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Starting with our Concerts division, it continued to show strong global demand for Concerts through the third quarter. We drove an 8% increase in attendance to 71 million fans attending over 24,000 shows across 40 countries, driving revenue up 11% and AOI up 29% year-to-date. We have also grown our show count by 17% year-to-date to 24,000 shows at the same time, we have increased the revenue generated by each show through pricing optimization. Across arenas and amphitheaters, our average ticket price is up 14% driven by front of house pricing, which is up 25%. Collectively these increases have grown artist revenue by over 300 million across roughly 6,000 shows.

This summer we also saw growth on-site through our hospitality initiatives at our amphitheaters. Increase in our average revenue per fan by nearly $3 to almost $27. This is an increase of more than $6 per fan over the past three years, as we have driven substantial improvements across our food and beverage, VIP and parking programs.

With the success of our Concerts flywheel, we are promoting more shows for more fans, more effectively pricing and selling tickets and delivering a better fan experience than ever before. As a result, we will spend over $6 billion producing concerts this year, making Live Nation far and away the largest financial partner to musicians. And our high margin sponsorship business, we have continued our double-digit growth this year with revenue up 11% and AOI up 12% year-to-date, as we delivered our best quarterly results ever for sponsorship business.

With a 1,000 sponsors across our on-site and online platform, Live Nation is the global leader in music sponsorship, providing brands for the opportunity to reach our core millennial audience as we again add new brand partners this quarter, including T-Mobile, Sony, Pennzoil, Sterling Wine and Subway.

Onsite continues to be a key growth driver and year-to-date our festival sponsorship business is up 12%, as we continue to find innovative ways to scale and connect brands with nearly 9 million fans attending over 100 festivals worldwide. Other key growth initiatives is deepening and broadening our strategic brand relationships, with now over 70 sponsors investing in our platform across multiple fronts. Collectively the committed spend by this group is up 13% to nearly $350 million for the year, accounting for approximately 75% of our overall sponsorship and advertising revenue, with over 95% of our expected sponsorship revenue for the year now contracted, we are confident we will deliver double-digit AOI growth for the year.

Ticketmaster continues building its position as a global ticketing marketplace leader, with 15% growth year-to-date in global fee bearing GTV driving revenue growth of 13% and AOI growth of 11%. Ticketmaster will deliver almost 500 million tickets worth approximately $31 billion GTV across 28 countries this year, making it the world's largest such marketplace. And the success of our marketplace is stronger than ever, as all three quarters in 2018 have been among the top five quarters ever for recognized GTV.

During the third quarter, we continued our Presence digital ticketing rollout to NFL stadiums, and many Live Nation buildings, bringing the installed base to 177 venues. In the third quarter at these venues, we held over 1,500 events with over 3 million fans using mobile tickets for entry. We proved out the scalable capability of mobile ticket in the quarter with as many as 97% of the fans for some NFL games entering via mobile. For the fourth quarter we expect digital ticketing growth to continue with another 10 million fans across 2,000 events approximately 5 million of whom will enter using mobile tickets. The move to digital ticketing has meant that sports teams, venues and artists have much greater control over the ticket, enabling them to better control distribution and ultimately the chain of custody for the tickets.

Overall, Ticketmaster's results are validating our dual strategy of delivering a great marketplace for fans to buy tickets by providing the greatest enterprise tools to venues, teams and artists, looking to control their tickets and maximize the value of their events. By continuing to do both effectively, I expect us to deliver high single-digit growth in ticketing AOI this year.

As we approach the end of 2018, we are confident that our strong performance will deliver another record year of top line AOI and free cash flow. All of our businesses concerts, sponsorship and ticketing had delivered growth year-to-date, and based on this key operating metrics we expect each to deliver record revenue and AOI for the full year.

As we look forward, we see tremendous opportunity to continue the global consolidation of our concerts and ticketing businesses and further growth in sponsorship and ticketing on the concerts flywheel.

