In the U.S., over 40% of the population have received at least one vaccine dose, and most states are now fully or partially reopening with more restrictions being lifted daily.
In the U.K., over 50% of the population has received at least one vaccine dose, and their reopening road map is tracking to plan.
In the U.K., we have 11 festivals planned this summer, including our largest ones, Reading, Leeds and Parklife, where tickets are already sold out.
While we expect the second quarter to be our first year-on-year improvement since Q4 of 2019 and to also be generating positive AOI through the second half of the year, we still plan on reducing costs this year by $750 million and reducing cash spend by $1.5 billion relative to prepandemic plans.
Our AOI loss for the quarter was $152 million, which consisted of $323 million in operational fixed costs and $171 million of contribution margin, which included $149 million from operations, along with various onetime items, including insurance recoveries.
We ended the first quarter with $1.1 billion in free cash compared to $643 million at the end of 2020, an increase of $462 million.
Our free cash, along with $964 million of available debt capacity, gives us $2.1 billion in readily available liquidity, up from $1.6 billion at the end of 2020.
Benefiting our free cash position, in January, we raised $417 million of net debt, and we had a $181 million timing benefit, largely associated with deferred revenue classification.
Our total free cash usage in the quarter was $136 million or $45 million per month, which included $100 million per month of average operational burn, roughly in line with Q4, plus another $4 million per month of nonoperational cash costs to get us to $104 million average per month in gross burn.
And in Q1, we had $59 million average cash contribution margin per month, roughly 50% higher CM than we averaged in Q4.
The global refund rate for Live Nation concerts that are rescheduled and are in or have gone through a refund window or windows was unchanged from the prior quarter at 17% through the end of Q1.
On our festivals where fans were able to retain their tickets for the next scheduled event, 65% of fans are doing so.
On deferred revenue, at the end of the first quarter, event-related deferred revenue for shows that will play in the next 12 months was $1.5 billion, the same as at the end of Q4.
Ticket sales in the first quarter were $200 million, but this was offset largely by a shift of deferred revenue from short term to long term for shows that were rescheduled into 2022.
Kathy Willard, our CFO for the past 15 years, will be retiring as of June 30.
Kathy, as you know, has been an invaluable part of our executive team for the past 15 years and been with Live Nation for over 20.

Summary:
While we expect the second quarter to be our first year-on-year improvement since Q4 of 2019 and to also be generating positive AOI through the second half of the year, we still plan on reducing costs this year by $750 million and reducing cash spend by $1.5 billion relative to prepandemic plans.