Kiss Sells Catalog, Name, Logo and Makeup Rights for $300 Million
Kiss has sold their name, logo, image and likeness rights and their share of the band's music catalog and publishing to Pophouse Entertainment group, the company behind ABBA's popular live avatar show.
According to Fortune, the band is being paid over $300 million by the Swedish company, who plan to use the same technology to launch a Kiss avatar show in America.
"Kiss the touring band is over," bassist Gene Simmons said of the deal. "What Pophouse will do with our images, our music and our personas is unlike anything anyone has ever seen."
Billboard reports that the Kiss avatar show will open in an unspecified U.S. city in 2027. "We went to see the ABBA show and it blew our socks off," Simmons told the magazine. "And the technology since then has improved by leaps and bounds. We've seen sketches of what it will look like and we looked like the X-Men."
"We have a lot of plans for Kiss," Pophouse CEO Per Sundin added. "We want to keep to the legacy. We want to extend and amplify it for new generations." The deal also includes Kiss' share of the publishing and master recordings rights to the band's music catalog.
Kiss offered fans a sneak peak at their avatars during the the last show of their End of the Road farewell tour. At the conclusion of their Dec. 2, 2023 show at Madison Square Garden, oversized digital versions of the band were projected on video screens performing "God Gave Rock and Roll to You II."
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Gallery Credit: Matthew Wilkening