With that I will turn our call over to Joe, to take you through more additional details on the divisional performance.

Joe Berchtold -- President

Thanks, Michael. Looking at our business segments, first, concerts. By making concerts revenue in the third quarter was up 12%, and AOI was up 30%. This was the best quarter in Live Nation Concerts history with 33 million fans attending 7,700 shows delivering fan growth of 3.6 million in this quarter alone, and bringing our fan growth for the year-to-date of 5.4 million.

Overall, our ticket sales for shows this year has accelerated over the past three months, increasing from 4% growth back in July, now, being at 6% growth through October. All parts of this business continues to do well, led by our top global tours including five tours to the week sold over 1 million tickets this year, Beyonce and Justin Timberlake, Pink and Bruno Mars.

And for the quarter, our arena and amphitheater shows were the largest growth driver, each adding approximately 2 million fans in the quarter. At the same time, our show counts in fan base all grew at our festivals and theaters and clubs while we had our second strongest stadium year ever trailing only last year.

Looking at the fourth quarter, we see continued strong performance in our North America Arena and theater and club shows or internationally we are compete, a very strong Q4 of last year, that had unusually heavy touring activity with U2, Coldplay, and Bruno Mars follow.

Turning to our sponsorship and advertising business. Sponsorship and advertising revenue for the third quarter grew by 8% and AOI was up 8% as well. Our growth for the year is in strong across both sponsorship and online advertising businesses, were both growing revenue and AOI in the double-digits year-to-date. And from a geographic perspective, both our North America and international markets have contributed similarly priced sponsorship growth or North America has driven our online advertising growth.

Finally, Ticketmaster. For the quarter Ticketmaster revenue was up 8% and AOI was up 1%. Well, GTV was up 3% for the quarter and 7% year-to-date, driven by fee-bearing in GTV which was up 13% and 15% for the quarter and year-to-date respectively. Primary GTV was up 13% for the quarter and 14% year-to-date and secondary GTV was up 11% for the quarter and is now up 22% year-to-date. Our concerts and particularly Live Nation Concerts, are the largest growth driver of our ticketing business. Ticketmaster remains first and foremost of the world's top ticketing marketplace for artists or themes and venue and sell tickets for their fans, with primary ticketing representing over 90% of our global GTV, and only approximately 2% of our Concerts pickets and 4% of our sports tickets are resold on our secondary platform.

Michael gave you an update on the success we're having with our digital ticketing rollout. At the same time, we're continuing to see an overall shift in ticket sales through our mobile platform. We sold 45% of our tickets in the third quarter on mobile, with sales up 37% year-on-year as we increased mobile visits by 27% and grew our app downloads by 30% to over $50 million. These results, make it clear that the ticket has made the shift to mobile, giving us even greater confidence that digital ticketing will be rapidly adopted.

Finally, our opened distribution strategy continue selling more ticket to clients through our platform at 23% with almost 12 million tickets sold year-to-date. And while margins grew around quarter-to-quarter, we expect full year margins particularly to be in line with last year.

In summary, we're confident that 2018 will be another year of record revenue and AOI results overall and for each of our businesses. On FX Q3 revenue and AOI were negatively impacted by about 1% with the strengthening of the US dollar and for the full year, we expect the impact to be about 1%.

Looking at Q4, we expect another strong concerts on sale for next year, which we project to drive up to $10 million in advertising expense growth, along with increased referrals and Ticketmasters recognition of Live Nation concert tickets.

And I'll now turn the call over to Kathy to go through more on our financial results.

Kathy Willard -- Chief Financial Officer

Thanks, Joe and good afternoon everyone. Our key financial highlights for the third quarter of 2018, our revenue was up 11% to $3.8 billion. AOI increased 16% to $386 million and free cash flow adjusted with $307 million, up 21%, all compared to the third quarter of 2017. As of September 30, our deferred revenue related to future shows was $759 million. Revenue growth was driven by all our segments, with the majority of the growth coming from concerts up 12% from higher attendance and increase show counts primarily in amphitheaters and arena. Our AOI growth of 16% for the third quarter was also driven by the concert segment, which delivered 30% AOI growth.

