Joe Berchtold
President And Chief Financial Officer at Live Nation Entertainment
Thanks, Michael, and good afternoon, everyone. As we've done over the past year, we've added some tables at the back of our earnings release that reconcile in more detail some of the numbers I will refer to today. In the second quarter, our AOI was positive for the first time since the start of the pandemic as the U.S., by far our largest market, accelerated its reopening, also driving our revenue to the highest level since the first quarter of last year. As a result, our contribution margin ramped up faster than expected, particularly in ticketing. Even with the increased activity, our monthly gross burn for the first half of the year was lower than the monthly burn during the last three quarters of 2020 due to our structural cost savings and continued cost discipline.
As a result, we remain confident that actions taken to reduce cash burn and increase liquidity will provide us with the runway we need as shows return. And as we move toward reopening in more markets, we continue to balance the strong cost and cash management with making the necessary investments to grow the business. While we expect to generate positive AOI overall and for each segment for the second half of the year, we will also reduce costs this year by over $800 million and reduce cash spend by $1.5 billion relative to pre-pandemic plans. Looking at our Q2 results. Revenue for the quarter was $576 million compared to $74 million in the second quarter of 2020 for growth of over $0.5 billion. All three of our business segments more than doubled their revenues from last year.
Our AOI for the quarter was $10 million compared to a loss of $432 million for the second quarter of 2020. Our Q2 2021 AOI consisted of $351 million of contribution margin, which included $364 million from operations, along with various onetime items, including gains from insurance recoveries and government support and losses from ticketing service fee refunds paid out. This was then offset by $341 million in operational fixed costs. Getting into our business segments a bit deeper, starting with Ticketing, which was the primary driver of our results this quarter. Contribution margin for the quarter was $204 million or nearly 60% of our total contribution margin, delivering $99 million in AOI. Ticketing revenue for the quarter was $244 million or just over 40% of our total revenue for the quarter. Each month of the quarter, Ticketmaster had progressively stronger results, culminating with June being Ticketmaster North America's fourth best month ever for transacted ticket volume.
In general, North America drove much of this resurgence, accounting for over 75% of total transacted tickets in the quarter as compared to approximately 2/3 of transacted tickets for 2019. Concert tickets drove much of this activity, and as a result, the top 10 artists sold over $513 million in GTV during the second quarter this year compared to $329 million in the second quarter of 2019. Secondary ticketing has similarly rebounded. Our June GTV was only eight percent below June of 2019. That trend has continued into the third quarter, with July 12 marking the highest resale GTV day in our history, driven by the U.S. Open along with strong NBA, NFL and concert resale volumes. These results in ticketing are a leading indicator to our concerts business.
For the second quarter, our concerts AOI loss of $84 million was an improvement of $127 million relative to Q2 last year, and our revenue was up $145 million relative to Q2 last year as we promoted nearly 1,700 shows for 1.3 million fans during the quarter. More importantly, these ticket sales drove our event-related deferred revenue up to $2.1 billion, representing a pipeline of future activity even higher than the $1.6 billion we had at the end of the second quarter in 2019. In part, this event-related deferred revenue is associated with over 25 million tickets we have sold for our concerts in the second half of this year, along with also being part of the 14 million tickets that we have already sold for concerts in 2022, which reflects strong double-digit growth in our 2022 pipeline for show count and fans relative to 2019. Sponsorship and advertising then naturally flow from our ticketing and concert platforms.
Our sponsorship and advertising AOI for the quarter was $13 million and revenue was $45 million, with the bulk of our activity tied to our ticketing platform and concert presales. We continue to find brands that are committed to maintaining or increasing their spend with Live Nation to reach our music fans and other live event audiences. And during the quarter, we added several long-term strategic partners, including Allegiant Air, Adobe and cinch in the airline, technology and auto sectors, respectively. And more broadly, we expect our sponsorship and advertising full-scale activity to return somewhere between ticketing and concerts timing. Most importantly, as we look out at our 2022 pipeline, confirmed activity is pacing well ahead of where we were in 2019 at this point. And with many multiyear contracts on the books, we are lining up to be growing this business in 2022 and beyond.
Looking at free cash and liquidity. As of June 30, we had total cash of $4 billion, including $1.1 billion in ticketing client cash and $1.8 billion in net concert event-related cash, leaving free cash of $1.1 billion. This was flat relative to our first quarter reported number. Our free cash, along with $971 million of available debt capacity, gives us $2.1 billion in readily available liquidity, up from $1.6 billion at the end of 2020 and steady with our Q1 ending liquidity. Benefiting our free cash position in the second quarter was $161 million in favorable timing, largely the result of classification of our event-related deferred revenue between short term and long term. Our total free cash usage in the quarter was $163 million or $54 million per month, which included $115 million per month of operational burn, up from $100 million per month in the first quarter as furloughed employees returned to prepare for our reopening and we reinstated full pay for most employees, plus another $58 million per month of nonoperational cash costs, including investment in capital expenditures, acquisitions and artists and ticket client advances, to give us $173 million average per month in gross burn.
And in Q2, we had $119 million average per month cash contribution margin, double our Q1 average. Turning to other balance sheet items. More on deferred revenue. At the end of the second quarter, event-related deferred revenue for shows that will play in the next 12 months was $2.1 billion, up from $1.5 billion at the end of the first quarter. Ticket sales in the second quarter were nearly $900 million, while refunds totaled $100 million, and a shift to deferred revenue from short term to long term for shows that were rescheduled into the back half of 2022 totaled $150 million. This long-term deferred revenue will then largely shift back to short term during Q3 and Q4, reversing the timing benefit in free cash this quarter. Our total capital expenditures were $52 million for the first six months, with $38 million spent on revenue-generating items.
The markets have reopened faster than expected. We will similarly be accelerating some of our investments to take advantage of additional opportunities this year and into 2022. As a result, we now expect total capital expenditures for 2021 to be approximately $170 million, with over 60% of the spend going into revenue-generating capex projects. Our total debt as of June 30 was $5.3 billion. And our weighted average cost of debt was 4.4%, with about 90% of that debt at a fixed rate. Finally, looking forward, as Michael said, we continue to expect concerts to scale further in the second half of this year in key markets, notably outdoor and led by the U.S. and U.K. With this activity, we will continue to ramp up our operations, enabling Ticketmaster to run its on-sales, the concerts division to book and market 2022 tours and sponsorship staff to support delivery for brands on site and online. Given the COVID issues in our key markets appear to be short term at this point, we continue to expect 2022 activity and results to exceed 2019 levels, with continued growth opportunities from there.
With that, let me open the call for questions. Operator?