Pär Sundström Of Sabaton On Band Management, Loyal Fans And Reining In Ticket Prices

Few genres in recorded music have cemented the artist/fan bond that the metal community has over the course of the last five decades.

Metalheads aren’t fickle, supporting their favorite artists as almost a lifelong commitment on stage and off.

And they actually still buy albums.

While sales of recorded music began to crater following the advent of online file sharing and streaming in the digital era, genre defining metal acts like Judas Priest, Iron Maiden and Ozzy Osbourne have all reached their highest ever chart positions in America in the last 20 years, with Black Sabbath topping the Billboard 200 album chart in 2013 for the very first time, a list generally dominated by the pop acts du jour.

Since 1999, Swedish metal group Sabaton has slowly built a grassroots audience around the world, with last year’s The War to End All Wars, their tenth studio album, reaching #1 in 11 countries, anything but an overnight success.

The group drills down on storytelling, each song and album focused on historical events that are further fleshed out by videos, a YouTube channel, meticulously crafted staging of their live shows and personally curated merch.

At the center of it all is co-founding bassist Pär Sundström, who doubles as the band’s manager, shrewdly guiding his group’s career trajectory with a keen eye on the band’s business.

“First of all, we started as a heavy metal band. And we were just having fun. Everything along the way was self-taught,” said Sundström during a video call. “We’d see a problem and it needed to be solved – otherwise, we were not getting past the problem. And we usually find the solution ourselves,” he said of the band’s early days in Falun, Sweden. “We came from a smaller town. There was no real music industry in that town. Whatever other bands that were there were stuck there. And we didn’t want to be stuck there. We wanted to go further,” he explained.

“I always wanted to grow things to the maximum. No matter what I did, I wanted it to be as big as it could be. I think quite early, I thought, ‘I want to take Sabaton as far as it can go…’” said Sundström. “In the beginning, I felt that Sabaton was a bit limited. But, at some point during maybe 2005 or 2006, I started to think that I could remove the barriers – that they don’t need to be there. Before that, the band was not ready,” he recalled. “Mostly, the hard work was to play. That’s how we found the fans. We always had to fight against the industry and the mainstream and the pop culture. We always had to be the outsiders who did things our way,” he said. “But everything has grown. And I’m quite happy Sabaton has grown slowly over the years. Which meant that we could keep up with everything and stay in control of each step along the road. I like the taste of something we have created by ourselves. It was slow and it was very organic.”

As the sales of recorded music have continually dried up over the last 20 years, many artists have struggled to make a living in the digital era, with fans choosing to stream songs online rather than purchase them.

For Sabaton, ownership of their brand has always been key. Today, the band owns its masters and publishing, which has proven a viable revenue stream for a band that has eclipsed two billion streams regardless of the state of physical album sales.

“I know bands who signed contracts in let’s say the pre-digital era. And they signed contracts where they have a royalty rate based on physical sales. In short term, the contract would cover the universe and beyond and give them the same royalty no matter what kind of format for a lifetime,” Sundström explained. “When that translates into the digital era, it doesn’t matter if you have millions of listeners on a song because you get almost nothing out of it. It’s not a secret that the digital platforms pay very little per stream. But it makes a huge difference if you are on the higher scale or lower scale of keeping that percentage for yourself as opposed to all of the other labels and publishers who take their cut. So, when we own it, we can decide where we want to be on the scale. And when it bumps up to the billions, yeah, that bumps up pretty nicely.”

An element that continually sets metal acts apart from artists in other genres is the unique way in which they’re still able to channel that inner fan even as success sets in, a compass that continually guides Sabaton even after nearly 25 years, allowing the group to maintain an authentic brand that continues to resonate.

“Heavy metal has a very loyal audience and heavy metal bands have a very long lifespan. We remain loyal to the bands that we loved before we even started to play. We still appreciate them. We still follow them. And that transcends to us how we’d like to be. We pick up a couple of things,” Sundström said. “We are five guys in the band. Nobody is out there representing the brand Sabaton. That is one of the reasons that we don’t have external management that is out selling the brand. Everything comes from us. Nobody is coming to show us, ‘These are the clothes that you should wear.’ Or, ‘Say this…’ It’s very honest. When people meet us, they shouldn’t see somebody that doesn’t care. I don’t want anybody to feel that we do not care. It’s genuine.”

