Evolving music trends spark growth of festivals at venues across valley

Pat Christenson remembers the old days — a mere three years ago — when there was not a single multiday outdoor music festival in Las Vegas.

Now Christenson glows with pride when he ticks off the growing number of music festivals that have picked Las Vegas as their home. And there are more to come, with event promoters and venue owners preparing announcements for new area events.

From the northern end of Las Vegas Boulevard at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, where the Electric Daisy Carnival will be holding its annual blowout in June, to downtown Las Vegas where Life is Beautiful was launched in 2013, to points south along the Strip, monster music festivals are finding Las Vegas and its host properties financially attractive.

“Three years ago we had no outdoor music festivals in Las Vegas and now by 2015 we will sell a million tickets at festivals along the Strip,” Christenson said. “They are putting together music with food and art and creating events that are bigger than just a concert.”

The latest music festival to join the lineup is Rock in Rio. It’s part of a minitrend within the broader music festival trend — a major hotel-casino company investing in the music festival business to take advantage of dusty parking lot holdings along the Las Vegas Boulevard corridor.

In the case of Rock in Rio, MGM Resorts International, with Cirque du Soleil and investment company The Yucaipa Cos., is converting 40 acres into a permanent $20 million open-air concert venue for 80,000 fans at the southwest corner of Sahara Avenue and Las Vegas Boulevard. MGM Resorts will oversee construction, with the venue’s goal of hosting the biannual event in May 2015, 2017 and 2019. Brazilian entrepreneur Roberto Medina is the festival founder.

The Rock in Rio site is what MGM Resorts is calling the “North Lot.” Tickets for next year’s Rock in Rio are expected to cost $150 per day. Rock in Rio organizers are expected to spend $60 million to produce the event, said Chris Baldizan, MGM Resorts senior vice president of entertainment.

In 2013, MGM Resorts used another empty lot on the south end of the Strip across from the Luxor — or the 13-acre “South Lot” — to host outdoor music activities related to the iHeartRadio Music Festival at MGM Grand Garden Arena.

MGM Resorts spent $4 million to $5 million to level the parking lot, which was used for overflow parking by Luxor and Excalibur employees, and to also install water, power, sewer and Wi-Fi, Baldizan said.

Although camping is a feature of many multiday music festivals, Baldizan said MGM will be providing the ultimate form of lodging for festivalgoers — the thousands of hotel rooms available in neighboring MGM properties such as Mandalay Bay, Luxor, Excalibur, New York-New York and MGM Grand.

MGM Resorts is also fresh off a milestone groundbreaking of a new $375 million, 20,000-seat arena behind New York-New York. MGM Chief Executive Jim Murren said today’s entertainment consumers are collecting experiences like kids collecting baseball cards a generation ago. More and more tourists — especially the younger 18-to-30 millennial demographic — want to explore and not be tied to a set schedule, Murren said.

That outlook can easily be applied to the advent of the music festivals up and down Las Vegas Boulevard, where both tourists and locals are seeking more outdoor options that allow for spontaneous decisions.

“We want guests to be in a casino, but we can’t expect them to be in there 12 hours a day. They want to move from activity to activity and be outdoors,” Baldizan said.

MGM Resorts’ main Strip rival, Caesars Entertainment Corp., has also started using vacant property to stage festivals. Just last month, Caesars used a lot behind the High Roller observation wheel and the Linq for an outdoor, two-day Academy of Country Music festival that drew 40,000 fans.

Jason Gastwirth, Caesars’ vice president of entertainment, said he expects more events to be staged outdoors on the site, which is between the High Roller on the west and Koval Lane on the east. He said the 19-acre site can accommodate up to 90,000 people, with events ranging from motocross to food festivals.

“It’s a perfect site. It’s the 50-yard line on the Strip,” Gastworth said. He added that visitors can reach the site via the monorail, or through the Linq.

Event organizers and fans can enjoy the illuminated High Roller, serving as a backdrop for the open festival site, he said.

“The strategy is to bring the best entertainment to Vegas in large gatherings and capitalize on the trend of music and food and how people like to experience it,” Gastwirth said.

The man behind the Electric Daisy Carnival, Pasquale Rotella, said he has talked with MGM Resorts and Caesars about their outdoor venue lots along the Strip corridor, as well as owners of other off-Strip locations to host two music events.

Rotella said he plans to stage a Nocturnal Wonderland event in 2014 and a Beyond Wonderland event in 2015. The locations, dates and ticket information will be released soon, he said.

Rotella said the open festival lots owned by MGM and Caesars are ideal for promoters, letting them use the sites as blank canvases for staging different types of shows and festivals.

“We can change up the environment and create a different experience,” Rotella said. “It’s like going to a different venue.”

Event promoters also said the festival locations are ideal venues to showcase the growing variety of music genres that have grabbed the attention of fans and consumers.

“The music business has changed,” Baldizan said. “There are so many types of music. There’s alternative music that’s just as popular as quote-unquote mainstream music, and festivals are a great way to experience it.”

The way fans “experience” music festivals and venues is changing, too.

“If you look at the growing popularity, instead of going to traditional concerts, people want to see music bands and are looking for unique experiences,” Christenson said. “This is something Europe has been doing for 20 or 30 years and you can look at the recent successes at Coachella and Bonnaroo.”

And the key for the music festival growth in Las Vegas is that each festival has its own unique story line, Christenson said.

“We were not in the music festival business three years ago and now we will have five events along Las Vegas Boulevard with different themes and properties,” he said.

Rehan Choudhry, founder of Life is Beautiful, said Las Vegas is just catching up with the movement.

“The reason for the delayed entry (EDC in 2011, Life is Beautiful in 2013 and Rock in Rio in 2015) is that so many Las Vegas festivals failed in the past. And rather than digging into the real reasons for those failures, the entertainment industry generalized that Vegas wasn’t a viable festival market,” said Choudhry, the former Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas director of entertainment and special events; former Caesars Entertainment regional director of marketing, partnerships and development; and founder of the Food Network’s Atlantic City Food and Wine Festival.

“What do we know today? That Las Vegas is a world-renowned entertainment destination that continues to innovate in the experiential event arena. It always has been. From the days of the Rat Pack in lounges, to the introduction of resident headliners and Cirque du Soleil, Vegas sets the global bar for entertainment development,” Choudhry said.

“And now we are doing it with festivals. By 2015, you will have the greatest EDM experience, the world’s largest music festival, and an inspirational lifestyle festival all in the heart of Las Vegas. And, I assure you, we’re just getting started,” he said.

Electric Daisy Carnival has showed that Las Vegas is a viable market and can accommodate the big crowds that festivals attract, Rotella said.

“We’ve done it,” he said. “We’ve proven the case.”

Choudhry noted that demand sparked Life is Beautiful to lengthen by a day.

“We are so much more than just a music festival,” he said. “By speaking to four different audiences for one event, we have more people wanting more of what they enjoyed. So we are booking more bands, more chefs, more art and more speakers and needed an entire third day to fit it all in.

“Our focus is on growing this festival exponentially, all while establishing a broader sense of purpose for Life is Beautiful as a brand. To put it another way, the festival is just one part of the message. You can expect to see a lot of unexpected new ways to interact with Life is Beautiful in addition to the three-day festival,” he said.

Choudhry also expects MGM Resorts and Caesars to increase the use of their vacant properties as locations for music festivals.

“I think MGM Resorts and Caesars are going to create a lot of additional opportunity, attention and revenue for the city,” he said. “I am looking forward to seeing what they introduce.”

Contact reporter Alan Snel at asnel@reviewjournal.com or 702-387-5273. Follow @BicycleManSnel on Twitter.