Operating income was $234 million, an increase of 16% compared to the prior year and our net income for the quarter was $173 million, up 27% over last year both given by the growth in AOI. For the third quarter the impact to earnings per share from the accretion of redeemable non-controlling interest was $21 million, consistent with the same period last year. For the nine months of 2018, revenue was up 11% to $8.2 billion. AOI increased by 17% to $761 million and free cash flow adjusted was $529 million, up 22% compared to the prior year.

Revenue growth for the nine months was driven by solid growth across all our segments. Concerts grew by 11%, again delivering the majority of the revenue growth due to increased amphitheater and arena activity along with the higher onsite spend per fan in our amphitheaters. Sponsorship and advertising also grew by 11% and ticketing revenue was up 13%. AOI through September was up 17% as each segment delivered double-digit growth. Operating income was up 24% to $363 million driven by the increase in AOI that also impacted by slightly higher depreciation and amortization expense.

Net income for the nine months was $208 million, up 13% due to our growth in operating income after higher interest expense from our debt refinancing. For the nine months, the impact to earnings per share from the accretion of redeemable non-controlling interests was $54 million and we currently estimate that the impact for the full year will be approximately $77 million.

Moving to our balance sheet, as of September 30, we had total cash of $1.9 billion, including $734 million in ticketing client cash and $553 million in net concert event related cash, with free cash of $613 million. As you look at our working capital accounts on the balance sheet the growth over December 2017 is driven by the normal seasonality of the business at this time of year and at the higher, given the overall growth of the business since last year.

Net cash provided by operating activities for the nine months was $256 million compared to $418 million in 2017. The main changes to working capital were the receivables increased driven by the higher concert activity in the third quarter and accrued liabilities were down because of the payment of the legal settlement accrued last year. Free cash flow adjusted through September was $529 million, an increase of 22% over last year. Our total capital expenditures were $169 million for the nine months, of which 53% was spent on revenue generating items. We currently estimate the total capital expenditures for 2018 will be approximately $250 million roughly half of which will be spent on revenue generating CapEx. As of September 30, our total net debt was $2.8 billion and our weighted average cost of debt was 4.1%.

For the fourth quarter of 2018, we currently expect that stock-based compensation expense and acquisition expenses will be in line with the third quarter of this year. Thank you for joining us today.

Operator, we will now open the call for questions.

Questions and Answers:

Operator

Thank you. (Operator Instructions) And we will take our first question from Brandon Ross with BTIG. Please go ahead.

Brandon Ross -- BTIG -- Analyst

Hi. Thanks for taking the questions. I have a few. For Michael, you mentioned ticket pricing optimization in the prepared remarks. I guess, the expansion of platinum ticketing and price increases were a big part of the strategy this year. Do you expect this is something that we're going to see a lot more of in 2019. Is there still lot of room there? And what has been the feedback from artists and fans, then I have some follow-up.

Michael Rapino -- President, Chief Executive Officer and Director

Thanks, Brandon. Yeah, we believe that we've kind of had seen when we talked about for a while on tickets continually be probably the most inefficiently priced product in the world. I mean, there is literally no other product in the world that is worth more than it's sold the second later. Generally what you do is you increase your price, but we know we have the balance of the artist, his incredible brand manager, and he has to find that by line of what does Bruce Springsteen charge for the front row versus what the market will bear. So we know that we don't expect the business to be completely efficient marketwise because it will probably be a contradiction to maybe with the artist stands for.

But we do know that $8 billion number as they throw around on the size of the secondary market of the price gap. We do know every year the artist is looking more and more at -- I have to figure out through VIP platinum P1, how to charge more for the front, because I can't continually let this be sold on the secondary market. So we think we're in that first second inning of that game, we think there's a long great path forward where the artist will continually look to increase the pricing.

