The company that runs the downtown Lynchburg amphitheater is out of compliance with its contract and owes the city more than $100,000 as of September, according to documents obtained by Cardinal News. With a month left in its inaugural season, the company says it’s working on a plan to make the payments.
The city owns the amphitheater in Riverfront Park on Jefferson Street. Mason Lane Entertainment is contracted to operate the venue, which opened in late April.
Mason Lane hasn’t paid a number of invoices for city services as well as invoices for the city’s share of amphitheater revenue, according to a letter sent from the city attorney’s office to the management company on Sept. 14. It was released to Cardinal News under the Freedom of Information Act. Those invoices total about $106,000, according to the letter.
The value of unpaid invoices changes frequently as penalties and interest for past-due payments are factored in, city staff said. Past-due invoices are subject to a 10% penalty accruing every 30 days, according to a letter sent to Mason Lane Entertainment from the city’s procurement office in August and also released to Cardinal News under the Freedom of Information Act.
Mason Lane has paid the city about $10,400 as of Oct. 5, city staff said. Those payments have been for city services such as security needed for events and not for other contractual requirements such as a venue fee. Some invoices remain unpaid for city services.
Ty McBride, president of Mason Lane, said in an emailed statement that the company is “working on a plan with the city now” to make the payments and that unpaid invoices were “just a miscommunication” between Mason Lane and the city. His team is looking forward to October’s lineup of shows, including two concerts from national touring artists, he said.
“We understand there are naysayers and supporters of the venue,” he said. “Did we make some mistakes this year, sure. It’s our first year, and there will always be growing pains and learning lessons. We are super appreciative of the fans who’ve come out and enjoyed the venue.”
In a Sept. 23 news release, the city said “launching a new entertainment venue is challenging under the best circumstances,” and it plans to continue to manage a business relationship with Mason Lane.
“Establishing a venue in the market, building an audience, developing relationships with promoters and performers and determining what works best for the community all take time. We anticipated a learning curve and have worked with Mason Lane throughout the inaugural season to address issues and improve operations,” the city statement said.
Next steps will be decided after the season concludes, as Mason Lane still has a month of planned amphitheater events that will affect its overall contract performance, city staff clarified in a follow-up interview. In its first six months of operation, the amphitheater has hosted four national touring artists and eight free events, according to its Instagram account.
“The city remains committed to the long-term success of the Riverfront Amphitheater as an important community asset,” the September news release from the city said. “We also have a responsibility to protect the interests of Lynchburg taxpayers and ensure the city receives everything it is owed under its agreement with Mason Lane Entertainment.”
The current fiscal year city budget includes an estimated $345,000 in revenue from the amphitheater. The budget is a plan in which every revenue line is likely to overperform or underperform in some way, city staff said, and the amphitheater’s revenue line will not make or break the city’s more than $250 million general fund budget or ability to deliver expected city services.
Questions regarding the amphitheater have played out in the public eye after Tim Anderson, an attorney and former Republican state delegate from Virginia Beach, posted the amphitheater’s outstanding invoices on Facebook in September. Some Lynchburg City Council members have publicly voiced their concerns, including Marty Misjuns, who called the situation a “rip-off on the Lynchburg Taxpayers” in a Facebook post and later posted a list of concerns about the $345,000 budget line and Mason Lane’s revenue-sharing responsibilities.
Geoffrey Kershner, a local arts leader, said performance venues in small towns face challenges that can be overcome with time and local government and community support.
“The question is, what lessons are we learning from this season? We could learn the wrong lesson: that Lynchburg can’t have that amphitheater operate in a way that works. Or we can take a deeper look at what our part is in helping provide cultural amenities that improve the quality of life for our community,” he said.
What does the contract say?
Mason Lane Entertainment was founded in 2021 in Charlotte, led by McBride. The company got started to “support great causes through unforgettable concerts,” with events such as an annual Carmel Country Club ’47 ChariTee Concert in Charlotte that raises money for the Carmel Employee Assistance Fund and the Folds of Honor Foundation. The company also manages the annual Carolina BBQ Festival in Charlotte.
The city of Lynchburg received bids from three companies that wanted to operate the amphitheater, and a selection committee chose Mason Lane after conducting interviews and checking references.
The city invested $8 million to build the amphitheater. It includes the surrounding Riverfront Park facilities and has a capacity of 5,000 visitors, according to the amphitheater’s management contract.
The city, at its own expense, provides utilities, including water, sewer and electric services, and day-to-day cleaning and repair of the amphitheater, according to the contract. Those expenses are looped into other costs of running Riverfront Park, which has to be maintained year-round regardless of when concerts occur, city staff said.
Mason Lane manages and pays for all other aspects of the venue, including booking events and selling tickets, according to the contract. All revenue generated at the amphitheater goes to Mason Lane, and the company then pays the city its share.
According to the contract, the city’s share includes a $15,000 venue fee for every ticketed event and 25% of profits from sponsorship revenue and beverage sales. Mason Lane is required to pay the city within 30 days of each event, the contract states.
Revenue shares are calculated based on event reports that Mason Lane must submit to the city, according to the contract. According to the letter from the city’s procurement office, as of Aug. 7, the city had not received proper reports or revenue share payments from 10 events held between April and July — including from the only two national touring artist shows held at that point, by Everclear and Mitchell Tenpenny.
