Attendees at the 2014 Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival | Source: Frazer Harrison/Getty Images
After the dust settles and the hipsters return home following the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival, some people are going to sit back and count their cash. The annual, two-weekend festival – which brought 579,000 people to the desert town of Indio, Calif., in 2014 – is also a big boon for the local businesses and governments.
Coachella pumped $254.4 million into the local economy in 2012, according to a study commissioned by Goldenvoice, the festival organizer. The city of Indio receives $5.01 for each ticket sold and expects to take in $2.8 million in music-festival-related fees in 2015. That’s not counting additional revenues that come from hotel and sales taxes, plus the money people spend at local businesses on food, drink, transportation, and more.
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“It has huge support on a city level. It really impacts our community greatly. Many people would like to see the number of festivals expand,” Dan Martinez, the Indio city manager, told the Los Angeles Times.
Coachella is a behemoth among multi-day music festivals, which in recent years have sprouted like weeds across the country. Other towns are eager to attract their own major fest like Coachella or Bonnaroo, since such events have the potential to bring in big money for cash-strapped local governments, boost sales at local businesses, and put a city on the cultural map.
New entrants to the festival scene in 2015 include Rock in Rio USA in Las Vegas, Kaaboo in San Diego, and the Eaux Claires Music Arts Festival in Eau Claire, Wisc. Those newcomers will be competing with more established events, from Chicago’s Lollapalooza to the Hopscotch Festival in Raleigh, N.C. But with so many events on the calendar – and with many of the same artists playing at multiple festivals – have we reached a tipping point when it comes to music extravaganzas?
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