Sunset Music Festival, Tampa, Fla. (photo by Alex Perez)
The electronic dance music (EDM) market has been booming for nearly five years in the U.S. and while the genre is showing some signs of waning, someone forgot to relay that news to veteran Florida promoter James "Disco Donnie" Estopinal, Jr., founder and CEO of Disco Donnie Presents (DDP).
After throwing his hat into the EDM festival ring in 2012 with the one-day edition of the Sunset Music Festival in Tampa, Fla., Estopinal is doubling down on his investment for this year’s event, which will stretch to two days over the Memorial Day weekend (May 24-25).
With such sought-after headliners as Zedd, Hardwell, Benny Benassi and Krewella, Estopinal said he’s confident that his expansion will pay off. “My partner and I [John Santoro of Sunset Events] have been working in the market for a long time and when things started to go up again [after the financial meltdown] we could see the numbers growing,” he said of the EDM audience. “We had this huge database with all the people buying tickets to our shows and we decided that Tampa needed its own EDM festival.”
The pair picked Memorial Day weekend because there were always a number of acts available on those days and there wasn’t another comparable festival in the Southern region at the time. After pulling 8,000 attendees in 2012 and taking a “huge” loss, Estopinal said he stuck to the 1-2-3 rule (lose money the first year, break even in the second and, if you can make it to the third, make money) when planning for 2014.
Their patience appears to have paid off, as last year’s event drew 23,000 dance music fans, a number that was not only unexpected, but helped cover the losses from the first year and convince the partners to expand to two days. “People were asking for it and there was a lot of talent available,” Estopinal said of 2014’s two-day festival. “The production is already there, so it makes sense.”
If anything, the partners were worried about the audience balking at a ticket price that doubled to over $100, but sales to date have been well ahead of expectations and Estopinal said he’s aiming for 25,000-30,000 attendees a day.
The approximately $2.5-million event takes place in a 700,000-sq.-ft. grassy field adjacent to Raymond James Stadium that is used for overflow parking. It is large enough to allow for future expansion to up to 50,000 attendees per day.
“I think we’ll cap it at 30,000 this year because we don’t want to grow too fast,” Estopinal said, adding that if things progress as they have so far there is talk of possibly moving into the stadium in the future. Another difference this year is that the show has transformed from an all-ages one to 18+, because Estopinal said 18-26 is his demo range and it felt the festival should be geared toward that group rather than younger patrons.
Raymond James Stadium has hosted sporadic festivals over the years, but Sr.VP of Stadium Operations Mickey Farrell said the home of the National Football League’s Buccaneers had never tried its hand at EDM until Disco Donnie came knocking. “It’s a wide-open space with grass and trees out there and obviously it has enough parking to accommodate the patrons,” he said. “And it’s a good way to generate revenue outside of football season.”
Farrell has been impressed with Sunset’s growth and attributes some of it to the hand-in-hand work his team has done with DDP to make it a success. Raymond James Stadium provides the security and sanitation staffing, as well as Port-O-Lets and barricades, while Estopinal books world-class acts that bring in a young, enthusiastic audience. “It’s a real collaboration between all parties to make this a success,” he said. “It’s also bringing in a new, younger audience and exposing them to the property. Some might be fans who come to the USF games we host, but a lot are coming here for the first time.”
Because the show takes place outside the confines of the stadium, producers have to set up a perimeter of 8-foot chain-link fencing and Estopinal said that, so far, security breaches have not really been an issue. The staffing for the event, which runs from 2 p.m. until midnight each day, makes sure of that, with approximately 250 T-shirted security team members, as well as 30 in-house security and more than 65 Tampa Police Department officers on site.
“It’s a great venue because it’s kind of a blank canvas, a huge grass field with the stadium in the background that helps show the enormity of the show,” Estopinal said. Among the elements that are being added this year are a performance art troupe that Estopinal recently saw in Argentina and an art installation that cost $200,000, which he hopes will raise the entertainment level of the show.
Though Sunset does not have the backing of a major promotions giant like AEG Live or Live Nation, Estopinal (a former partner in the EDM events promotion company Insomniac Events) relies on his close ties with corporate parent SFX Entertainment, which acquired DDP, the company, in 2012.
“[For instance] that art installation that cost $200,000? I had to pay for it and will amortize it over 4-5 festivals and it’s a good thing [SFX] backed me and wrote that check,” he said. “If I was independent I wouldn’t have been able to do that. I’ve been doing this for 20 years and the way the industry is growing, we were financing everything ourselves through ticket presales, through mom’s credit card and putting my house on the line every weekend.”
With 50 percent of the budget earmarked for talent, Estopinal said he’s finally handed over booking to someone else on his team as he focuses on the bigger picture, including trying to get more major sponsors on board in order to keep ticket prices flat as talent and production costs continue to rapidly increase.
This year’s show will feature three stages, including a 160-ft.-wide main stage with an L’Acoustics K1 sound rig and two 80-foot-wide side stages fitted with L’Acoustics VDOSC rigs.
At press time, Estopinal was bullish on ticket sales, despite the jump to $129 for two-day GA passes and $209 for VIP entry. “If you count each day as a ticket and count both days, we’re 19,000 ahead of where we were this year,” he said.
The collaboration has worked so well that Raymond James Stadium hosted two other smaller DDM events in October and December. “We’ve defnitely had some other discussions [as a result of the DDM shows] but nothing has come to fruition yet,” Farrell said of the attention Sunset has brought to the stadium. “We are in discussions now with some other promoters about similar events in the same space.”
Contacted for this story: James "Disco Donnie" Estopinal, (504) 432-4869; Mickey Farrell, (813) 350-6507
