the business, which will now operate under umbrella company KMJ Entertainment.
Owned by DEAG, KMJ Entertainment comprises 16 live entertainment brands, including promoters Kilimanjaro Live, Regular Music, FORM and Singular Artists. Also operating under the umbrella are spoken word producers Fane and How To Academy, theatrical companies Flying Music and JAS Theatricals, ticket businesses Gigantic, Myticket and Tickets.ie; festivals Belladrum Tartan Heart, Let’s Rock and Pennfest; exhibition venue Arches London Bridge and production company Kontour.
We’ve expanded into new areas and needed an umbrella name that represents our growing family of companies across the live entertainment world
Stuart Galbraith
Stuart Galbraith, CEO of KMJ Entertainment, said: “Kilimanjaro Live was originally formed to provide the best live rock and pop entertainment across the UK, but as a group, we’ve now expanded into new areas and needed an umbrella name that represents and supports our growing family of companies across the live entertainment world. I’m very proud to see our evolution into KMJ Entertainment, with the support of our parent company, DEAG.”
Kilimanjaro Live won the Live Promoter category at last year’s Music Week Awards, and Galbraith hinted at further growth for the business in an interview with Music Week towards the end of last year.
“It’s recognition of what a stunning year Kili had and the huge effort the team put in,” he said. “Across the Kilimanjaro group we now have over 125 people and last year, we had the highest turnover in our history, which was £110 million .We had [increased] shows and turnover, so it was a stunning result. It was exceptionally busy, with new [bookings] and some rescheduled from 2020.”
“We’ve had good growth in all of the non-music areas, to be quite frank,” he added. “The spoken word and exhibitions are all doing very well. The group of companies that we either opened or acquired are all experts in their areas and, certainly, there are learnings that we’ve seen in some areas that we are applying across the whole group. There are elements that we’re seeing in theatrical, spoken word and exhibitions that we’re now able to apply into our music projects.”
Galbraith also told us that the firm is now the second biggest promoter in Scotland and has become “fully operational” in Ireland. Depending on the year, Galbraith said that Kilimanjaro represents “between 40 and 50%” of the European turnover of DEAG.
Subscribers can read our interview with Galbraith here.
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