How Electric Zoo became an actual zoo

Hello!

Welcome to a special Sunday edition today after some busy waters last week we’ll be back onto regular waters this week.

Since we’re on Sunday I’ll highlight some happy stories from last week like before instead of just diving into our anger fuel of a Main Report.

Sunday Trends

• A Delta Airlines flight from Atlanta to Barcelona was forced to reverse course and come back to Atlanta after a passenger caused a “biohazard” incident all throughout the plane, causing the plane needing to be recarpeted and thoroughly cleaned before use again. 💩

• Asian American artists ISOxo and Knock2 after both already having a legendary year and rise to stardom have done the unthinkable and sold our four consecutive nights at the LA Shrine expo hall with a dual headlining show

• A dog that had ran away from home got to experience Metallica by sneaking into SoFi Stadium and seeing the band perform there.

• Oprah and ‘The Rock’ are donating $1.2k of their own money each month to Maui fire survivors after already getting together and creating a fund that has gotten up to $10 million dollars in donations

Today’s Main Report

How Electric Zoo became an actual zoo

Though it may feel like an eon ago, it was just last week ago that the once coveted Electric Zoo festival turned into a disaster and now textbook case on how not to run a music festival. This is already saying a lot in a year where music festivals have already been having a lot of difficulties from shooters to mud attacks to chair fights but the zoo takes the cake.

Here’s the simplest breakdown of all that transpired in New York last week. The festival started off extremely strong by canceling it’s first day on Friday due to building on main stage not being completed. The festival promoters stated it was due to global supply chain issues that this delay occurred, yet no other festival in 2023 has had any issues with this strangely enough. They delay on main stage was so severe eZoo even pushed back starting by two hours on Saturday as well. On Saturday things got more interesting with lines galore. Many goers reported that lines for getting into the festival and will call were both extremely slow, some folks getting in after waiting up to five hours in line. Going back to the will call line that was much more packed than anticipated for folks as everyone quickly learned that eZoo actually dropped the ball on shipping wristbands to a boatload of attendees. Usually people who need to go will call to get their tickets or wristbands are those who ordered tickets very last minute or had issues receiving them but the case here was that eZoo didn’t ship wristbands to many more people including some who were among the first to order tickets. Now the cherry on the cake comes on Sunday. A good ways into the festival on Sunday Electric Zoo put out another post saying that they were going to stop letting people into the festival even if you had tickets due to them reaching capacity at the venue. This didn’t bode well at all with anyone especially with people waiting in line at the time of the announcement. Those in line rightfully stayed in their spots to get into a festival they paid a few hundred dollars to attend. However, with security not letting more people in due to the capacity constrain this caused some near in humane conditions with attendees in the waiting areas not having access to water or bathrooms causing more distraught. All this eventually culminated in all those waiting to just rush the gates and barging into festival.

Now if you think the surface level of what happened is bad let’s take a look at what has surfaced from below since then about how bad this was. As mentioned above the Friday cancelation was chalked up by the promoters as “supply chain issues” when in actuality it was due to safety concerns given of the main stage. Due to those concerns from inspectors the permits weren’t granted for Electric Zoo to operate on Friday until they were fixed, which wasn’t until two hours passed start time on Saturday. What’s even worse is that the poor construction and overall delay on getting the stage fixed was that Electric Zoo did not pay the vendors that had built the stages last year! So they were stretched thin on vendors who could or would want to do the work for this year’s stages. As for the capacity issue well simply it’s simple math to know that how many tickets you sell shouldn’t be more than how many people you can let in but the only math eZoo looked at was how much more money they could get by selling more tickets.

Frankly, we can continue on and on for a while on how Electric Zoo was an island sized disaster but we should look at the macros of this. In a post lockdown world events like these that bring thousands of people together have gotten more and more cash hungry. Attendees from many festivals throughout this year from all over the US have brought up many similar complaints; overcrowding, exorbitant prices, poor management/logistics, subpar included amenities, disconnected experiences and staff, it goes on. These festivals are over selling ,doing less and milking you more. Understandably, the live event space is a tough space to profit in and we may not know the financial status of a lot of these companies after surviving through lockdown but treating their customer base like a rag to squeeze money out of is not the answer here.

There is some upside to all this. For one, the corporation that runs Electric Zoo is being investigated and possibly sued/fined by New York for all they did wrong. With all the turmoil in the events space many smaller festivals run by those with an actual passion for the arts and bringing people together have begun springing up more around the circuits. Which in turn also gives more opportunity for other artists to gain exposure.

That’s all for today guys! Let me know how your guys’ festival experiences have been this year. Reply to this email and give that special festival a shout out or shout in if they weren’t that special.