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Melissa Bubb-Clarke
Touring
Melissa Bubb-Clarke On Helping Lead Live Nation Canada to New Heights: Interview
The chief commercial officer of Live Nation Canada will accept the Executive of the Year Award at Billboard Canada Women In Music 2026. Here, she reflects on the honour and the last two years of heights that have led her there.
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The live music sector is thriving more than ever in Canada. In her role as chief commercial officer of Live Nation Canada, Melissa Bubb-Clarke is helping it soar towards new heights.
On Nov. 24, she will accept the Executive of the Year Award at Billboard Canada Women In Music, recognizing the important work she does behind the scenes, helping Canada's live music giant scale its operations amid a rapidly growing industry, through collaborating and partnering with corporate brands.
The market leader in the country, Live Nation Canada has seen record success and revenue figures over the last few years, but in many ways Bubb-Clarke and the team she works with are just laying the foundation for an even bigger future.
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In its second season this summer, the 50,000-capacity Rogers Stadium welcomed a new record number of 20 concerts to Toronto, drawing record-setting tours by headliners like Bruno Mars, BTS, Karol G and more. RBC Amphitheatre also kicked off its first season under its new name and partnership with RBC, which arrived alongside plans to become a year-round venue by 2030. There are more A-list artists coming to town than ever, but beyond welcoming shows, Bubb-Clarke is vying to create venues that offer an optimal experience for not just the artists playing them, but also the fans coming to see their favourite artist.
Alongside her colleagues Riley O’Connor and Erik Hoffman, Bubb-Clarke shared the honour of Billboard Canada Power Player of the Year in 2025 as Live Nation witnessed a record year defined by $25.2 billion USD in revenue. After spending over a decade working at MLSE (Maple Leaf Sports & Entertainment), she has taken lessons from the sports world to adapt and create venues to bring fan experience to the concert world and bring music's megastars to Canada.
Preparing to accept the Billboard Canada Executive of the Year Award has given Bubb-Clarke the opportunity to reflect on the major strides she and her team have been making in the live music landscape over the past several years.
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"I'm in a team sport, and an executive is only as good as the team that they get to work with and represent. And I have a great one," she says. "My career has always been intertwined with Live Nation, so it's absolutely a testament to everything that Live Nation is accomplishing in the live music space."
"With Erik Hoffman leading the concert side of the business and Wayne Zronik leading the business operations side, and all the players in between, it is a big team and everybody is genuinely a fan first," she continues. "We love music. We love live events, we love communal gatherings where people are coming to celebrate together. No one's leaving a show upset. It is joy personified. How can that not impact how you work and your success? It runs through my veins."
Ahead of the star-studded Billboard Canada Women In Music celebration on Nov. 24 at Rebel, Billboard Canada spoke to Bubb-Clarke about the honour.
Billboard Canada Women In Music takes place Nov. 24 at Rebel in Toronto and features Cardi B, Summer Walker, Tia Wood, Faouzia, Bebe Rexha and more. Find the full lineup here. Limited tickets are available here.
You've been the chief commercial officer at Live Nation Canada for just over two years now. During that time, you've been a key figure in multiple major expansions: the renaming of RBC Amphitheatre, the opening of Rogers Stadium and its two seasons of major concerts from Coldplay to Bruno Mars, and the opening of History Ottawa. What do you see as your biggest success during your current tenure?
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The catalyst [to me coming to Live ation] was when I learned about the concept of the stadium. [Rogers Stadium] really represents so many things [about our goals]. The vision was to build something to attract the AAA artists [top-tier touring acts] that Toronto can stand up and deserve. Knowing that Oasis was coming [was also a big factor]. My daughter's middle name is Lyla. I'm a huge Oasis fan. There were just these little fun signs where I was like, I want to be a part of that.
RBC Amphitheatre was a really incredible project to work on with our partners at RBC, also. I got a real kick out of it. I love having corporate Canada support our business. I saw that so much in sports, and I've always felt very passionate to fight for music's place in how corporate Canada could support the arts and be supported by the arts.
What is the biggest success the live music industry is currently witnessing in Canada?
There are more artists than ever before on the road connecting with their fans, and we get to be a part of that. Artists are investing in their show, there are residencies, it comes in all different types now. We've got people crossing the country and playing a ton of dates and clubs. We’ve got artists coming to one venue and programming 12 nights there. I think that is a win for everybody.
You started you career at Live Nation, worked at Maple Leafs Sports & Entertainment (MLSE) for over a decade, then returned. In that time, your work has spanned sports, music and entertainment. How has that helped shape your approach back at Live Nation now?
I really started my career and cut my teeth at Live Nation and came up through the ranks. When you start out answering the phones and sending faxes and learning the key players in that way, you learn a lot. It’s hands-on, and you learn a lot through osmosis.
