Just 1 in 5 Ohio Independent Music Venues Were Profitable Last Year, Report Says

Ohio’s smaller music venues aren’t doing so hot, a new report says.

Just 20 percent of Ohio’s independent venues turned a profit last year, a study released Wednesday by the National Independent Venue Association found. Nationally, that number is 36 percent.

It’s a discouraging fact that underscores “the urgent need for solutions to ensure [venues’] survival and sustainability,” the group concluded.

NIVA’s report comes about a year after Cleveland got its first Music Census Survey, which found that the city’s scene is—besides being majority heterosexual, white, male and in need of a day job—searching for answers on how to better link burgeoning musicians with Cleveland’s scattered array of local venues.

And how to simply sell more tickets. In both the 2024 Music Census and NIVA’s report this October, figuring out how to really market a show and bring fans through the door is the top challenge for venues.

Which explains why so few venues in Ohio are turning a profit.

“It doesn’t shock me,” Sean Watterson, the Happy Dog owner who helped spearhead the Music Census, told Scene.

The Happy Dog, which Watterson has run since 2008, has been in the red since the start of the pandemic, he said. The reasons aren’t too far off from the struggles of retail: a population that isn’t growing quickly; alcohol, music and property taxes that act as weights for smaller stages already operating on tiny margins.

“So, you combine all those factors,” Watterson said, “and you can see why we might be running behind national averages.”

Larger music venues, the Jacobs Pavilions and Agoras, are often backed by corporate structures that help them stay in the black with stratagems only larger venues can carry out—like big sponsorships, beefy ticket sales (and fees), VIP packages and steep food and drink prices (see: Blossom).

But those smaller stages, from the Little Rose Tavern to the Grog Shop, often have to rely on a delicate mix of local and nationally-known acts to keep the them from collapsing altogether.

Earlier this year, the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame partnered with the Music Census’ main backers and created a one-stop-shop music calendar called Hello Cleveland as a way to get fans through the doors. Also, Cuyahoga LIVE!, a county-led precursor to a Cleveland music commission, began its fact-finding stages in March, and will be moving forward this fall.

And this summer, State Sen. Kent Smith introduced Senate Bill 186 in the Statehouse, an act that could create a $10 million rebate fund to help struggling music venues around Ohio.

That proposed bill, currently rounding the Senate Committee, would allow venues under a 3,000-seat capacity to ask the Ohio Director of Development for up to $100,000 back from the taxes they paid on beer and wine.

For a place like the Happy Dog, which pays roughly $40,000 in alcohol taxes, that could mean rising out of the red in 2026.

“That would have been the difference between being profitable and not profitable,” Watterson said.

“So, this is not something where a bunch of quote-unquote ‘rich venue owners’ are getting fat off of tax rebates,” he added. “This really is sustainability for small businesses.”

Similar rebate state programs to keep music scenes afloat have shown promise in cities such as Austin, Texas, and Nashville, Tennessee.

If passed and signed by Gov. DeWine, venues in Cleveland could apply for such a rebate as early as September 1, 2026.

As a whole, the hundreds of independent stages across Ohio help contribute—directly and indirectly—about $1.5 billion to the state’s GDP, the report reads. That’s roughly $122 million in tax revenue.

“We have known for years that Ohio’s independent venues are gathering places, community anchors, and economic development catalysts,” Smith wrote in a statement to Scene.

The NIVA findings, he said, “confirm the importance of these businesses as key contributors to both the quality of life and our tax base.”