Coldplay Support Music Venue Trust 2025 (Music News)

Without a grassroots music scene, there is less opportunity for new talent and ultimately less spaces for people to express themselves.

5 min read

Last September, Coldplay advertised a poster in the window of Dublin Castle in Camden, London - the scene of the first ever Coldplay Show in 1998. The poster revealed upcoming UK stadium dates, alongside the welcome news that 10% of the band’s proceeds from these shows will be donated to Music Venue Trust (MVT).

This donation from 12 shows at Hull and Wembley - for which the 800,000 tickets sold out within hours - will help fund the Trust’s vital work supporting UK grassroots music venues and upcoming artists.

The news comes as many smaller venues up and down the UK are closing down due to rising operational costs, and a lack of support from the wider industry and government in recent years.

Without a grassroots music scene, there is less opportunity for new talent and ultimately less spaces for people to express themselves.

In 2024, MVT reports that 810 grassroots venues across the UK hosted 162,092 events with 1.49 million individual artist performances and 19.4 million audience visits. That’s staggering.

This crisis is only exacerbated by the growing divide between smaller and larger artists, brought on by streaming and eye-watering touring costs.

Over festival season, MVT have highlighted how this ongoing crisis would impact the lineup of the world’s most popular festival Glastonbury by redacting all artists who had came-up through the grassroots scene. The result? An almost empty poster.

Coldplay are one of a growing number of artists who have taken matters into their own hands, and began supporting the cause from the revenue generated from much larger arena and stadium shows.

The band chose MVT as the charity has a 97% success rate in planning objections that threaten venues, and their partnership with Save Our Scene UK which helped create a Liveline Fund, uniting all grassroots investment efforts under one umbrella.

Outside of artists, the UK government is beginning to address various longterm issues in the music and entertainment industry. One of these is the closure of grassroots venues, recommending a £1 ticket levy on all arena ticket sales. The Royal Albert Hall has been the first to commit to this, and will raise more than £300,000 per year by doing so.

Sam Fender and Katy Perry also pledged their support to the levy on their recent tours, but this needs to become mandatory for the arenas themselves to work long-term.

If you’re wondering how you can help save your favourite spaces, you can do so by supporting the venues by attending local gigs, donating to MVT and spreading the word on social media. Utilise this gig guide to make the most of your local area.

Coldplay have always been an artist willing to give back into the scene that made them, and have also pledged an effort to make the ‘Music of The Spheres World Tour’ sustainable. This move towards supporting grassroots venues is one in a long line, and will make an overwhelming difference.

Find out more information here.

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