For a fifth-generation Colorado native who grew up on a small ranch simply north of Colorado Springs, the dream of being related to the music business appeared like a protracted shot for JW Roth.
As a substitute of ending highschool, Roth opted to get a GED after which labored nights on the Douglas County Sheriff’s Workplace. He finally began working two jobs—within the Denver Police Division and as a salesman at Common Meals. The latter enabled Roth to get a job within the brokerage enterprise, which allowed him to finally turn into a founding father of AspenBio Pharma.
In 2015, he began Roth Industries along with his son, and in 2019, he stepped away from the day-to-day operations of Roth Industries to deal with his true passion: music.
The irony, Roth says, is in the present day he would by no means have the ability to get a job on the police division, at a brokerage agency and even at his personal firm with only a GED as a result of a bachelor’s diploma is required for all these positions.
Roth’s latest enterprise, Venu Holding Company, is disrupting the music business with plans to construct 10 luxurious outside music venues throughout the nation. With Venu, Roth plans to construct an organization that’s fan-founded and fan-owned.
Venu opened its first stadium, the Ford Amphitheater in Colorado Springs, Colorado, final summer season. Ford Amphitheater is competing instantly with the legendary Pink Rocks Amphitheater, situated about 70 miles away in Morrison, Colorado.
OneRepublic, a band from Colorado Springs, opened Ford Amphitheater’s live performance sequence in August 2024. John Fogerty, Steve Miller Band, Foreigner, and Robert Plant and Alison Krauss additionally carried out there in 2024. Exhibits for the 2025 season embody Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit, Dwight Yoakam, Leon Bridges, King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard, and “Bizarre Al” Yankovic.
“I grew up a music nut,” Roth says. He recollects a time in 1978 when he and his buddy had new girlfriends they wished to impress in order that they invited them to a Rolling Stones live performance earlier than they even had tickets to the present. Roth and his pal camped out in a single day on a concrete sidewalk within the rain to safe these tickets.
As Roth grew to become extra profitable, he had the chance to attend concert events all around the nation. “I seen [the venues] had been all form of outdated and dilapidated, they usually had been constructed again earlier than rideshare and the fan demand had simply grown,” Roth says.
He additionally seen that the NFL and MLB homeowners had been placing collectively public-private partnerships with municipalities to construct state-of-the-art stadiums. These stadiums aren’t only a venue for watching sports activities; they’re about expertise and ambiance, he says. Many provide nice eating places and different distinctive experiences. These stadiums impressed Roth to ascertain Venu Holding Company, which grew to become a publicly traded firm on Nov. 29, 2024.
Initially the corporate was known as Notes Reside, however when Roth determined to take the corporate public, he realized his firm wanted a special title to create a memorable inventory image: Venu.
Venu is presently constructing Sundown Amphitheater in McKinney, Texas. The entire price of the stadium is about $300 million, Roth says. Very like the NFL and MLB stadiums Roth visited, Venu put collectively a public-private partnership to construct the amphitheater.
As an illustration, to construct Sundown Amphitheater, town of McKinney is contributing $110 million by way of the contribution of land, tax incentives, abatements and refunds within the type of money from property tax and gross sales tax, Roth explains. In return, town will get financial growth as a result of as soon as the stadium is constructed, inns and eating places will begin to open. “Different leisure amenities present up as a result of individuals come to what I construct, and what I construct is a magnet,” Roth says.
Inside every amphitheater, Roth builds firepit suites, which he sells to native companies, very similar to a rental constructing sells particular person models. This permits the companies to depreciate their investment, Roth says. Every firepit suite proprietor can select to both give away tickets for the suite to shoppers or staff or to lease their seats within the firepit suite to followers, very similar to property homeowners lease out flats by way of Vrbo or Airbnb.
Sundown Amphitheater could have 295 firepit suites on the market ranging in measurement from 4 to 10 seats, all with large, overstuffed chairs. The least costly suite is $295,000, and the most costly is $800,000, Roth says.
Nonetheless, Venu’s amphitheaters don’t simply cater to followers who will pay hundreds of {dollars} to see a live performance. Roth’s hope is to make the expertise of seeing reside music as snug and opulent as doable even for these seated within the least costly seats on the garden. To make the garden seats extra lavish, a consolation pad is positioned beneath the garden’s synthetic turf. Seats contained in the amphitheater are three inches wider and deeper than at different outside music venues, and every seat has its personal cup holder.
Plans name for Venu to construct stadiums in El Paso, Texas, and Oklahoma Metropolis and Damaged Arrow, Oklahoma.
Roth believes that music is the best unifier. “You would put an unbiased, a Republican and a Democrat that hate one another, that may’t agree on something, however they will all sit collectively and sing each lyric of ‘Resort California,’ and they’re going to take pleasure in that six minutes and 9 seconds,” he says.
Music followers come from all walks of life. Some will save for months to purchase garden tickets, and a few will spend hundreds on firepit seats, however they may all sit collectively, united of their love of reside music, Roth says. That have doesn’t occur at a sporting occasion as a result of the followers are rooting for various groups, he says.
“I can’t inform you in specifics a reminiscence that was created each time I went to a ballpark,” Roth says. “However I can inform you a reminiscence from each single live performance.”
Photograph by Josh Bourgeois @JBCreative. This text initially appeared within the May/June 2025 issue of SUCCESS journal.
