Indoor theaters and music venues opened back up in England on August 15th with social distance rules in place. Founder of Music Venues Trust, Mark Davyd, talks about what these reopenings will look like. 

“Venues are operating at roughly 30% capacity. Everybody has to be seated. Drinks are only brought to the table. There are massive additional costs in meeting the health and safety demands of managing the virus. And frankly the kind of music you can program is also very limited. We’re not going to see any hardcore punk gigs. It’s going to be a lot of folk and jazz and singer/songwriters with acoustic guitars,” Davyd says.  

Davyd adds that operating at 30% capacity will not be a financial benefit to music venues. He estimates that 93% of England’s music venues are still under threat of permanent closure because of COVID-19.  

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