Now the advantages, we get to decrease the pricing in the back part of the house. Generally our problem in any concert, we never have the back sold but not the front, as you know, the house usually is the front is sold and we are trying to fill the rest of the house. So the lower we can price the back end and the higher we can price the front end are the optimal pricing for both the gross and for sell-through. So this is just a new kind of concept of dynamic pricing and increase in the pricing front. We are in the first or second inning, we think we have lots of pricing opportunity for years to come.

Brandon Ross -- BTIG -- Analyst

Great. And then, I was wondering if you could unpack your outlook for especially ticketing a little bit. How will the timing of on sales this year versus last impact of phasing of AOI at Ticketmaster between Q4 in 2019 and maybe how accounting changes here and abroad, may also impact AOI and ticketing?

Joe Berchtold -- President

Yeah, Brandon, I'll take maybe the first part, this is Joe. Our expectation is the next year is going to be another very good year as I said in some of my comments, we see a strong setup of on sales in Q4, the benefit of which is certainly on the ticketing side with Ticketmaster recognizing a number of those tickets, particularly the non Live Nation side of any tickets that get sold in Q4. Part of the impact is also on the concert side through the accounting, you expense your advertising for an on sale in the period it takes place. So our large on sales that we'll have as we do particularly stadium big arena tours will be recognized in Q4 in our concerts and the concerts part of the business. And I'll let Kathy to speak to what the accounting means for some of the recognition.

Kathy Willard -- Chief Financial Officer

Yeah and it's less about changes next year versus this year on the accounting it's more just the fact that we're seeing expecting more of those tickets to be sold for Live Nation events by Ticketmaster and because of that for the tickets we control, we defer those to next year. So that's what Joe is addressing in his prepared remarks on that.

Brandon Ross -- BTIG -- Analyst

Great. And then just one more. Your acquisition strategy has generally been to use cash to fund your inorganic growth and as rates come up in the environment changes a little bit do you expect to only continue to do cash acquisitions or would you consider starting to use your stock a little more as well.

Kathy Willard -- Chief Financial Officer

So we absolutely consider both and we'll work depending on the size of the acquisition and obviously our cash. We're pretty happy with our debt structure right now. We have room in our leverage ratio. We're pretty comfortable space, so we will look at overall the AOI that will be coming in and certainly consider at least a combination of cash and stock on (inaudible).

Brandon Ross -- BTIG -- Analyst

Thanks.

Operator

And our next question will come from David Karnovsky with JP Morgan. Please go ahead.

David Karnovsky -- JP Morgan -- Analyst

Thank you. With onsite you've had tremendous growth over the past few seasons. What further opportunity do you see at the North America amphitheaters and then just beyond that what's the opportunity to take those best practices from the amphs for the festivals and then maybe to the clubs and theaters as well?

Joe Berchtold -- President

Sure, this is Joe, David. As we said, we're at about $27 per fan right now when we benchmark the sports teams there in the '30s so we think there continues to be good opportunity for continued growth over the next several years by further honing the offer, the VIP offer, all of the other ancillary services that we have so we're very optimistic. We think the organizational change we put in place at the end of last year to get more focus on execution of the amphs helps a lot this year, and we had continue to grow there.

So we think there's quite a bit more to continue to move and absolutely we're taking learnings that we're getting here, we've brought them into the theater and club business particularly in North America already. We're very focused on the VIP offerings there, focused on our beverage service where we have our point of sale, our mix and so on and I think festivals are more individualized given the thematic of the festival but absolutely starting to roll some of that out there too.

David Karnovsky -- JP Morgan -- Analyst

Okay. And then just regarding your commentary for concerts in Q4, I think you mentioned North America would be strong but measured against international tough comp, I mean is there any way you can sort of frame your outlook for concerts in the aggregate for Q4?

