An Attempt at a UK Live Events Day-Rate Benchmarking Study

In March I did something I’ve wanted to do for a while and never got round to. I built a survey, sent it out into the industry, and asked people what they believe to be the rates against individual roles and sectors within the events industry.

160 of you replied.

Before we go any further: 160 is not the industry. It’s a starting point. The UK live events workforce is tens of thousands of people, and 160 freelancers and producers filling out a Tally form on a Tuesday is a snapshot at best. Some role-and-sector combinations in the data come down to single-digit sample sizes. I’ll flag those as we go. Treat the headline numbers as directionally interesting, not gospel.

But even as a first cut, it tells us things the industry rarely talks about openly. So here we are.

What the data actually says

Festival pays the least. Brand and agency pay the most.

A senior production manager working a music festival has a median day rate of £350. The same role, same person, working a brand or agency event: £500. That’s a 43% premium for doing what is, in many cases, less complex work. (Sometimes. Not all of the time. I know.)

A senior site manager: £350 at a festival. £450 at a corporate gig. £450 at a brand/agency job.

A stage manager: £275 festival. £420 brand/agency. A 53% uplift.

The pattern repeats almost cleanly across the board:

Senior roles: £350 festival → £455 corporate → £468 brand/agency (median)
Mid-level roles: £261 → £331 → £356
Support roles: £196 → £237 → £285

So if you’re the same person, with the same skills, the sector you work in changes your income by 25 to 70%. Not the difficulty. Not the hours. The sector.

My take

This isn’t news to anyone in the industry. It’s been talked about in pub corners and WhatsApp groups for two decades. What’s new is having data around it.

The festival sector pays less because the budgets are tighter (ticket revenue vs marketing spend), the bookings are longer (so the per-day rate matters less), and frankly because we’ve all accepted it. The aspirational pull of festival work — the lifestyle, the camaraderie, the photo at the end of the weekend — is a real economic input. People accept lower pay for it. I’ve done it myself; to be honest, I still do it now.

But the gap is no longer subtle, and the people doing the work are getting older, with mortgages and kids and parents who need looking after. “It’s the festival rate” is an explanation, not a justification.

The bit that is being avoided

46% of respondents define a standard day as 12 hours. 33% define it as 10. So 79% of the industry is working days of 10 hours or more as standard.

40% report no overtime at all. Another 19% get a flat hourly rate when they go over. Only 17% get time-and-a-half. 2% get double time.

Let me say that more clearly: nearly half the industry works 12-hour days with no overtime structure of any kind. We have normalised this so completely that we don’t flinch at it.

If you take the median festival mid-level rate (£250) and divide it across a 12-hour day, you get £20.83 an hour. That’s a real number for a lot of skilled, experienced freelancers in this industry. People with ten or more years of expertise, qualifications, and responsibility for hundreds of staff and millions of pounds of equipment. £20.83 an hour. Before tax. Before unpaid pre-production days. Before the time it takes to do invoicing and chase payment.

I’m not pretending the numbers should be the same as a corporate desk job. The work is different, the structure is different. But if we’re going to be honest — and that’s the only useful place to start — these hours and these rates are not sustainable for the people we want to keep in the industry.

The undercutting conversation

The recurring theme in the open-text answers, and there were a lot of them, was undercutting.

The pattern goes like this: a less experienced freelancer accepts a rate well below market to get the booking. The producer or production company finds it works fine for the volume of work that doesn’t really need senior experience. Next year they book the cheaper person again. Rates drift down at the bottom, then in the middle, then everywhere except the very top.

I’ve heard this complaint for years. The data backs it up. Senior crew describe it as corrosive. Junior crew don’t always know what the going rate is, because the industry has historically refused to publish one.

Which brings me to the second thing the survey is genuinely useful for: not as a definitive rate card, but as a public reference point. The medians here are imperfect, but they exist.

Published medians are always better than no medians, because the absence of data is what makes undercutting easy in the first place.

What this survey isn’t

This isn’t a complete picture. Some specific limits worth flagging:

The respondent pool is heavily freelance (78%) and heavily experienced (87% with 5+ years). That’s appropriate for asking about day rates, because those are the people setting them. But it means buyers are underrepresented. If you only listen to sellers, the picture skews.
Touring and brand/agency sample sizes for some roles are in single digits. I’ve marked those in the report. Don’t take a £650 median based on 7 responses as a binding industry benchmark.
The survey didn’t cover technical crew: lighting, sound, video, riggers, electricians. Several respondents flagged this, fairly. That’s a separate survey, and worth doing.
It’s a March 2026 snapshot. Rates move. I’d want to do this annually to see what changes.
It’s UK-only, with the predictable London skew (24% London, 76% regional).

If you read the numbers and they don’t match your experience: that’s useful. Tell me. The only way this gets better is more data.

My take, for what it’s worth

If you’re a freelancer, the most useful thing this data gives you is the courage to have a clearer rate conversation. The medians are public now. You can quote them.

If you’re a buyer, the most useful thing is to stop pretending you don’t know rates are too low at the bottom and that 12-hour days with no overtime are a welfare issue. Both of those things are visible in the data, and they will become more visible, not less, as the workforce ages and the skills shortage gets worse.

If you’re an industry body, a producer, or a promoter with influence: the request that came up over and over again in the open responses was for a transparent, agreed industry rate framework. Not a fixed rate card — that’s both impractical and probably illegal. A benchmark. Something buyers and sellers can both point to. Film and TV have one. Live events doesn’t.

We could.

What now

I’ll do this again next year. If you have thoughts on what to add, what’s missing, or where the data feels wrong against your experience, send them. Especially if you’re a buyer. You’re the perspective most underrepresented in this data.

A couple of questions I’m genuinely sitting with:

Does the industry want a published benchmark, or do we secretly prefer the opacity?
And, the harder one, at what point does “it’s just the festival rate” stop being a defence?

Let me know what you think.

The numbers, in one place

For anyone who wants to skip the prose, here are the headline figures from the 160 responses.

Who answered

160 total responses, March 2026
78% freelancers (124 of 160). The rest were a mix of production companies (8), crew agencies and suppliers (9), promoters and event organisers (7), venues (3), brand/agency (3), and other (6).
87% had 5+ years experience. 22% had 20+ years, 39% had 10 to 20 years, 26% had 5 to 10 years.
60% identified primarily as sellers of day rates, 9% primarily as buyers, 26% as both. The buyer voice is underrepresented and that’s a known limitation.
Sector experience overlapped: 77% had worked festivals, 52% corporate, 36% touring, 30% brand/agency. Most respondents work across more than one sector.

Caveats

Single-digit sample sizes move with one or two responses. Treat them as indicative only.
“Festival” combines music festivals and concerts, which buyers sometimes price differently.
Rates are quoted as raw day rates. They do not account for unpaid pre-production, expenses, accommodation, or overtime structures (or the lack of them).
All figures are medians, not averages. The averages are higher in every category, dragged up by a small number of senior touring and brand respondents quoting £600+ rates.

If your numbers are different to these, fill the survey next time. The point of doing this in the open is so the next version is closer to the truth.