The selling of band branded merchandise has become a crucial revenue stream for artists, a concept that took on increasing importance amidst the lockdown of early pandemic quarantine, which took traditional live performance largely off the table for nearly two years.

Channeling the inner fan has helped Sabaton create ingenious, one of a kind merchandise opportunities. Last year, the group released a box set entitled The Great Show, a Lego kit which enabled fans to build a duplicate of the stage setting used by the group on tour, a stage which ultimately doubles as the box that holds the DVDs included in the live collection.

All of the ideas come from within, a unique arrangement which gives the group incredible access to each facet of the merchandising process, from inception of the idea through fine tuning and creation of the product.

“First of all, we need to look to ourselves. We are fans of other bands and we are collectors of other bands. Would we have wanted our favorite band to make a Lego stage when we were 10 or 12 years old? Yes! That’s first,” said Sundström with a chuckle. “Then it’s like why do we create it – just because we want it or is there a deeper story behind it? Can we make it clear? I don’t want to stand there and explain to you what you’re looking at and why you should buy it.”

Today, the band handles all of their merch in-house, operating from a base on the island of Cyprus, offering fans a form of customer service that is virtually unparalleled for a band with Sabaton’s audience, allowing them to further engage directly with a growing fanbase while fueling the local economy.

“I moved to a little island in the Mediterranean a few years ago. I moved alone. And I started something that hadn’t existed there: a heavy metal office,” said the bassist and manager. “We moved the Sabaton mail order and started to ship from there. People told me, ‘This may be a stupid idea to ship out of an island. You have a little bit higher costs.’ But, at the same time, we control the whole thing. I’m there next to the people – and the people who are packing everything love it. They have a connection to the fans that are going to receive it. They are personally involved in this,” Sundström said. “There was nothing on the island like that before I moved there. Now there is a heavy metal industry where you have actual office hours work with heavy metal and nobody is complaining that you have long hair or tattoos and are listening to heavy metal at your desk. And I think that’s great!” he said.

“I think that that is part of the experience and why our fans love the mail order so much. They know that we are hands on with it,” he continued. “When I’m in the office and my team comes by, we’re showing all of the stuff. We’re sitting down and we’re drawing on the garments. ‘This needs to be more like that. Extend this. Ask for another sample. That quality isn’t good enough, go here.’ We have that. And it’s exciting. It’s interesting,” he said. “In the end, it’s for the benefit of the fans. Because they get good stuff! And that’s a benefit for the band. We get happy fans! Happy fans are good fans – they stay longer. It’s a circle that is very good. It works.”

Since the mid-2000s, Sabaton has been specific in their staging of all ages concerts, often leaving money on the table to perform in a venue sans alcohol sales with an eye on the bigger picture, developing a staunchly loyal fanbase that now function as merch and ticket buying adults with their own income.

Fans of gaming, the group has further used collaboration with games like World of Tanks to reach younger music lovers outside the general metal realm.

As live events have begun a steady return over the last year and a half, many artists have lamented the increased level of difficulty in touring, especially internationally, amidst continued supply chain and logistics issues, manpower shortages and inflation. But Sabaton forged ahead, successfully navigating globe spanning concert stagings.

“It was boring as hell but I did invest a lot of my time analyzing what was coming and how it was going to work,” said Sundström, forced off the road for most of 2020 and 2021 amidst pandemic. “It didn’t come as a wake up call for us. I spent a lot of time on that. I know that a lot do not do that. They say, ‘We get all of these advances, let’s go on tour!’ They take that money, they go on tour and then they don’t have enough ticket sales. Then they realize everything has become so expensive that they cannot continue the tours. It’s just bad. We never really faced that at all. We were very stable,” he said.

