Coldplay and Oasis tour promoter takes home £3.7 million dividend

A music tycoon at the centre of the Oasis ticketing debacle paid himself a £3.7 million dividend last year, his company’s latest accounts show.
Simon Moran’s SJM Concerts promotes gigs for some of the world’s biggest artists when they tour in the UK. Last year it worked with Coldplay, Chappell Roan and Never Gonna Give You Up star Rick Astley.
This summer, SJM and Moran were embroiled in the row over prices for Oasis’s reunion tour tickets, which shot up to well above face value thanks to Ticketmaster’s “dynamic pricing” tools. SJM is one of the tour’s promoters.
SJM promoted 1,845 shows in 2023. Although it put on more shows – 2,160 – in 2022, its revenues grew four per cent to £286 million because there were a higher number of large-capacity events. It made a profit of £12 million.
Accounts for Moran’s holding company, SJM Holdings North, through which he also owns Warrington Wolves rugby league club, show it paid out dividends of £3.7 million in 2023.
Moran, who did not respond to a request for comment, started out promoting gigs in the 1980s while on a business studies course at the University of Sheffield. He organised a concert for The Farm, a Liverpool-based band, and became their manager.
He later made his name promoting the boyband Take That and was credited with helping to spark the band’s reformation and 2009 tour.
In addition to running SJM, which owns the ticketing website gigsandtours.com, Moran is involved in several other music industry businesses.
He is a director of the Isle of Wight Festival and Parklife Manchester, as well as Academy Music Group, which owns several of the UK’s largest music venues.
SJM Holdings North, which Moran wholly owns, had not paid out a dividend for several years before 2023. Between 2015 and 2017, it paid out a combined £32.5 million. In 2020, The Sunday Times gave Moran an estimated net worth of £142 million.
Outside music, Manchester-based Moran has owned Warrington Wolves since 2003. Last weekend, The Mail on Sunday reported that Moran had donated £25,000 to the Labour Party ahead of July’s general election.