Coachella, Stagecoach festivals 2020 cancelled over coronavirus concerns
We all knew this was coming. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, it became impossible for Coachella 2020 to hold, all we needed was official confirmation.
After initially being postponed until October, the 2020 Coachella Valley Music & Arts Festival has officially been canceled.
The festival promoter Goldenvoice’s parent company, AEG, just made huge cuts across staff due to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic and statewide stay-at-home orders.
On Monday, the company laid off 15 percent of its workforce, furloughed over 100 people, and instituted 20 to 50 percent pay cuts, per an internal note obtained by Billboard.
Riverside County Public Health Officer Dr. Cameron Kaiser decided to cancel Coachella and Stagecoach Music Festival amid concerns that COVID-19 could get worse later this year.
“Given the projected circumstances and potential, I would not be comfortable moving forward,” Kaiser said in a statement on Wednesday (June 10).
“These decisions are not taken lightly with the knowledge that many people will be impacted. My first priority is the heat of the community.”
According to Kaiser, if COVID-19 were to be detected at these festivals which hosts hundreds of thousands of people from around the world
“the scope and number of attendees and the nature of the venue would make it infeasible, if not impossible, to track those who may be placed at risk.”
The Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival (commonly called Coachella or the Coachella Festival) is an annual music and arts festival held at the Empire Polo Club in Indio, California, in the Coachella Valley in the Colorado Desert. It was co-founded by Paul Tollett and Rick Van Santen in 1999 and is organized by Goldenvoice, a subsidiary of AEG Presents. The event features musical artists from many genres of music, including rock, pop, indie, hip hop, and electronic dance music, as well as art installations and sculptures. Across the grounds, several stages continuously host live music.
The festival’s origins trace back to a 1993 concert that Pearl Jam performed at the Empire Polo Club while boycotting venues controlled by Ticketmaster. The show validated the site’s viability for hosting large events, leading to the inaugural Coachella Festival being held over the course of two days in October 1999, three months after Woodstock ’99. After no event was held in 2000, Coachella returned on an annual basis beginning in April 2001 as a single-day event. In 2002, the festival reverted to a two-day format. Coachella was expanded to a third day in 2007 and eventually a second weekend in 2012; it is now held on consecutive three-day weekends in April, with the same lineup each weekend. Organizers began permitting spectators to camp on the grounds in 2003, one of several expansions and additions in the festival’s history.
Coachella showcases popular and established musical artists as well as emerging artists and reunited groups. It is one of the largest, most famous, and most profitable music festivals in the United States and the world. Each Coachella staged from 2013 to 2015 set new records for festival attendance and gross revenues. The 2017 festival was attended by 250,000 people and grossed $114.6 million. Coachella’s success led to Goldenvoice establishing additional music festivals at the site, including the annual Stagecoach country music festival beginning in 2007, the Big 4 thrash metal festival in 2011, and the classic rock-oriented Desert Trip in 2016.