Joe Berchtold -- President

Nothing more than we've already given.

David Karnovsky -- JP Morgan -- Analyst

Okay. Thanks.

Operator

Our next question will come from Amy Yong with Macquarie. Please go ahead.

Amy Yong -- Macquarie -- Analyst

Thank you. So two questions. First, I was wondering if you can talk a little bit more about your acquisition pipeline. It looks like you acquired an asset in Brazil this quarter. Are there any other geographic markets that you're focused on either on the venture ticketing side. My second question is, there's been a lot of questions I think from investors on the upcoming FTC Workshop in Ticketing. Can you just talk through some of the details around this, whatever you're going to share either the process with some of the issues that they are pressing on. Thank you.

Michael Rapino -- President, Chief Executive Officer and Director

Thanks, Amy. We continue as we have historically. We think there are lots of great bolt-on acquisitions that are generally accretive as we're buying them. We're in over 40 countries now. So we look at building on where we already have a business. So in those 40 countries, we're always looking for ongoing festivals or established promoters or music venues that can build on our business and grow our core business. So we kind of look at it on a global basis and have a running acquisition list of things we're exploring.

I'd say all the -- there is no one country that's more important than the other. We see growth in all of them. U.S. as you've all seen in the last few years has been growing and we think the U.S. has lots of growth left. We have a lot of markets where we are under-developed still, in cities Miami and Florida, Los Angeles, Denver, Seattle we've lot of markets where we can still grow our business. Canada is a big opportunity, Australia, South America, as you've seen us move over the last few years. So what we love about this business is actually the global opportunity, bolt-on strategy with really no regulations on a local basis.

So, it allows us to move into these countries like Argentina and Brazil and Milan and Cape Town and if there is a great international promoter or festival we can instantly buy that and build that into our global platform and power accretively instantly. So we have a long list of businesses we look pit across the globe. We think that we will keep -- you will keep hearing about an ongoing story of the bolt-ons that keep building our business.

Joe will fill you on the TM, yes.

Joe Berchtold -- President

Yeah. So Amy, on the FCC Workshop just to be clear, the SEC in our conversations with them have told us this workshop as been long in the works well predates any of that press cycles that existed around various assertions, that is we've answered with the Senate and elsewhere where we're largely misleading in a best, but the FCC Workshop to our understanding is going to focus on a wide variety of practices in ticketing. It's going to focus on speculative ticket sales which is basically ticket sales that where the ticket doesn't actually exist.

It's going to focus on fraudulent advertising and the use of misleading websites. It's going to focus on the use of box, all three of which to be clear Ticketmaster doesn't participate in. We're the only secondary major secondary site that doesn't do selling, doesn't -- we certainly don't use fraudulent advertising, and our policy is not to allow bot. It is first to try stop bots and secondly, do not let people who use bots, poster, tickets. So we think there's going be a whole host of topics and we're going to fully participate. We applied the fact that the workshops is taking place and we think that there'll be a lot more transparency and accurate information coming out of it.

Amy Yong -- Macquarie -- Analyst

Great. Thank you.

Operator

We'll take our next question from Ryan Sundby with William Blair. Please go ahead.

Ryan Sundby -- William Blair -- Analyst

Yeah. Hi. Thanks for taking my question. Just wanted to ask on presence. So Q4 10 million fans expected to enter 5 million on mobile, is there -- what's the -- if the barrier to getting that 5 million up to a higher number at some point?

Michael Rapino -- President, Chief Executive Officer and Director

Is the question barrier.

Joe Berchtold -- President

Well it's not -- I mean, it's Joe, it's not really the reason why it's 5 million versus 10 million is the decision by teams whether or not paper tickets for season tickets holders are also issued in addition to the use of the mobile tickets. There are some teams that have already switched to mobile only, with the exception of people that have indicated an issue that's where we talked about up to 97% of the people entering the game on a mobile ticket. So, it's our expectation that these teams get more comfortable with the technology, they see it working, they see other teams that are the leaders able to get 97% plus and without any issues. We'll have more and more teams adopting use of our mobile.

