Life is Beautiful played its fifth run in Las Vegas Sept. 22-24. (Photo by Michael Montoya)
When it was launched in 2013, the Life is Beautiful Festival (LiB) seemed like a big-hearted, inspiring idea that felt a bit too touchy-feely to make it on the vice-filled streets of Las Vegas. A massive street festival sprawling over more than a dozen downtown blocks that aimed to inspire and entertain with music, top chefs, artwork and a variety of eclectic speakers and lecturers.
But over the Sept.22-24 weekend all those dreams, and more, finally came together into what is now a financially viable event that still has that heart of gold, but also has a balance sheet in the black that promises to keep the good times coming in the future.
LiB took place a week before the horrific shooting during the Route 91 Harvest Festival on Oct. 1, and may have dodged a bullet according to Rep. Dina Titus, congresswoman from Nevada’s first congressional district said, “I have heard from police sources that the gunman had been looking at other targets. He apparently was looking at the Life Is Beautiful festival downtown, which was held a few days earlier.” LiB reps had no comment on the stunnig news that they may have been the initial target of gunman Stephen Paddock.
“We had never sold out in the history of the festival at all, not even on the day of the show and so this year when we went on sale with the lineup in April we sold out all the three-day GA tickets in 90 minutes and all the tickets in our cart within 30 minutes,” said LiB’s CEO Justin Weniger of the event that won Festival of the Year from Pollstar in 2016. The enterprising fest, which takes over 18 square blocks downtown and carts in 180,000 square feet of sod to make fans more comfortable, hosted sets by Chance the Rapper, Muse, Gorillaz, Lorde, Blink-182, The XX, Kaskade, Wiz Khalifa and dozens of others on six stages — including a comedy stage — as well as more than 60 food vendors and an A-list lineup of speakers that included “Science Guy” Bill Nye, Bethany Mota and Rachel Platten.
With 45,000 attendees each day and an estimated 135,000 over the weekend, Weniger said he thinks this year’s success came because organizers used data and targeted digital marketing to get a much clearer understanding of where their audience is and where they are coming from. “It’s a testament to four years of really unbelievable passion from a lot of people — from our staff to the city and the community around it — and the momentum that we kept going from last year that helped us this year,” he said, noting that 2016 was the first time he knew the festival would make it.
Art and photo ops intersect often at Life is Beautiful, the Las Vegas festival. (Photo by Michael Montoya.)
“We did a recap after [2016] to see how things looked, and if we could afford another investment, and we knew going in that it would be a viable thing for the community, so that allowed us to focus for the entire year.” That explains why Weniger was booking artists for 2017 before the 2016 event opened its gates, helping to create continuity and momentum for his staff. The core 20-person LiB teamwork on the festival all year-round in partnership with San Francisco promoter Another Planet Entertainment. That small team expands to 50 people during the first annual staff meeting with contractors, then swells to 150 as site planning begins to come into focus, ballooning to 3,500 on the day of the show counting onsite security, food and beverage and other site-specific workers.
Because Weniger’s WENDOH marketing agency is also busy doing marketing development inside Las Vegas and outside the city limits, with a content team churning out a variety of products, his multidisciplinary team is able to not only book and curate LiB, but also keep their eye on engaging potential consumers and maximizing their media buys. “All those things matter. Without the lineup that’s amazing, without that engagement we would not sell as many tickets,” he said of what his team has found out in case studies of past events, including one incredible statistic. “In our study we found that we drove the cost of acquisition from $17 [per ticket sold] in 2015 to just under $11 in 2016 and to under 97 cents this year.”
Because that cost of acquisition was driven down so dramatically, Weniger was able to shift money away from what would normally be spent on traditional marketing into creating a better experience for their visitors.
Weniger said part of the reason LiB has had such success is the “very authentic” relationship the fest has with its audience. “We think we can change the world with positivity and inspiration at a time when the world needs that right now… positivity and storytelling and connectivity and we provide a space for that,” he said.
With 65 percent of attendees coming from Southern California, the event’s proximity to Los Angeles is a key to its success, as are the 9,000-plus hotel rooms in downtown Las Vegas and 140,000 on the Strip. “People can find good prices on hotel rooms, they’re not wading through mud or camping and it’s very easy to jump in a car, drive up [from Los Angeles] and walk in and out of the venue and go back to your hotel room, so families can come during the day and come back at night.” Though the majority of attendees are from Southern California, this year’s event drew from all 50 states and 24 countries as well.
One of the biggest challenges is, unlike a comparable festival of its size that might have a month or more to get a fairground in shape to welcome patrons, the LiB team has about 10 days to bring in all that sod, arrange access for dozens of muralists and ensure that the proper shade is put in place. That time also includes a survey of the site for walkability to reach their goal of never having the walk from one stage to another take more than three minutes no matter how busy the stage is.
“If we weren’t putting any music on, the art we have would still make it one of the premiere art festivals in the world, and over five years the murals we’ve put up around downtown have changed the city,” he said. “Everything comes to life in this footprint and it’s something that can’t be replicated anywhere else because we have all these bars and restaurants inside the footprint, art throughout the streets and, even with the bigger footprint this year, it never felt overcrowded because of the way we create capacity.” In a testament to the eclectic nature of the audience, Weniger said at one point there were 8,000 people in a tent quietly listening to TV personality Nye on a Friday afternoon on the same stage that housed thumping dance music just hours later.
With more than two-dozen sponsors, increased ticket sales and the lower cost-per-acquisition, Weniger confirmed that LiB was in the black as of this year, with an 80-percent increase year-over-year in ticket revenue, another sign that its future seems rosy. “We do better than a lot of organizations on things like people pushing their friends to come out and see us,” he said, pointing to the engagement on the festival’s Facebook post with the initial lineup poster, which he said elicited 23,000 comments.
Fans enjoy the ambiance at the fifth annual Life is Beautiful festival in Las Vegas. (Photo by Michael Montoya)
“That’s 23,000 people not saying ‘oh my gosh, I’m so excited to see this band,’ but people tagging their friends and saying ‘we have to go.’ I don’t think people decide to buy tickets to experience it on their own. They tag their friends. Nobody says ‘I need a plumber this weekend, do you need one?’ We saw a ton of sharing and people building this network, which is why we spent substantially less this year on media since we sold out on our first day. That [effectively] eliminated any marketing budget and helped us shift our overall strategy to put purpose and storytelling first and inspire people.”