A new era of Bonnaroo Music & Arts Festival will begin next year. According to a new report, Live Nation is set to purchase Superfly Entertainment‘s remaining stake in the widely popular Tennessee festival.
Superfly started Bonnaroo back in 2002, and has steadily grown it into one of the nation’s most popular annual music events. In 2015, Live Nation purchased a controlling interest in the festival. Now, according to Billboard, the concert production and ticketing giant has told Superfly that they will exercise a buyout clause in the 2015 agreement to purchase their remaining shares in the festival.
As Billboard notes,
The transaction will take place before next year’s festival and effectively ends Superfly’s role as festival producer, although limited role for Superfly at the festival is being considered. Going forward, Bonnaroo will be produced by co-founder AC Entertainment and C3 Presents, which Live Nation purchased in 2014.
As Bonnaroo co-founder Rick Fairman told Billboard in 2015 when the initial deal was made, “We built this business on partnerships, and having a company like Live Nation come to the table and want to be part of that partnership in the way that they are here, and making the commitment to taking Bonnaroo to the next level, is an extremely gratifying, humbling validation of the hard work.”
The news of the Live Nation buyout comes in the wake of the successful sold-out 2019 edition of Bonnaroo earlier this month featuring performances from Phish, Childish Gambino, Cardi B, Post Malone, Joe Russo’s Almost Dead, The Wood Brothers, Mac DeMarco, and many more.
Superfly had initially been hired to produce this year’s Woodstock 50 festival in Watkins Glen, New York but pulled out of the anniversary event over disagreements with festival organizers over the event’s capacity. Superfly is also a co-producer of San Francisco’s Outside Lands.
[H/T Billboard]
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