Las Vegas will be hosting a new music festival in May 2015 when the Rock in Rio event lands on the strip. The event is expected to last four days with a future date in 2017 that could expand to six days. The news comes days after SFX expanded its global empire in the music industry by purchasing a 50% stake in Rock in Rio owned by Robert Medina. The four day event would be expected to attract 80,000 people to the festival that’s expected to be held right on the Las Vegas strip. This is a small number in comparison to the 360,000 people that Electric Daisy Carnival attracts over the course of three days. We had received information in October about a festival being held on the Las Vegas strip but could not envision EDC moving from the Las Vegas Motor Speedway so this news finally makes some sense.
Rock in Rio isn’t just an electronic music festival, it also features and focuses mostly bands as well. The Rock in Rio 2013 festival in Rio was headlined by names like Beyonce, Muse, Justin Timberlake, Metallica, Alice in Chains, Bon Jovi, Bruce Springsteen, Iron Maiden and many more. Electronic music was also well represented by David Guetta, Paul Oakenfold, Otto Knows, Loco Dice and many more.
The SFX empire continues to grow in size and American’s will continue to benefit with events like this that only seemed to occur everywhere else in the world until recent years.
From Billboard:
The news about the festival’s first U.S. edition follows the announcement Friday that the growing entertainment conglomerate SFX had signed an option agreement to acquire a 50 percent interest in a newly formed entity which will own the assets and operation of the festival franchise. Rock in Rio has been staged 13 times over 28 years in Madrid and Lisbon in addition to Rio to more than 7 million people. The 2013 Rock in Rio, held in the festival’s home city in September, was attended by 595,000 people over seven days.
“It’s bigger in terms of public, in terms of sponsorship, in terms of social media,” Medina said, in comparing Rock in Rio to established U.S. festivals. “Not a little bit bigger, a lot bigger.”
The Department of Tourism of Rio de Janeiro (RioTur) put the festival’s economic impact on the city at over $400 million U.S. dollars.
There’s nothing on the planet like Rock in Rio,” SFX Entertainment Chairman and CEO Robert Sillerman said in an interview with Billboard. Last week, the growing entertainment conglomerate announced it had finalized its purchase of German promoter i-Motion for some $21 million in cash and stock. SFX growing portfolio now includes such events as Tomorrowland, Mysteryland, Sensation, Electric Zoo, Disco Donnie Presents, Life in Color, Nature One, Mayday and Ruhr-in-Love. The company also owns digital platform Beatport among other properties. “As electronic music is expanding and gaining importance and prevalence, I’m sure it will play a greater role [in Rock in Rio],” Sillerman added.
Source: Billboard.com
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