EDM festivals are huge boons to the local economies of their host cities and the leadership in those regions realize it, which is why Atlanta has extended the TomorrowWorld "lease" for another ten years, ensuring that the SFX event will stay in the Chattahoochee Hills area until at least 2025, according to Dancing Astronaut.
The decision to extend the show for ten years is even more surprising, considering that there have only been two installments thus far. In other words, the first TomorrowWorld occurred during 2013, making the new contract 500 percent longer than the actual existence of the festival. That's confidence, but there aren't too many safer bets. TomorrowWorld has the benefit of being a sister of TomorrowLand, by all means the most renowned EDM festival in the world (held twice a year now in Belgium). That association also brings with it the biggest names in the genre.
The city of course is less interested in the music and more interested in the financial payout that come with it. Like many other big name EDM festivals, such as Electric Daisy and Ultra—in Las Vegas and Miami, respectively—TomorrowWorld has had an enormous economic impact on the region. An independent study contracted by organizers demonstrated that the event brought $85.7 million to the Atlanta area, nearly as much as the city's hosting of the NCAA Final Four basketball tournament during March, 2013. Nearly $4.3 million of that went to local government in the form of taxes. The amount paid by SFX for local labor to stage the event ($28.7 million) amounts to 749 full-time yearly salaries, by their estimation.
An added bonus that Electric Daisy and Ultra can't claim: TomorrowWorld hasn't had a death to its name yet, while the aforementioned events both suffered losses last year, drawing the suspicious eyes of law and media.
Two years of error-free operations were evidently enough to convince the city to aggressively push to keep the event in Georgia for a decade to come.
© 2024 MusicTimes.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
