Las Vegas Business Press :: News : Vegoose promoters giddy over first-year attendance

Vegoose promoters giddy over first-year attendance

By ARNOLD M. KNIGHTLY
BUSINESS PRESS

They descended on Sam Boyd Stadium by the tens of thousands on Halloween weekend, happily danced late into the night and left as quietly as they came. They were the fans of Vegoose, the first true, built-from-scratch, valley-wide music festival.

The two-day event, which featured 33 bands on four stages, sold 36,199 tickets. Additionally, 45,020 people paid to see festival-related sold-out shows around the city, in venues ranging from the Thomas & Mack Center to the House of Blues, as well as resorts such as the Orleans, Hard Rock, Mandalay Bay and Aladdin.

"We look at all of our events as long-term projects," A.C. Entertainment owner and co-promoter Ashley Capps said. "So for a first-year event, we are really ecstatic about the results."

Over 33,000 Vegoose patrons came from outside the Las Vegas area.

Although economic impact studies and room capacity numbers will not be available for a few more weeks, 90 percent of the festival attendees were from out of state, according to Darren Libonati, director of Sam Boyd Stadium. One of the goals in creating the festival for that particular weekend was to help boost what traditionally has been a weak tourist period for the city.

"It was a perfect hit," Libonati said. "Any time you could create something from scratch and then paint the picture on the canvas and then say, 'Come see us' -- we connected every dot just perfect."

Beyond the 33,000 out-of-towners who bought tickets, the promotion companies, production crews, and the 33 bands brought numerous friends and family to town; those were people who occupied rooms, ate at restaurants and gambled at the tables.

"You've got Vegas, Halloween and a bunch of eclectic, weirdo bands all together," said Dave Schools, bass player for Widespread Panic. "How could it possibly go wrong?"

According to everyone involved, it didn't.

"We were very pleasantly surprised," said UNLV Chief of Police and Director of Public Safety Jose A. Elique. "Usually when you get a crowd that big, just the sheer numbers alone, if they're drinking and taking drugs, you're bound to have some problems. But this seems like a very mellow crowd. Very mellow."

UNLV Police, in coordination with the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department, provided security for the event, with 25 university officers patrolling inside the event itself.

According to Elique, there were few reported violent acts or fights inside and only one citation was issued -- for a woman who took her top off. Metro, which had 50 officers outside the event, reported one arrest. Metro was also in charge of keeping traffic flowing in and out of the day-long events.

"I knew this was a peaceful crowd, but that's (one arrest) just a rarity," Las Vegas Events President Pat Christenson said. "That's just a good job of managing the crowd and creating a relationship between the police and the crowd."

Although Elique has been with UNLV five years, he said some officers who had worked the Grateful Dead shows of the early 1990s at Sam Boyd Stadium said the Vegoose crowd presented fewer problems. The crowd responded well to officers' directions, whether it was to move out of a path of vehicles or asking fans to vacate a particular area.

The movement of the artists and fans from hotel to venue, and from venue to venue, also went off without any reported problems. The traffic flow in and out of the area was deftly handled with minimal delays. Those leaving Saturday night in the middle of the Dave Matthews performance found it took only six minutes to pull out of the parking lot and start heading north on U.S. 95. Sunday night's experience was similar.

"Traffic turned out to be no problem because it is such a long event," Christenson said. "They gradually came out. A lot were leaving early to catch some of the shows back in Vegas. That part of it worked itself out."

"I think it sort of exceeded everyone's expectations," said Rick Farman, co-founder of Superfly Productions, one of the promoters. "From my perspective, everything ran very smoothly."

With the main stage located in Sam Boyd Stadium and three more stages on the Star Nursery Field north of the stadium, the desert rising into the mountain provided a natural backdrop for the festival. Far removed from the Strip, the atmosphere was still a Las Vegas experience. The promoters included a mock wedding chapel, impersonators' cafe and a cabaret circus tent in the vendor area. The names of the stages even reflected the town or a visitor's perceptions of it -- Double Down Stage, Snake Eyes Stage, Jokers Wild Stage and Clubs Tent.

The weather also cooperated, with a nearly cloudless sky a light breeze and temperatures in the low 70s.

The New York-based Superfly, in partnership with Knoxville, Tenn.-based A.C. Entertainment, were brought in by Las Vegas Events to put Vegoose together. The two companies also partner to produce the Bonnaroo Music and Arts Festival that is held during June outside Manchester, Tenn.

Although everyone was pleased with the first-year attendance numbers, the space is available for the festival to grow over the next few years.

"We'll definitely take baby steps as it grows," Libonati said. "We believe our capacity is 55,000. A lot of what makes 55,000 work is the balancing of the different stages, being able to have diverse acts at all locations to be able to push all the bodies in different directions."

The promoters will get together for a "post-vent session" in the next couple of months and to start planning for Vegoose 2006, according to Capps.

"We have a very solid and successful event we can build on for the future," Capps said. "That's a great place to be."

aknightly@lvpress.com | 702-871-6780 x316

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