Published in the Quad-City Times on June 3, 2024

A lot has changed since The Mark opened its doors. 

When Neil Diamond played the first show at the venue in May 1993, gas was just over a dollar per gallon, Google didn’t exist and the Quad-Cities live entertainment scene was on the precipice of a boom. 

Immediately after opening, the arena, now named Vibrant Arena at The Mark, went through what current executive director Scott Mullen refers to as a “honeymoon period.”

There were more than 30 shows each year in 1994, 1995 and 1996. Stars like Frank Sinatra, Billy Joel and Janet Jackson came to town.

The arena’s reputation — and proximity to his hometown of Dubuque — is part of what attracted Mullen to the arena when he took his position in 2005. 

He said that in the arena industry, even The Mark’s unique U-shaped construction was a conversation starter in the ’90s. He worked at an NHL arena in New York at the time, and noticed venues nationwide started to follow suit.

Locally and nationally, The Mark made its mark. 

“It was the hottest thing ever,” Mullen said, in an interview from his arena office, a room decorated wall-to-wall with plaques, signed basketballs and other memorabilia from The Mark’s three decades of history.

“The market was starved for entertainment, and it was getting everything and they were selling out everything. No matter what you put in here, it did well.” 

But as the honeymoon faded, the number of shows booked at The Mark declined.

According to records shared by the venue, The Mark has held more than 600 ticketed non-sporting events since 1993, almost all of which have been concerts. It averaged 26.4 shows per year in the 1990s. In the 2000s, that number dropped to 22.7. And in the 2010s, it fell again to 17.5.

This summer, Vibrant Arena currently has zero standalone concerts booked in June, July or August. Comedian Nate Bargatze has the venue’s only non-sports event this summer. 

So what’s changed?

‘We try to be a little bit more shrewd’

When explaining how the Quad-Cities’ largest live entertainment venue operates, Mullen was candid.

His main job as executive director is booking shows, and he does so by coordinating with independent promoters contracted by artists or artists’ own booking agents. 

Mullen says networking is a big part of it. He travels to conferences nationwide, nurturing relationships with promoters so to improve The Mark’s chances when there’s a “jump ball” event considering multiple venues in the region.

He said that, since 2005, his job has stayed mostly the same. 

“The only thing that changes is they always want more money,” Mullen said, with a laugh. 

He said that artists nationally have increasingly realized that they have more power in negotiations and have asked for larger financial guarantees. That’s made the arena get choosier about which shows are booked, Mullen said, because it’s easy to lose money on a show.

“We try to be a little more shrewd,” he said. 

Another factor in the decreased volume of shows at The Mark, Mullen said, is date protection. Often, artists require venues not book shows of the same genre within a certain timeframe, sometimes for as much as 30 days on either side of the performance.

Booking around schedules for The Mark’s home sports teams — the Quad City Storm and the Quad City Steamwheelers — can be challenging, Mullen said. But the arena has agreements with the teams that say games can be rescheduled if a big show can only play a certain date. 

Mullen said that moving sporting events is only an option if there is no alternative, praising the impact professional sports has on the community. 

This summer, four football games accompany the Nate Bargatze show as the only events on The Mark calendar. Mullen said the summer silence is not abnormal.

The venue’s records indicate that the average schedule in the last decade included between three and four shows per summer, a lower rate than other seasons. 

That’s partly due to competition with amphitheaters, festivals, fairs, casinos and other outdoor venues in the region, Mullen said. As the weather gets warmer, many promoters are simply looking to get their artists outside. 

“The festivals like Tailgate ‘N Tallboys, and they’re doing a great job at the Mississippi Valley Fair booking stuff, so sometimes that takes things out of circulation that were coming through the area,” Mullen said. 

He added that The Mark is still considering adding to its summer lineup for 2024, but it would have to be the right show. 

Rising ticket prices

In 2022, Pollstar found that average ticket prices for the top 100 North American music tours had gone up from $91.86 to $108.20 since 2019.

Mullen acknowledged that ticket costs are a problem. He said they’re set by artists, not venues, and that price tags will continue rising as long as fans are comfortable with paying it. 

“At the end of the day, it’s the consumer that pays,” he said. “It’s a shame — tickets when I was a kid were $10, $15.” 

All tickets for shows at The Mark are sold by Ticketmaster, an entertainment company that has faced criticism for perceived “junk fees” and market domination.

Last month, the U.S. Department of Justice filed an antitrust lawsuit against Live Nation Entertainment, Ticketmaster’s parent company. 

The DOJ complaint alleged that Live Nation and Ticketmaster have locked out competing ticket companies by using exclusionary contracts, threatening venues that choose other brokers and acquiring smaller regional promoters. 

In response to criticism about the company’s various service fees, in 2023, Live Nation and Ticketmaster rolled out all-in pricing. The decision came not long after President Biden critiqued junk fees in his State of The Union address and Taylor Swift fans joined together to file a class action lawsuit against the company. 

Mullen called Ticketmaster a “great product” and the best ticketing platform out there, adding that most surcharges are returned back to the artists. 

He said the DOJ lawsuit won’t impact anything at The Mark. 

“I just think Ticketmaster has a reputation,” he said. “Yes, they do have service fees, but a lot of people, including a lot of people in government, don’t realize where the money actually goes.” 

‘Winners and not losers’

These rising ticket costs make it more difficult to book shows, Mullen said, another factor that has made the venue pickier with who it brings to town. 

