POWER 50 2025: Jeff Drake & Ryan Sabet (Kicks Entertainment)

BACKGROUND CHECK:

With decades of shared experience in the music industry, Jeff Drake and Ryan Sabet are best known as the Founders and Co-CEOs of Kicks Entertainment, the creators of Spilt Milk Festival, Strummingbird Festival, and Head of Festivals for Live Nation Australia.

While Drake has been instrumental in the success of Ministry Of Sound Australia, having spent a decade with the company, and overseen more than 20 Platinum and Gold records in his roles as Head Of A&R and Director of Recordings, Sabet's experience in the world of nightclubs and event management have seen the pair pool their collective talents into ensuring that live events and music festivals are within safe hands.

THE YEAR IN AUSTRALIAN MUSIC:

Together, Drake and Sabet have managed to ensure the 2025 Australian festival scene is one to write home about. While Spilt Milk has become Australia’s largest and fastest-selling music festival, 2025 saw 195,000 ticket sales across four dates, thanks to a line-up boasting Kendrick Lamar, Doechii, and more. That success also followed the inaugural edition of Strummingbird, a brand-new modern country festival whose Jelly Roll and Shaboozey-featuring line-up sold more than 70,000 tickets to become one of Australia’s largest touring country music festivals.

Elsewhere, the pair’s overtaking of the Harvest Rock Festival has bolstered the South Australian festival scene, with its latest event setting record-breaking attendance and sales figures. 

Add in the fact that their oversight of festivals has also created approximately 300 individual performing slots for Aussie acts, and it’s easy to categorise Drake and Sabet as a pair who not only believe in local talent, but are dedicated to ensuring the festival scene remains as strong as ever.

THE MUSIC SPEAKS:

It wasn’t that long ago that the death of festivals was being forecast, but it turns out rumours of their demise were greatly exaggerated. It took Australia a little while after COVID to reconnect with music, and it turns out that in the off-season, tastes and industrial realities changed just enough for the scene to get the speed wobbles. Acquired in 2022 by Live Nation’s Secret Sounds, Kicks has re-stamped the multinational’s authority in the festival scene.

Drake and Sabet have led from the front, proving with Spilt Milk that a great line-up can sell significant amounts of tickets. Their understanding of the power of genre niche learned from their experience in electronic and hip-hop were transported to the “other” zeitgeist genre of country as they successfully launched Strummingbird Festival. The duo have also shown a strong commitment to local acts, albeit down the bill in what has been a tough year for Australian hits.