Michael Bailey
Michael Bailey treats arts and entertainment as a serious business, writing on how creative work, box office performance and investment decisions shape fortunes at The Australian Financial Review. He writes on arts and culture for the masthead and edits its Weekend Fin section, bringing a wealth and entrepreneurship perspective to cultural coverage. His background as a former editor of the Financial Review Rich List means his stories often sit at the intersection of performance, ownership and money.
Arts and culture with a financial edge
Bailey’s core brief is arts and culture, but he covers it with an explicit focus on economics, investment and commercial risk.
His reporting on theatre producer Michael Cassel details how private equity backing, cost-of-living pressures and investor searches affect musicals such as Hamilton, MJ and Beetlejuice, treating them as assets within a global theatre company rather than only as shows on stage. In coverage of the Australian Ballet, he tracks an 18 per cent fall in box office in 2024 that led to a $9.1 million loss, directly tying an enforced move from the company’s home theatre to its financial results.
His own Rich List responsibilities inform this approach, with author lines explicitly noting that he writes on entrepreneurship and the arts while overseeing the masthead’s wealth rankings. Across these pieces, the through-line is clear: he explains how creative organisations manage revenue, investment and risk, and how those decisions affect audiences and the broader cultural landscape.
Theatre, opera and live performance
Bailey is a regular guide to live performance, especially theatre, musicals and opera. His Life & Leisure work includes curating monthly selections such as “Seven shows you must see in July”, a national round-up that ranges from productions like Dracula and Hamilton to a gallery tour led by a cat, presented as unmissable shows around the country.
He writes criticism and features on productions such as Chicago The Musical, describing the latest Australian staging in terms of its big-city swagger, jazz-age choreography and period-inspired songs, signalling a close attention to artistic choices and staging.
At the same time, his reporting on the Australian Ballet’s financial performance shows that his interest in live performance extends beyond reviews to the organisational and venue decisions that sit behind them. Even when profiling figures in the music industry, such as in his piece on the man who made the Australian music industry, he places individual creative influence within the wider performance and business ecosystem.
Wealth, entrepreneurship and the creative economy
Wealth and entrepreneurship are long-standing strands in Bailey’s work, shaped by his years overseeing the Financial Review’s Rich Lists. Author notes describe him as responsible for those lists and as a writer on entrepreneurship and the arts, linking his arts coverage to deep familiarity with how fortunes are accumulated and maintained. His Rich List work includes co-authoring coverage of Australia’s wealthiest 200 people, anchoring his understanding of high-net-worth individuals and their investments.
That perspective carries into his arts and entertainment reporting, where he examines producers, impresarios and institutions as entrepreneurs navigating capital structures, international markets and investor expectations. His piece on the story of land rights origins framed around a $150 million lesson for today fits the same pattern, using historical and legal context to illuminate contemporary financial stakes and ownership dynamics in a clear numerical frame.
His profiles and analytical features show how creative-sector entrepreneurship, from theatre producers to music-industry figures, interacts with wealth creation, private equity and global expansion.
Weekend Fin and long-form cultural coverage
Bailey edits Weekend Fin for The Australian Financial Review, extending his arts and culture focus into the masthead’s weekend offering. In that role he shapes longer-form pieces and packages that sit alongside his own reporting, which often combine cultural subjects with careful attention to business models and financial outcomes. The recurring Life & Leisure show guides, theatrical reviews and industry profiles align with this editorial remit, giving weekend readers both practical recommendations on what to see and deeper context on the organisations and entrepreneurs behind those performances.
His dual identity as an editor and a reporter allows him to commission and craft stories that match his hallmark: concise, numerate examinations of how the creative economy works, rather than lifestyle coverage divorced from the financial realities of the arts.
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