MTV EMAs Executive Producer Bruce Gillmer Talks Embracing Latin and K-Pop, Staying Relevant and Honoring Liam Payne  

LONDON — On Sunday Nov. 10, the 30th annual MTV European Music Awards (EMAs) will take place at Co-op Live arena in the U.K. city of Manchester. Hosted by Rita Ora, the show will feature performances by LE SSERAFIM, Peso Pluma, Tyla, Benson Boone, RAYE, Shawn Mendes, Teddy Swims, The Warning and Pet Shop Boys, who will receive the first ever MTV EMA Pop Pioneers Award.

Broadcast live across MTV’s global network in nearly 150 countries, as well as available to watch on Pluto TV and Paramount+, the 2024 EMAs promises to be an “amazing global music celebration,” says Bruce Gillmer, the event’s executive producer and president of music and chief content officer for music at MTV parent company Paramount+.

After last year’s EMAs, due to be held in Paris, was cancelled due to global security reasons in connection with the Israel-Hamas war, this year’s 30th edition will be all the more special, says Gillmer. “There’s a lot of pent-up excitement for the show coming back,” he tells Billboard in an exclusive interview.

This will be the first EMAs since 2022. How relieved are you to be back after two years away?   

The entire team, and there’s quite a few of them, several hundred, they’re all amped up. We have this incredibly tight-knit group here. It’s like a family and some of us haven’t seen each other in two years in person. So, I’d say the excitement is fever pitch. There’s a lot of happy, smiling faces. And we’re really thrilled to be in Manchester – a city that has such deep musical roots and acts that are key to the MTV brand, like Oasis or Joy Division. It’s always amazing to be in a musical city and this one is really deep. On top of that, we have an incredible brand-new venue, Co-op Live, which is one of the only arenas in the world purpose-built for music. So, taking the year off has yielded a lot of excitement, a different creative [treatment] and an amazing brand-new venue – so we win.

There’s always a danger of annual events and awards shows losing momentum when they skip a year. How have you looked to mitigate that risk?

I think we’re fortunate with the MTV brand and within Paramount we have a handful of some of the biggest, most significant events. For us, what we have found is even more passion and desire to join us for the journey. Whether that be on the talent side, on the music industry side, our directors and lighting designers or the vendors we use. We’re blessed. We didn’t lose momentum. I think we picked up steam, if anything.

MTV’s biggest music awards show has traditionally been the VMAs. How does the EMAs compare with its U.S. sibling, and do you approach the two shows differently?  

There’s definitely crossover because they’re both global shows and most, if not all, of the talent that’s featured on both shows has a global reach. But I’d say we go deeper into the global lane on the EMAs. This year we’ve got Tyla from Africa. We’ve got Peso Pluma from Mexico. We’ve got great U.K. artists like Raye and great U.S. talent, for sure, but also K-pop artists with LE SSERAFIM and Latin artists. It feels like it’s probably more balanced globally, although I don’t want to lead you to believe that the VMAs wasn’t also global, because it was. But the EMAs has some extra juice. Some extra elements that really bring the global message home. Both shows are really important and both have global reach. But the EMAs is purpose built to be a global show, whereas the VMAs feels global because the talent within it has a global reach.

What are some of the biggest challenges in putting on a major awards show in 2024? 

Most of the challenge lies in the economics. Everything is more expensive every day. Labour is more expensive. Materials are more expensive. We have talent traveling in from around the world that’s impacted in a very significant way. Unfortunately, the entire world is feeling the downturn of the economy, so that’s our biggest hurdle. It’s not an inexpensive show and we don’t have the benefit of increasing our budget year-on-year. So, we’ve got to produce a show that costs more with the same level of entertainment [as previous years] on significantly less [money]. But, like I said, our team is incredible.

2024 marks the 30th anniversary of the EMAs. What do you think has been the key to the event’s lasting popularity?

That first year, 1994, the whole show was live from the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin. You had Prince and Aerosmith [performing]. Tom Jones hosting. George Michael [performing] “Freedom.” And in the years to follow the biggest artists in the world have come across our stage: Madonna, Jennifer Lopez, Shakira, Miley, Eminem, David Bowie, Bon Jovi, you could go on and on. We’re very proud of the 30-year anniversary and the fact that we’ve been in somewhere around 25 cities around Europe. We’ve had some incredible hosts: Heidi Klum, Sacha Baron Cohen twice, Katy Perry twice, Ed Sheeran, Selena Gomez. We’ve always had a great mix of top talent from Europe, from the U.K. and from the U.S. The show is just stronger than ever and in a digital age has a wider reach than ever. When we look at the video categories that are being voted on, it’s hundreds of millions of votes. The show is connecting with more fans than ever globally and super healthy after all these years.

In the three decades since the first EMAs in 1994, there’s been a huge increase in the number of awards shows televised globally. How do you stand out in such a competitive marketplace, and do you believe awards shows are still relevant to audiences today?

I feel like some of them are and some of them aren’t. [Paramount is] fortunate to be the home of the Grammys, the VMAs and the EMAs. We’ve got these shows that really matter and connect with the audience and the artists alike. They feel to me super relevant and in the past couple of years these shows have become bigger. There was a couple of years where they were all losing audiences, significantly. But in the last couple of years the trajectory is going upward. The Grammys, VMAs, the EMAs are all up in the last couple of years. The core shows that really matter and connect truly with the audience, the fans, the talent are doing well. But when you get into that environment you get a lot of other folks that come along, see the success and all of a sudden the events landscape becomes crowded. [And] not all of them do well. The ones that don’t have much of a history or reason for being, I think, struggle.

This year’s EMAs host Rita Ora previously recorded a song with Liam Payne – 2018’s “For You (Fifty Shades Freed).” Will you be paying tribute to the former One Direction star, who died last month after falling from a hotel balcony in Buenos Aires, in the show?

Obviously, Liam was an artist that was incredibly close with our core audience and even with some of our staff and our host, Rita Ora. We have to be somewhat sensitive to the timing of it. It’s all very new. So, we’re not looking to do anything out-of-bounds. But, for sure, there’ll be an acknowledgement of his passing. It’s appropriate given the connection to the audience and what he means to the brand.