Sub Focus gives a pound a ticket to Save Our Scene and the grassroots venue levy

Sub Focus will hand a pound from every ticket sold on his next UK shows to Save Our Scene and the grassroots venue levy. The producer, real name Nicolaas Douwe Douwma, confirmed the pledge alongside two arena dates: The O2 in London on Friday, March 26, 2027, and Manchester's Co-op Live the following night.

"It's never been more important to support small venues," he said, describing them as an incubator for new talent that has shaped the careers of most musicians he knows, and saying he is lucky enough now to be able to help support the rooms he came up through.

The shows are the largest he has played. They bring his Circular Sound production into arenas for the first time, following a sold-out night at London's Alexandra Palace last year and runs in Los Angeles, Australia and New Zealand. The same production made him the first drum and bass artist to headline Colorado's Red Rocks Amphitheatre.

The levy idea has been gathering weight for a few years. A pound from arena and stadium tickets, routed back down to grassroots level, already operates in several European countries and echoes the model football's Premier League uses. The UK government backed the principle in 2024, and the LIVE Trust levy launched in January 2025 to share the money between artists, managers and promoters. Harry Styles, Coldplay, Sam Fender, Katy Perry, Pulp and Mumford & Sons have all paid into it, and London's Royal Albert Hall became the first venue over 5,000 capacity to commit, which is expected to raise around 300,000 pounds a year.

The numbers behind the campaign are stark. According to figures cited by NME, the grassroots sector subsidised live music by 76.6 million pounds in 2025 while UK live music contributed a record 8 billion pounds to the economy. A Music Venue Trust report found the country losing a music venue every fortnight, with the rate of decline in 2025 the slowest since 2018 but still unsustainable, and more than 1.5 million young people have given up on ambitions to perform live as small rooms disappear.

Save Our Scene, the other beneficiary, was founded during the pandemic in 2020 to support independent musicians and has since worked with Music Venue Trust on the Lifeline Fund, which eases financial pressure on local venues. The pledge is filed under electronic, and the dates sit on the tour guide. We covered the two Circular Sound arena shows when they were announced, and the fund taking applications from grassroots venues, promoters and artists.