Mason Lane is also expected to pay the city for any municipal services needed to run events, such as security and janitorial services. Reimbursements for such services are also due to the city within 30 days, the contract states, and are billed via invoices.
“City staff have been actively managing the agreement throughout the season,” according to the September city news release. “When Mason Lane has fallen out of compliance, staff have communicated outstanding requirements, issued invoices, established deadlines for bringing the company into alignment and, when issues remained unresolved, formally notified Mason Lane of its noncompliance.”
The amphitheater also brings the city revenue from numerous taxes on tickets, food and beverage sales, and lodging. Those numbers were not immediately available.
How do arts venues work in a city like Lynchburg?
The business behind the scenes of performance venues can be complicated to understand from the audience, Kershner said. He trains students to run arts organizations as the director of Randolph College’s graduate program for arts leadership, and he guides communities statewide in building and growing such organizations as he manages the Small Town and Rural Arts Network. Formerly, he spent a decade as the CEO of Lynchburg’s Academy Center of the Arts.
Shows that will draw high-capacity crowds are expensive, he said. An artist that will pull a 3,000-person audience will cost anywhere between $35,000 and $150,000 to hire for a concert, he said. It takes tens of thousands more to put on the show, including all the general overhead that makes a venue performance-ready.
A show with a strong turnout can make a profit, he said. But not every concert will sell out.
Kershner said that, at new venues in small towns, artists are often guaranteed their payment as a flat fee, regardless of how many tickets sell — and they may also get a cut of sales once the show breaks even. That means that on a night of bad ticket sales, the venue carries the risk, and the artist still gets paid in full. It’s a deal structure that can hit small cities hard, simply because they have fewer people to sell tickets to, he said.
“So it’s not all a loss, but inherently there will be losses,” Kershner said of running performance venues in small cities. “You bake all of that into the entire operating budget annually, and you’re raising dollars anticipating that you are going to lose money on some shows.”
Outdoor venues face other unique challenges, including weather, which can add an extra element of unpredictability with sales. And outdoor layouts often make it difficult to create tiered ticket prices, he said. In an indoor theater or large covered stadium, venue operators can charge a premium for the seats with the best views. The more revenue is collected in those sections, the more operators can reduce the price of tickets in other sections — which makes tickets more accessible to a broader audience and ultimately drives sales up, he said.
“That is really hard to do in an open park,” he said.
Different operators have different strategies to “weather the ups and downs” of running performance venues, he said. Commercial operators often rely on corporate sponsorships and alcohol sales, he said.
Other venues, such as the Academy, operate as nonprofits. Its leaders recognized that “these shows in a venue our size in a market like ours is not going to be profitable,” Kershner said, and designed the business model to match. Charitable donations and underwriting can offset losses, and the model works long-term because of community members who invest in providing shared cultural experiences for the city, he said.
Often, local government support is needed to secure long-term sustainability for small arts venues, Kershner said. He works with many localities that allocate money in their annual budgets to subsidize cultural amenities so they can navigate the financial risks of the industry.
“We have choices to make as a community,” he said. “If we want to have amenities … then maybe we want to think about what it would be like to have a very small percentage of the city budget going into having a successful outdoor concert.”
Localities gain a return on their investment, Kershner said, from the taxes generated by guest spending, higher economic activity at nearby restaurants and hotels and entertainment experiences that encourage people to live and work in the locality, he said.
Where do things go from here?
In the summers of 2017 and 2018, long before the city broke ground on the amphitheater, the Academy hosted concerts on the lawn of Riverfront Park, Kershner said. At the time, the organization was renovating its Main Street theater, which had been closed for the 60 years prior. Organization leaders used the park as an alternative venue to build community engagement before the theater’s opening day.
Academy staff decided to stop hosting concerts at the park because “we would have gone under as an organization” otherwise, he said, and would have needed city support to make the concerts work season after season. His team had a hard time breaking even when rain insurance and artist fees added up faster than ticket sales that had to be kept at low prices to sell at all. They decided to focus on booking shows at the newly restored theater and, over time, were able to strike better deals with artists as they gained experience and trust.
Having leverage in negotiations with artists and their agents takes time, Kershner said.
“I will say that at the Academy, in my 10 years there, it was maybe in the last three years that the agencies understood who we were, what we were and how we did what we did. It took, like, seven years to get there,” he said. “When you’re starting off at the bottom of a ladder like that, you have to earn a reputation, you have to build relationships — both on the ticket buying side as well as the booking side.”
City staff is “aware of public concerns surrounding canceled events, operational decisions and the company’s financial performance,” according to the September news release about Mason Lane. Since the amphitheater opened in April, some residents have been frustrated with cancelled shows and slow refunds, including for the ZZ Top and Dwight Yoakam concert that was called off in May due to severe weather forecasts.
The contract states that “delays in the performance of any obligation” can be excused if they’re due to bad weather or other factors not in Mason Lane’s control.
The contract with Mason Lane took effect in November 2025. It is active until November 2030, and it will be renewed for an additional five-year period through 2035 unless a notice of nonrenewal is provided. The contract can be terminated at any time with proper notice, the document states, which may result in termination costs depending on the nature of the situation.
“Ultimately, our goal is a successful amphitheater that serves the community while ensuring the city and its taxpayers receive everything required under the contract,” the city’s September news release said.
Upcoming October events include a concert by country singer Chase Matthew on Friday, a soul music festival with local and regional artists on Oct. 17 and a Clint Black and Midland show on Oct. 22.
