Michael Cohl

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Michael Cohl (born c. 1948) is a Canadian concert promoter. He is the president of Toronto-based music promotional company The BCL Group (Ballard Cohl Labatt). Although he started out in the business at the age of 18 running a strip club, ^[1] he made his reputation in 1989 by buying the concert, sponsorship, merchandising, radio, television, and film rights to The Rolling Stones' Steel Wheels Tour. The tour became the most financially successful rock tour in history. Rival promoter Bill Graham, who also bid on the tour, later wrote "Losing the Stones was like watching my favourite lover become a whore."

In 2003, Cohl was instrumental in staging the massive Molson Canadian Rocks for Toronto SARS benefit concert. In 2005, he was an important organizer behind the Canadian Live 8 show in Barrie, Ontario. That same year Cohl was inducted into Canada's Walk of Fame. ^[2]

In October and November 2006, he produced Barbra Streisand's North American tour, her first in many years. Ticket prices for some venues on that tour were as much as US$750, and VIP tickets cost well into the thousands. ^[3]

In December 1995, The Toronto Star printed a 4,000 word article entitled "King Cohl of Rock'n'Roll and the Tax That Never Was." From conversations with a number of managers of touring bands, the reporter was able to show that Cohl's Concert Productions International misrepresented to touring artists that it was collecting a tax, while not remitting any such tax to any government body. ^[4]