MVT Teams Up with Fender for Open Nominations: Grassroots Venues in Three UK Nations Can Win Full Amp Gear Packages
Music Venue Trust has partnered with Fender to invite music fans to nominate their favorite live venues across England, Scotland, and Wales. The three top-voted venues will each receive a customized gear package—a campaign born out of the harsh reality of years of losses across the UK's grassroots music scene.
Music Venue Trust (MVT) has launched a new nomination campaign in partnership with Fender, calling on fans across England, Scotland, and Wales to vote for the grassroots venues they visit most often. Based on nomination counts in each region, the top-voted venue from each nation will be selected—one per region—and each winning venue will receive a Fender gear package sized to fit its specific needs.
The equipment list is remarkably specific: a Hot Rod Deluxe IV amp, a Rumble 200 bass amp, an Acoustic SFX II amp, a 5150 Iconic Series 40W EL34 1x12 combo, and a StudioLive SE digital mixing console. Fans who submit a nomination are automatically entered into a prize draw for a chance to win a Fender 75th Anniversary Player II Sparkle Precision Bass.
This latest push comes against a backdrop of years of mounting pressure on the UK's grassroots music scene. 2023 was the worst year on record, with 125 venues closing their doors; a 2024 report warned that without urgent intervention, the entire scene could face "total collapse." Numbers released earlier this year were even more blunt: more than half of UK grassroots venues failed to turn a profit in 2025, and the industry has shed 6,000 jobs. MVT CEO Mark Davyd described the situation as goodwill being "stretched to the absolute limit of what it can bear."
In January, the government rolled out additional support for pubs and music venues, a concession following earlier steep hikes in business rates. But the industry is still waiting on a voluntary £1-per-ticket levy—a mechanism the government backed in 2024, originally aiming for 50% of arena and large-venue shows to sign on by the end of 2025. In practice, only 8.8% of shows enrolled all year, far short of the target. The government is still waiting for the industry to complete self-regulation legislation before considering mandatory enforcement.
In April, MVT announced a new round of funding and initiatives, with COO Beverley Whitrick saying at the time: "Grassroots music venues cannot keep being expected to survive on goodwill and praise alone. If the UK music industry genuinely wants to protect its talent pipeline, it needs to seriously confront the economic realities that sustain it." This collaboration with Fender is, in some sense, a concrete attempt to put that statement into action—though against the industry's overall financial shortfall, what a single gear package can fill remains, in the end, limited.