“The previous summer tour that we did in Europe, there were so many bands that couldn’t perform their tours. They didn’t get tour buses. They couldn’t get flights. They couldn’t get crew members. And they had to cancel. We were fine. We knew that this was coming. I could just sit and watch and analyze that all of these bands going on tour was going to create a shortage. A lot of good people have also left the industry. And that’s why we secured everything far, far in advance,” the Sabaton manager said. “The flight chaos that everybody knew about, we didn’t really have any big issues. At all. I’m pretty proud to say that. We had canceled flights and delayed flights, yes. But there was never an issue. We always had backup plans and we always were ahead of time. We never had stress there. Coming to a festival, we’d get there – and we’re relaxed and chill – while the promoters are running around with so many changed plans: bands not showing up, no equipment and these kinds of things. We never had issues with that.”

As he steers the band continually forward with a fan first approach, Sundström is acutely aware of the pinch fans are sure to feel as ticket prices continue to surge, an arms race he acknowledges isn’t likely to change.

While the older end of his fanbase was raised with concerts as an affordable entertainment option, today’s youth are often left to watch from the sidelines, relegated to online streaming events thanks to prohibitively priced concert tickets that simply aren’t an option, priced out of the in-person experience.

But, unlike many artists who make the concerted effort to utilize controversial ticketing methods like Ticketmaster’s dynamic pricing despite the financial effect it has on fans, Sundström offers proactive ideas and solutions which could rein prices in.

“First of all, I do feel a bit sorry for the fans,” he said. “Because it is eventually them who take the hit of expensive ticket prices. We are in control of more than the average artist – but we are not in control of the entire thing. And there are some things that we cannot change. Local costs have skyrocketed. And that’s completely out of our hands. That is one thing,” Sundström continued. “But I think also the greed of big corporations and things like that drive it up even further. And that’s not going to change. The whole thing will keep doing that. It’s not going to be cheaper to do things – that’s the problem. It’s a little bit dark to view the future,” he conceded.

“I was hoping that the music industry would turn more towards where some gaming and tech are – where the basics are free and you pay for the extras,” said the manager, referencing the model pioneered by games like Fortnite, which is free to play but monetized via in game microtransactions. “This is where I wanted the industry to go: that you basically can go very cheap to a concert – and then you pay for extras and upgrades. That’s where the tech industry goes and maybe the music industry could follow,” Sundström said. “I would think that’s a more healthy way of going. The average ticket would be cheaper but there’d be some extreme benefits for the people willing to pay for them. And that’s how it’d balance,” he said. “I’m worried for when the average ticket price goes too high and the people who don’t have the fat wallets won’t be able to go and enjoy the shows. This is a development I fear. But I’m still going to keep in my mind how we can work towards the other way. We can’t change the entire industry. But we can try to go that way. It’s always a balance.”

Set to return to the road on April 14, 2023 at First Direct Arena in Leeds, England, touring in support of their new EP Heroes of the Great War (the second installment in their Echoes of the Great War trilogy), a European outing running through May 20 in Finland, Sabaton does what they can to keep expenses in check.

With 25 employees, 10 trucks, a 100 person crew and warehouses home to past stagings and props, and Sundström himself a licensed pyrotechnician, the group tailors their live experience for each setting depending on the location and audience size.

Staring down an uncertain future for live performance, the bassist and manager is nevertheless clear on Sabaton’s motivations with bigger and bigger aspirations coming increasingly within reach.

“There’s three questions I ask myself if we’re going to do a show. And they are: Does this show make the band bigger? Are we having fun? Do we make money?” Sundström explained. “Sometimes you could ask me, ‘What’s your long term goal in 10 or 20 years?’ And I’d say, ‘I’d like to eliminate two of the questions.’ The first one I’d like to eliminate is, ‘Do we make any money?’ I don’t like that. At all. It needs to be there – for now. But hopefully one day we’ve eliminated that. The second one I’d like to eliminate is, ‘Does this make the band any bigger?’ Because if we get to where I’d love to be, we don’t need that. And then we just ask ourselves, ‘Are we having fun?’”