Ryan Sundby -- William Blair -- Analyst

Got it. Okay. Yeah, that makes sense. And then I guess following up on bringing this question on pricing. Are you seeing kind of pricing across the board with all artists so everyone taking a little bit more pricing equally or are there couple artists that are kind of pricing much closer to market value and then you've got to kind of a pool of artists that you need go back and address in the future?

Michael Rapino -- President, Chief Executive Officer and Director

No, it's across the Board. There would be -- generally every artist is probably under pricing his product. Might just be the one front row or it might be the first 17 rows, depending on how big you are if you are in an arena or stadium, but generally artists are under priced their product and all have opportunity to increase their prices.

Ryan Sundby -- William Blair -- Analyst

Okay, great. And then I guess back to the digital ticketing, as you -- as your data kind of improves, who's coming to shows and their behavior there, when you think about sponsorship and advertising the 70 partners that drives 75% of the revenue, how has that changed. Do you think there you have room for more partners that drive a big chunk like that or is it those 70 or more?

Joe Berchtold -- President

I think it's both. I think those 70 absolutely very familiar commitment to music into our business reaching these millennial fans and when they can get an even tighter connection they will absolutely be spending more, because they will be getting the results from their sponsorship. And there continues to be a number of categories and markets where we have sponsorship opportunities, and I think this just makes our product all the more attractive in general for all of those kinds of sponsors.

Michael Rapino -- President, Chief Executive Officer and Director

And I'm just going to jump on it. The core of the digital ticket unlocks multiple revenue avenues for us as well as just a better way to do business. Right now we have -- as we've talked about, we have 16,000 barcodes locked in the arena. I don't know who those barcodes generally are if they changed hands. In the future, we're going to have 16 digital tickets walk in that building that are scanned. So we're going about with those 16,000 people, we're going to have one-on-one dialog with them. So, yes, our data increases tremendously on knowing all about the customers that go to our shows. So that's obviously very valuable for sponsors, but two, we also get to talk to the fans at the show. It really opens up the -- how do you correspond with these 16,000 people who are locked in a concert.

The upsell of them when they're walking in, you know which seats they are in are they getting a beer or they are buying a T-shirt. So like you really bring to life of those 90 million customers that go to a Live Nation show we talk about. But, generally we haven't been able to actually sell once they walk in the door. We're good at getting them to the door. We are good talking to them weeks before the show. We haven't had any technology to date, let's just talk to them while they are at the most important place the show, the festival, the pre-show, the aftershow. So we get to talk to them while they're at the show provides incredible revenue opportunities. Also just at a country show we can talk to you about, if you want to go next Friday, we have tickets available for another show. So, the dialog that we get to create with this engaged customer base when a digital ticket turns the customer -- turns the barcode into a customer, both before the show and at the show provides incredible opportunities for our concert division and our sponsorship division.

Ryan Sundby -- William Blair -- Analyst

Great. Thank you so much.

Operator

Our next question will come from David Joyce with Evercore ISI. Please go ahead.

David Joyce -- Evercore ISI -- Analyst

Thank you. Could you please talk about the Ticketmaster margins. I know you've already guided to a similar margins to last year and also in the past you've talked about obviously margins that can -- managing to cash flow growth instead of the margins themselves. But could you please discuss what the impacts are on the margins from the mix of international ticketing businesses which are typically lower and from the investment level on continually redeveloping Ticketmaster. Just help us think about what the impacts are there and why the impact of higher volumes are not resulting in higher margins. Thank you.