“You got to know that sometimes you have to say no, if the deal just doesn’t make sense,” he said. “Every once in a while, you’ll have a show that loses money.

“But usually, we have winners and not losers. 

Despite having fewer shows than in the ’90s honeymoon period, The Mark has managed to be profitable in each of the last 20 years, Mullen said. He said the venue averages around $700,000 in profit each year. 

That money is re-invested in capital projects for the arena, like the recently renovated conference center and new ribbon board.

Some of the profit also goes to the City of Moline to help with infrastructure projects. If the arena ever depletes its financial reserves, it has an agreement with Moline that the city will cover the deficit.

But Mullen said that hasn’t happened, and he’s proud that The Mark can be a Quad-Cities staple that’s not funded by taxpayers. 

“It’s truly a community building,” he said. “That kind of sets us apart from other places. Building (The Mark) was probably the best thing this community has ever done, entertainment-wise.” 

Even through the pandemic, The Mark managed to stay afloat. It held just 12 shows in 2020 and 2021 combined, and had to shrink its staff down to just eight full-time employees. But assistance from the Shuttered Venue Operators Grant helped bring the building back up.

Federal government records show the Illinois Quad City Civic Center Authority, the quasi-governmental municipal corporation that does business as The Mark, received $3.8 million in the grant.

Since the pandemic, Mullen said that music fans have engaged in “revenge spending,” by going out en masse to see shows that they couldn’t in 2020 and 2021. 

In fact, he said that the fiscal year for 2023-24 was The Mark’s most profitable year yet. The Morgan Wallen show, held in September, brought in $2 million in ticket sales alone. 

It was the highest grossing show in the history of the venue, besting Paul McCartney’s gig in 2019. The Mark even gave Wallen a professional wrestling style belt to commemorate the honor.  

How are genres picked at The Mark? 

Kenny Chesney, Chris Stapleton, Cody Johnson and Blake Shelton were among the other stars who appeared at The Mark in the most recent fiscal year. The common denominator: most of the biggest gigs as of late have been country shows. 

“That’s the strongest market across the country right now,” Mullen said.

Deciding which shows are going to succeed locally is a tricky process that has only got more complicated in the streaming music era, Mullen said. The arena used to contact local radio stations to see what fans wanted to hear. But it’s hard to track regional streaming numbers.

Mullen, who said he grew up on hard rock like Metallica, Van Halen and Rush, said it’s a “constant education process” to stay up to date with what’s popular. 

He used to watch MTV to find out what resonates. Now, Mullen works with data-tracking companies and connects with venues across the country for ideas. He even asks his children for advice. It’s not always easy. 

“(Artists) used to start in clubs and then work their way up to theaters, then arenas, then stadiums,” Mullen said. “But now, with the internet, things blow up so fast that somebody can be on YouTube one day and be a major star the next and skip the clubs and theaters.” 

Mullen said the venue wants to experiment more, citing genres like Latin and Indian music as avenues he’d like to pursue, but the transience of trends makes it easy to lean on genres that are a sure thing. 

“We’re working on it,” he said. “But certainly, country is our lifeblood around here.”

In the ’90s, country and folk shows made up 23% of The Mark schedule — in the last two years, that’s up to 34%.

Other genres have faltered.

In the last 15 years, only three rap headliners have been booked to play the arena: Lil Wayne in 2016, Lil Durk in 2021 and Ice Cube and Snoop Dogg in 2022. Out of the nearly 650 shows booked at The Mark in its history, just 14 of them were headlined by rappers.

Mullen said that the arena has simply had a hard time getting rap promoters to bring tours to town.

On a national level, hip-hop certainly doesn’t have a popularity problem. In 2023, Spotify said that 25% of all streams on the music platform were for rap songs. But many performers are only going to major cities, Mullen said. 

Even when they do come to the Quad-Cities, the ticket sales are hit or miss. 

In 2008, Kanye West, Rihanna and Lupe Fiasco came to The Mark for West’s “Glow In The Dark Tour.” It was set to be one of the biggest shows ever at the arena — after all, the trio of performers combined for 11 of that year’s 100 best-selling songs on the Billboard Hot 100.

But the show underperformed.

The Quad-City Times review of it cited around 5,000 attendees, indicating roughly half capacity. Mullen said The Mark lost money on that gig, and it didn’t do the arena any favors when it came to convincing rappers to come back. 

“Agents, they know what they’re doing,” Mullen said. “They take notice of that stuff, so next time someone comes around …”

Picking a winning show over a losing show is a harder proposition now, compared to 1993. And with the changes facing the live music industry, losing shows are harder to stomach. 

Mullen’s office is tucked through a red hallway, with walls lined with photographed winners — Metallica, Elton John, Reba McEntire, Pearl Jam, who all performed at The Mark in the last three decades. 

Mullen said he has a lot to be proud of. 

“We’ve been very fortunate to be a profitable venue,” he said. “We regularly have promoters that come in here and think the building is only a couple of years old.” 

The interview with Mullen was held on the venue’s birthday, May 28. The energy at the arena was much different from when it opened.

Hoopla took over downtown Moline when Neil Diamond played The Mark that day in 1993. In its place today is a nonchalant gratitude that the pearly fixture of the local entertainment scene has persisted. 

Mullen said The Mark will continue to persist.

“Normally, when (venues) are 31 years old, they’re getting ready to tear ’em down,” he said. “This one is still as good as ever.”