Coachella Organizers Confirm Festival Is Delayed Till October
Coachella Organizers Aim to Delay Music Festival Until October
(Bloomberg) -- The Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival organizers confirmed that the California mega-concert will be delayed for six months after local officials declared a state of emergency over coronavirus.
The festival -- originally slated for April 10-12 and April 17-19 -- will now take place Oct. 9-11 and Oct. 16-18, according to Goldenvoice, which organizes Coachella. Bloomberg reported on Monday that the event was being pushed back.
Goldenvoice’s Stagecoach country music festival, scheduled for later in April, will be Oct. 23-25. The changes follow the first confirmed Covid-19 cases in California’s Riverside County, where the events are held.
“While this decision comes at a time of universal uncertainty, we take the safety and health of our guests, staff and community very seriously,” Goldenvoice, part of Anschutz Entertainment Group, said in a statement. “We urge everyone to follow the guidelines and protocols put forth by public health officials.”
Organizers are trying to save an event that’s become the world’s highest-grossing festival in recent years, generating more than $100 million annually, according to live-entertainment data provider Pollstar. This year’s lineup includes Rage Against the Machine, Travis Scott and Frank Ocean.
Earlier this week, organizers of the BNP Paribas Open tennis tournament canceled that event, which would have gotten under way in the same vicinity this week. The tournament has drawn as many as 475,000 fans to the area, about 120 miles east of Los Angeles.
“There is too great a risk, at this time, to the public health of the Riverside County area in holding a large gathering of this size,” David Agus, professor of medicine and biomedical engineering at the University of Southern California, said in a statement after the tennis event was canceled. “It is not in the public interest of fans, players and neighboring areas for this tournament to proceed. We all have to join together to protect the community from the coronavirus outbreak.”
Last week, organizers of South by Southwest canceled the celebration of technology, arts and music in Austin, Texas, citing concerns from city officials about the continuing spread of the coronavirus.
The rock group Pearl Jam on Monday postponed a tour that had been scheduled to begin March 18 in Toronto, noting in a statement that band members’ children’s schools in Seattle have been closed. “It’s been brutal and it’s gonna get worse before it gets better,” the band said, going on to criticize the federal response to the virus.
The Coachella Festival, co-founded by Paul Tollett and Rick Van Santen in 1999, takes place at Indio’s Empire Polo Club in the desert of California’s Inland Empire region.
To contact the reporter on this story: Lucas Shaw in Los Angeles at lshaw31@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Nick Turner at nturner7@bloomberg.net
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