Joe Berchtold
President and Chief Financial Officer at Live Nation Entertainment
Thanks, Michael, and good afternoon, everyone. Building on 2022, we started out this year with a record Q1 our highest first quarter revenue, AOI, fan count and ticket sales. All of our markets are fully open selling tickets, hosting tours, and connecting brands with fans. Our reported revenue of $3.1 billion for the quarter was $1.3 billion, better than 1Q22, an increase of 73%. On a constant currency basis, our revenue was $3.2 billion for the quarter. So there was roughly a 2% unfavorable impact due to the slight strengthening of the US dollar, primarily against the Canadian and Australian dollars. Given the limited FX impact on our numbers, the rest of my comments will just be a reported currency.
Our reported AOI of $320 million for the quarter was $111 million better than 2022, up 53%. With an improvement of $65 million in ticketing, $50 million in concerts and $26 million in sponsorship. Over half of our AOI growth came from our Asia Pacific and Latin American markets. We are expanding our global touring activity and diversifying our historical seasonality. We converted roughly 59% of this AOI to adjusted free cash flow of $190 million, which is significantly higher than our 43% conversion in 1Q22. And our deferred revenue, a key leading indicator of growth ended this quarter at $4.4 billion, up 28% from this point last year.
Let me give a bit more color on each division. First in concerts. we had the highest concert attendance ever for Q1 with 19.5 million fans attending our shows of 79% compared to 2022 when we had approximately 11 million fans. Show count was 9,600 events, up 43% compared to 2022 1959 1959 2022 with more fans per show due to a heavier mix of stadium and arena events and stronger than historical average attendance levels. As a result, our concerts revenue for the year grew by 89% to $2.3 billion, while we delivered $1 million in AOI, a $50 million improvement over 1Q22. This is the beginning of what we see is a very solid year for our concert segment including margin expansion relative to last year.
Looking a bit deeper at our fan metrics, we had strong growth across the board, stadium attendance more than quadrupled to 3.3 million fans this quarter, up from 800,000 fans in 2022. This growth primarily came from our Asia Pacific and Latin American markets. Arena attendance was 6.7 million fans for the quarter, up 3 million or almost 80% from 2022 largely as a result of growth in Europe and Australia touring. Theater and fan club count was up 45% and while it's not a large quarter for festivals. We did see festival fan count grow by 50% from our Mexico and Australia and New Zealand expansion.
Overall, our international markets drove fan count growth accounting for over 90% of our increase versus 2022. This was due in part to the closure is still in effect in 1Q22. That said, we expect to continued strength across all global markets through 2023, along with some seasonal shift toward Q1 activity. Last year, we discussed the various cost headwinds at our operated venues and festivals. Thus far this year, cost pressures are declining and our operational cost per fan is down across our indoor buildings and we are forecasting the cost increases will remain below general inflation levels for our festivals in amphitheaters. As a result of these improved conditions, we expect overall profitability per fan will again increase this year as cost increases are more than mitigated by increasing average revenue per fan pricing and onsite sponsorship.
Next in ticketing, where our numbers reflect growing fan demand for live experiences. In 1Q23, we sold 72.6 million fee-bearing tickets of 21 million tickets or 41% compared to 2022. Nearly 2/3 of the growth was driven by concert tickets as North American concert ticket sales increased by 35%, while international concert ticket sales increased even more by 65%. With this increased ticket volume GTV for the quarter was $7.7 billion, up 60% compared to 2022.
At peak sales times during the quarter, Ticketmaster has sold 15,000 tickets per minute in North America with more than 20 million fee-bearing tickets sold each month globally and in Q1 over 99.9% of all TM transactions were processed without any issues. While secondary ticketing volume grew to similar rate, ours continues to be largely a primary ticketing business with secondary ticketing accounting for only a mid-teens percent of our overall GTV. With these growing ticket sales, revenue for the quarter was $678 million and AOI was $271 million, delivering margin of 40%. It's hard to compare these margins to Q1 of last year given the geographic mix shift and increased cost of ramping our staff back up over the course of last year, but these margins are ahead of our full year 2022 numbers and we expect margins for the full year to continue being in the high 30s.
On the pricing front, average ticket prices on primary tickets rose by 16% compared to Q1 of 2022, driven by fan demand for the best seats, particularly at concerts. Average secondary ticket prices remain close to double that of a primary ticket, continuing to show the extent to which concerts and other live events remain price below market value. We also saw revenue from non-service fees grow double digits as we further build ancillary revenue streams, including insurance, upgrades and other up sells. Lastly, so far this year we have signed clients, accounting for nearly 8 million net new tickets up 15% compared to this point last year, positioning us for ongoing growth.
Finally, in our sponsorship business topline revenue improved by $54 million or 47% to a $170 million in Q1. Our AOI for this high margin business was $96 million, up 37%. Sponsorships growth during the quarter was driven by the reopening of international markets that were closed in Q1 of last year. The increase in high profile artist on sales that attract premium marketing partners and the expansion of our venue network. We had double digit growth in both onsite and online sponsorship, with onsite sponsorship representing most of our AOI growth year-over-year. From a geographic perspective, our international markets delivered 54% growth in the quarter, while North America had 26% growth. Contributing to our sustained growth since last year has been our strategic sponsors that generate over $1 million of revenue in the year. Relative to Q1 of last year, our number of strategic sponsors grew by 15%, while the revenue from those partners rose by over 20%. These marketing partnerships now account for 85% of our total sponsorship revenues. Sponsorship margins were slightly lower than average during the quarter as we had higher variable expenses due to artist activation costs for Avis talent presales, with tickets sold for these key sponsored programs four times that of last year. This timing plays out, we anticipate there for the full year variable expenses and margins will be in-line with 2022.
A few other points on 2023, we continue to project the Capex will be approximately $450 million this year with 2/3 on revenue generating projects including new venue builds and renewals as well as other organic investments to support growth. The remaining 1/3 is on maintenance Capex as we catch up on deferred 2020 and 2021 maintenance. We ended the quarter with $2.4 billion of available liquidity between free cash and untapped revolver capacity, giving us ample flexibility to continue investing in growth. We're comfortable with our leverage particularly given the AOI growth ahead with approximately 87% of our debt at a fixed rate with an average cost of debt of roughly 4.7%. In addition, the majority of our debt is long dated and nothing is maturing within the next 18 months. The only notable change to our below the line guidance from Q1 is on accretion due largely to assesses impressive growth above previous projections. We estimate that accretion will be approximately 40% higher in 2022 and should be factored into your EPS estimates. At this point, we don't expect any material FX impact on revenue or AOI for the year.
With that, let me open the call for questions. Operator?
