Coachella Music Festival Considering a Location Change due to Proposed Ticket Tax
First Burning Man and now Coachella:
FROM ROLLING STONE:
California-based promotions company Goldenvoice is threatening to move one of its biggest events, the annual Coachella festival, out of Indio if the city goes through with a proposed admissions tax, according to the Desert Sun.
The report comes after the newspaper obtained a series of text messages in which Goldenvoice vice president Skip Paige told an Indio official about the plans to move Coachella and also its country music festival, Stagecoach, from the city.
“If the tax initiative of putting $4 million to $6 million onto Coachella gets on the ballot,” Goldenvoice president Paul Tollett told the Sun, “we’re going to take off [in] 2014; 2015 we’ll be at a new facility outside of Indio.”
The 5- to 10-percent tax on admissions for events of more than 2,500 people was initially proposed by City Councilman Sam Torres, who believes that the cost would add an average of $18 to each ticket. Torres belives this would generate $4 million for Indio, which recently had to cut almost $4 million from its budget through layoffs and leaves of absence. Tollett, however, estimated that the tax would make tickets approximately $36 more expensive, a cost he did not want to make festivalgoers pay; the tax, then, would cost Goldenvoice an extra $4 to $6 million.