Las Vegas Review-Journal (Sunday)
BEAUTIFUL
Life is Beautiful faces pivotal test in fourth year
The good news, at least one aspect of it, can’t be argued.
When the first batch of discounted “presale” tickets for this year’s Life is Beautiful festival went on sale the morning of Feb. 4, its producers figured they would last all day.
Instead, someone broke in on their 10 a.m. meeting. The tickets were almost gone, in just half an hour. What did they want to do now?
But maybe Justin Weniger and Ryan Doherty shouldn’t have been surprised. After all, Doherty says it was last year’s triumphant set by hometown heroes Imagine Dragons that made him feel the 3-year-old festival had truly hit its stride.
Fans caught the euphoria of Imagine frontman Dan Reynolds as he thanked everyone he could think of, celebrating his own band’s triumphant rise and, by proxy, the bold move to plant a music and arts festival in the shadows of a downtown expressway.
Look at photos or YouTube footage of the Dragons packing what’s usually an ugly lot be-
hind the Pump N Snack, and “you see how special this festival is,” Doherty says.
The run on presale tickets was a sign of blind faith, that maybe people had finally embraced what Life is Beautiful promoters had been preaching: It’s the collective experience and unique setting that makes this one stand out amid bigger, more established music festivals around the country.
But then the lineup was announced. And that’s when the debate began. Is this fourth, crucial year for the festival another step forward? Or a reined-in attempt to turn a profit? Did that early burst of sales ride on the coattails of the festival’s ousted founder? Or the guys now in charge of marketing decisions?
This year’s lineup poster might be a Rorschach test of your enthusiasm.
Do Mumford & Sons, J. Cole and Major Lazer seem like they would have been second-billed to previous headliners such as Foo Fighters, Stevie Wonder and Kanye West?
Or do you share the promoters’ excitement in full explanations? It’s been 5½ years since Mumford & Sons played Las Vegas. The Lumineers never have. And The Shins won’t play anywhere else in the United States this year. And yes, Major Lazer is a do-over, but they’ve skyrocketed since last year’s fest.
Maybe the answers are not in an ink blot, but a driver’s license. If the producers don’t want to generalize while aiming for inclusiveness, an outside observer will.
“That talent lineup’s not booked for people in their 30s and 40s,” says Gary Bongiovanni, editor-in-chief of Pollstar, the concert industry’s trade bible. “It’s definitely skewing younger. And you know what? That’s probably a smart thing.”
The three-day downtown music and arts festival needs to hedge all bets as it heads into a pivotal fourth year Friday through Sunday.
It’s the first with Weniger and Doherty’s Wendoh Media fully at the operational helm, after festival founder Rehan Choudhry departed in January under terms both sides are reluctant to discuss.
The media partners known for Vegas Seven magazine, nightlife websites and special-events marketing announced in early 2015 their company had acquired a 50 percent stake in the festival.
“The numbers are improving every year,” Weniger says. But all the same, “It’s kind of put-up-or-shut-up time.”
BUILDING A (LOSS-LEADER) BRAND
Both the Life is Beautiful organization and its finances are private, even though the festival requires considerable cooperation from the City of Las Vegas, downtown merchants and even the post office — “Mail is still delivered Saturdays,” Doherty notes — to fence off an 18-block area between Seventh and 11th streets and between East Mesquite and East Carson avenues for the ticketed event.
But $10 million in losses have been reported for the first three years of the fest largely funded by Downtown Project, the urban redevelopment company financed by Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh. Last year, the festival also brought in the producer of the giant Electric Daisy Carnival, Pasquale Rotella’s Insomniac, as an investor and programmer of a new electronic dance music pavilion.
Weniger became the festival’s new chief executive officer and Doherty its “chief experience officer,” though Choudhry was still part of the festival he started in 2013.
But Choudhry left in January and says he was not even invited to attend this year. Instead, he will be checking out the iHeartRadio festival on the Strip.
(This year’s iHeartRadio, taking place Friday and Saturday at T-Mobile Arena, is direct competition. It’s always a tight ticket for superstars such as Drake and U2 inside the arena. But Saturday’s “Daytime Village” also sold out close to 25,000 tickets for Sam Hunt and 14 pop and rock acts on the 25,000-capacity outdoor grounds across from Luxor).
“The good news is there’s life after Life is Beautiful,” Choudhry says of a new startup he is working on but not yet ready to announce.
Those familiar with the concert industry and this festival say it’s unlikely Choudhry was under the gun to move into the black last year, even if three years is an accepted break-even benchmark for business plans not so dependent upon the intangibles of building a brand.
Attendance figures vary, but the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority estimated last year’s total as 131,550 for the three days. Outof-town visitors were estimated at 37,175, with “direct visitor spending” estimated at $21.5 million.
All of those were an uptick from 2014, with 24,075 out-of-town visitors and total attendance of 87,200. The out-of-towners that year spent $13.9 million, according to the convention authority.
“We improved the numbers substantially last year (and) have grown another 40 percent this year,” Weniger says. “It is a business. There’s not some unlimited fund we can keep dumping into this. We need it to be sustainable. We need it to be something that can stand on its own.”
Pollstar’s Bongiovanni says festivals are “a larger part of the concert market overall than they’ve ever been.” Life is Beautiful falls after most of summer’s big destination fests but still has just one week’s separation from this weekend’s KAABOO in the feeder market of BEAUTIFUL, See Page 23A ▶