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The 13 years that I had at MLSE afforded me a ton of opportunity. They do a lot of incredible things with a really talented team, and I learned so much over there. There are a lot of best practices in sports that I was lucky enough to be surrounded by and learn from, then figure out how to apply it to music.
I can give you a million reasons why I think music is as much of a compelling offering, if not more, than sports. There are more concerts at Scotiabank Arena than there are [Maple] Leafs and Raptors games combined. From a demographic standpoint, we're serving everything to everybody with our 4,000+ shows that we do across Canada here with Live Nation. We do every demographic, every age group, all sorts of styles of music, I think we are super fan-friendly in that way.
I think we have been able to understand what the fans have come to get, what they have been able to experience at a sports venue. They're looking for a similar experience at a show. They want to be able to have nice food and go to a specific place post-show or pre-show and have a great overall experience.
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Rogers Stadium opened as Canada's biggest outdoor music venue in 2025, and RBC Amphitheatre recently rebranded alongside plans to expand into a year-round venue by 2030. What role do you play in making these major projects come to life?
It is a major team effort. There are a bunch of us at the helm of the Amphitheatre that make that happen and we had a really motivated partner, RBC, that we've been in partnership with for over 10 years. Understanding what we're trying to achieve for the overall venue and trying to deliver to fans only comes together if everybody wins. It's our job to be able to build something that we feel like will be fan-friendly, attract the biggest artists in the world and also deliver them an incredible artist experience.
I get to be on the forefront, with a team and partners such as RBC, to negotiate what that will look like in term and investment. They'll look at our overall venue roster and figure out what opportunities we have there. As we look at what RBC Amphitheatre 2.0 would look like, what have we learned from this iteration of the Amphitheatre? How do we protect that moving forward and what other opportunities are there?
There's a host of partners that invest in those footprints to bring them to life. There's naming rights. Then there's everything from American Express and the program that we have with them, [to] the [Birkenstock] lounge at Rogers Stadium, a bunch of our food and beverage partners. It's [about] working with all of them to figure out how they want to show up and how we can ensure that it’s a good fit with our fans. Then there's whole premium seating at Rogers Stadium. We've got suites, we've got lodges, there's a whole program that we roll out there.
How have the rising trade tensions between Canada and the U.S. affected the live market music in Canada? Has it become more difficult for American artists to bring their tours to Canada and vice versa?
There is a ton of uncertainty given what's going on south of the border. Whether that's the strength of our dollar, which obviously affects how we do business, [or] tariffs, which are affecting a ton of our corporate partners and how they get to show up in Canada and the uncertainty that they're facing, [these are] challenging, interesting times.
From the perspective of the business that I touch, it's a crazy time. I had a meeting today with a company that we thought that we would be doing business with, and their budget has been affected by tariffs last-minute. We are all holding hands together and trying to figure it out, but it’s not easy. There's definitely budget uncertainty out there based on everything that's going on. We also love to work with Canadian companies.
Live Nation is producing the Backstreet Boys' 12-night residency in partnership with Rogers at Toronto's Rogers Centre in 2027, which has broken the venue's record for the most shows by any artist on a single tour. How has it been watching unfold as it's become one of 2027's most anticipated concerts?
We’re super excited to have this residency for Torontonians to enjoy, but a ton of people will fly in for these shows. We know Toronto punches above its weight, we know we're a great music city. From restaurants to hotels, we think this will be another good news story for everybody.
As a Gen Xer, I've been able to see the artists that I've grown up with for a while now, but it's time for another generation to really have these. When they see who they grew up with come back, it’s just emotion. It is joy personified. And my god, they have a lot of hits. When we were putting the shows on sale, I had it playing and it was just another one and another one and another one... it’s so fun. It's something to look forward to in the new year, in cold February and March.
What is one piece of advice that you would give to a young woman starting in the music business today?
First and foremost, know your numbers. People tend to listen to you more when you can give quantitative headlines. I always had budgets that I had to manage. Once I became closer to it and really understood it, I loved it and I think it's given me a ton of opportunities. As I say to my team, understand how you contribute to the plan quantitatively, whether that's revenue generation or cost savings or upsells.
I would say, particularly to young women who may be looking to have a family — or not — it also doesn't have to all happen right at the same time. Pretty early in my career I felt I had some pretty fast success, and then I plateaued for a while, and then I made some decisions to take a turn for a while. And now here I am all these years later, and I'm being recognized [at Billboard Canada Women In Music], which is awesome.
Careers are not linear. I remained consistent in that I always showed up. I've come to the realization that careers are just the act of showing up. You’ve got to endure and you’ve got to enjoy the journey because that's what a career is. It's the journey. Build it in such a way that you can get the most out of it while you do it. Don't constantly focus on where you want to get to or where you want to be. There's always another show or another milestone, and [the way] you get to those things is consistency.
Billboard Canada Women In Music takes place Nov. 24 at Rebel in Toronto. Limited tickets are available here.
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