The first annual Rock in Rio USA music festival comes to Las Vegas this weekend, with rock acts like No Doubt and Metallica headlining.
The following weekend, pop stars like Taylor Swift and Bruno Mars will take to the stage.
Mike Prevatt, the music writer for Las Vegas Weekly magazine, said the headliners are not usually part of American music festivals.
“I think it’s a novelty for some of these acts to be playing an American festival,” he said. “Clearly by the acts that Rock in Rio has booked they’re not trying to be Coachella because Coachella doesn’t book acts that mainstream”
Coachella is the biggest music festival in the country, making upwards of $75 million just in ticket sales, according to Prevatt.
While Rock in Rio won’t make that amount of money, it is still expected to be a success but just not the rocking success it was expected to be.
Scott Roeben, the editor of VitalVegas.com, said originally organizers of the festival had projected 80,000 people per weekend but now that number has been projected down to 30,000 to 35,000 per weekend range.
“They made quite a splash but I’m not sure that people outside of Las Vegas are aware of it that much,” Roeben said.
He said ticket prices and the headliners could have been a factor in the drop in attendance. He said festivals of this type do well overseas, but the bar is high for entertainment in America, particularly in Las Vegas.
Rock in Rio was started in Brazil in the 80s. In 1985, it broke festival attendance records. That is not expected to be the case here, which will have an impact on nearby hotels like the SLS Las Vegas.
“I just don’t know that it’s going to meet the expectations of either of the festival or of the Vegas hotels that have been pinning a lot of hopes to this festival,” Roeben said.
Despite the concerns about the final financial impact, Roeben thinks the festival itself will be great and it appears it is here to stay.
“The setup of the grounds is pretty amazing,” Roeben said, “There’s a lot of behind the scenes things that I think will set it apart as venue here in Vegas.”
Prevatt believes organizers aimed for something more mainstream and that could have backfired.
“They might have felt they could sell more tickets with more mainstream acts. Maybe it will turn out ironically they would have done better with more conventional American festival headliners,” he said.
Scott Roeben, editor, VitalVegas.com; Mike Prevatt, music writer, Las Vegas Weekly