Last month, Insomniac Events truly outdid themselves on the 20th anniversary of Electric Daisy Carnival (EDC) Las Vegas. I didn’t try too hard to hide my own childlike wonderment behind my usual shroud of hipsterism after covering the massive for We Got This Covered, and now, a recent Forbes article breaks down the numbers of what went into the monumental production.
The most noteworthy figure from the piece is the cost of the KineticTEMPLE main stage, which reportedly accounted for $3 million of the festival’s $35 million budget. The 700-ton incarnation of what’s billed as KineticFIELD in previous editions consisted of 1,400 light fixtures, 26 lasers, 33 flame units and more than 800 LED panels, and attracted crowds of 70,000,
However, Insomniac Events has garnered criticism for investing more into its productions than its lineups. Pasquale Rotella’s negotiating power allows him to book artists at notoriously low rates. For the 20th edition of Electric Daisy Carnival Las Vegas, he might have opted to cut costs by reducing the number of bookings and lengthening set times under the guise of wanting to “bring back the true art of DJing.”
Nonetheless, I’m probably more biased about Electric Daisy Carnival Las Vegas than any other topic I write about, but in my opinion, the ends justified the means.