Joe Berchtold -- President

Yeah, I mean David just again, to make sure we frame this year-to-date, our revenues up 13% and our AOI is up 11%, and I indicated that for the full year, our margins are expected to be flat. So that's the overall context of a very stable business. And yes, we continue to make substantial investments in areas like digital ticketing, which is as Michael just went through for a lot of reasons, massive change in the ticketing business that will have a dramatic benefit on concert side of the business, on our sponsorship side of the business. So it flows through elsewhere. So part of it is divisional accounting, may track costs in one area and benefits in another on some levels.

But it's also -- yes, our investments on ticketing throughout the world. International ticketing continues to grow well, which as we've talked about is generally a lower margin. We're continuing to focus and invest in our theaters and clubs. Do-it-yourself business where we have 25,000 shows, 25 million fans a year which we think is very important to continue to develop high quality tools for the artists. Those tend to be lower margin tickets due to their general simplicity relative to what exists at the arena amphitheater or stadium level. So we'll continue to grow the business across all fronts and I think continue to deliver strong AOI growth against them.

David Joyce -- Evercore ISI -- Analyst

All right. Thank you.

Operator

We'll take our next question from Doug Arthur with Huber Research. Please go ahead.

Douglas Arthur -- Huber Research -- Analyst

Yeah, thanks. Just continuing on the margin theme, I mean on the flip side really impressive margin improvement in the huge concert segment, and I know you've talked about the pricing in the house and the revenue per attendee going up, scheduling improvements, but what's sort of driving that overall and how much more progress can you make on margins in the concert segment?

Joe Berchtold -- President

Yeah, Doug this is Joe. I think you gave the two big drivers, which is as we continue to grow the high-margin food and beverage ancillaries per fan that flows through very well and then, secondly pricing inherently flows through very well also. So those are the two biggest drivers. I don't -- for all the reasons that we've talked about before not being margin obsessed. I don't think we're focused on what exactly can that be, because we will continue to grow our business in stadiums and arenas and other buildings that maybe more traditional margins, as opposed to our buildings, which will be higher margins. We'll have different mix year-to-year. We thought this year is a heavy -- heavier amphitheater mix, with also good arena growth. So those fluctuations and the fact that we're overall just focused and obsessed on growing the business and growing profitably, means that we're not going to be as deterministic about that margin number.

Douglas Arthur -- Huber Research -- Analyst

Well, you had cited earlier in the year that the big stadium show mix would be not as great in this year's third quarter. I think you cited in this release, specifically internationally. Does that help your margins when that's true?

Joe Berchtold -- President

Well on relative basis your amphitheaters are going -- because of your average per fan revenue we get from the onsite is going to be highest margin customer if you will. So, in a year where you've got relatively more amphitheaters, then yes that's going to help your margin.

Douglas Arthur -- Huber Research -- Analyst

Right. Okay, great. Thank you very much.

Michael Rapino -- President, Chief Executive Officer and Director

But Doug we've always talked, we're growing our business. It's more important on our scale flywheel to grow and for me, just to select amphitheater shows that our higher margin and at the expensive stadiums or other shows, right. So we know that if we get 98 million -- 90 million customers in our flywheel, on a positive basis that we can sell them more food, we can sell more sponsors, we can sell them more ticketing services all the other higher margin businesses than the low margin flywheel. So our first goal is continue to grow the global market share of our -- of the life business, which we still have great opportunities in, with that then we'll also be able to grow across our businesses that we scale from that flywheel.

Douglas Arthur -- Huber Research -- Analyst

Got it. Thank you.

Operator

And there are no further telephone questions at this time. This does conclude today's conference. Thank you for your participation, you may now disconnect.

Duration: 39 minutes

Call participants:

Michael Rapino -- President, Chief Executive Officer and Director

Joe Berchtold -- President

Kathy Willard -- Chief Financial Officer

Brandon Ross -- BTIG -- Analyst

David Karnovsky -- JP Morgan -- Analyst

Amy Yong -- Macquarie -- Analyst

Ryan Sundby -- William Blair -- Analyst

David Joyce -- Evercore ISI -- Analyst

Douglas Arthur -- Huber Research -- Analyst

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