Nashville's Encore Luxury Coaches to acquire Nitetrain Coach Company

As tours continue to surge in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, a tour bus shortage has emerged.

This has caused a significant shake-up in the lucrative business of leasing fleets of touring entertainment coach buses.

On Tuesday, two of many companies servicing the entertainment sector merged operations as Nashville's Encore Luxury Coach Leasing will acquire Tim Conner's four-decade-old Whites Creek, Tennessee-based Nitetrain Coach Company.

No financial details of the deal have been disclosed.

The acquisition agreement placed 145 buses under Encore's supervision.

Artists and entertainers Encore support include World Wrestling Entertainment, plus country stars Alabama, Russell Dickerson, Ashley McBryde, Kip Moore, Joe Nichols, Thomas Rhett, Hank Williams Jr., Bailey Zimmerman and popular acts from a myriad of other genres, including Nickelback, Bare Naked Ladies, Lauren Daigle, Ben Harper, Natalie Grant, Cheap Trick, Barry Manilow, Beck, Phish, Billy Strings, Big Time Rush, Blink 182 and Joan Jett.

Under the new partnership, they will benefit from the following:

Encore will now have leasing offices with attached maintenance facilities in Nashville and Phoenix equal to 85,000 square feet with 25 on-site technicians. A North Carolina-based operation will continue to build custom coach bus interiors for the company's clientele.

"The touring industry went through a crazy time during COVID, leaving many artists not knowing what would happen when everything returned. As touring is back to full scale, we see a significant shortage of tour buses to transport these artists to and from their concerts. We have a supply and demand issue," Encore CEO Justin Ward said.

"This expansion can bridge only so much of the gap in the touring industry. However, the supply and demand issue still exists. We can only solve so much of the problem."

Encore's president, Amanda Stophel, brings over two decades of executive professional experience in the tour bus maintenance and home improvement industries to the new partnership.

Both with Lowe's Home Improvement in her work as the director and president of Charlotte-based Service Pros Installation Group, plus for the past two years developing Encore's custom entertainment coaches, she cites her desire to evolve her "innovative business infrastructures" to the Encore-Nitetrain partnership.

"[Nitetrain's] Tim Conner is a statesman in our industry," Ward said to The Tennessean.

"Carrying [Conner's] legacy into the next generation and having him on board to shepherd this transition is important. However, consolidation and scaling operations for ease and speed of significant, more frequent leasing needs will be a part of the touring coach industry moving forward."

Concert tours are potentially more lucrative than ever

According to Pollstar, COVID-19 halted an expected unprecedented surge in the live event industry.

Revenues were expected to surge to over $12 billion in scheduled event income alone, with $30 billion more arriving from "unreported events and ancillary revenues, including sponsorships, ticketing, concessions, merch, transportation, restaurants, hotels and other economic activity tied to the live events."

The year 2022 saw a revival trending back to expectations.

Pollstar-reported 2022 touring revenue for scheduled events reached nearly $6.3 billion — almost 20% greater than industry expectations.

Touring expectations for 2023 are set at roughly $8 billion — Taylor Swift alone could be responsible for $2 billion.

"We're in a relentless industry where anxious artists and fans want live concert experiences more than ever," Ward said.

Ward cites that Prevost, the leading North American manufacturer of entertainment coaches, does not oversaturate the marketplace with new buses yearly. Thus, older-than-usual vehicles are currently servicing the touring industry's resurgence. However, expected capital growth allows for acquisitions like Encore's of Nitetrain to solve those issues.

"We're in the business of providing our units with quality drivers and preventing failures in our fleets," Ward said. "Enhancing our service capabilities by increasing the level of sophistication in our staff is one of the greatest benefits of this [acquisition]."

Increased logistics require enhanced services

Ward made note of the "difficult" logistics of servicing an industry creating stars through digital platforms. Artists quickly evolve from not touring to requiring a fleet of tour buses.

The idea of acts growing from conversion vans to sprinter vehicles to the point of being "bus ready" is antiquated.

For Ward, he's watched acts like Zimmerman and Zach Bryan spend their entire careers as mainstream artists on entertainment coaches.

Given that this trend will continue, Encore is already busily negotiating touring contracts through 2024.

Ward's ready for the challenge.

"Executing the volume of the forthcoming year's touring schedule will be a massive undertaking that will require an unprecedented understanding of logistics — and we can now more than adequately service that need."

This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Nashville's Encore Luxury Coaches to acquire Nitetrain Coach Company