There's one place you'll be able to see seven 2015 Brit Awards nominees playing live, and it's not YouTube. It's Rock in Rio Las Vegas, the first edition of a monster Music festival made in Brazil, that will arrive in America this year. You'll also get more freebies than you'd ever thought possible in a music fest. If the previous editions are any indication, there are going to be inflatable couches, cowboy hats, bracelets, sunglasses, wigs, neon sticks, t-shirts, and the list goes on. Rock in Rio is something America has never seen: a candy store for marketing purposes.
But after a year working on the first Rock in Rio USA, the company has learned that's not how they do things in America. Tickets for the two-weekends festival went on sale yesterday, for $298 per weekend, and the lineup is huge: Taylor Swift, Ed Sheeran, Bruno Mars, John Legend, Sam Smith, James Bay, and Charli XCX, all Brit Awards nominees, will play in Vegas May 15th & 16th, the "pop" weekend. A week before, May 8th & 9th, No Doubt, Metallica, Linkin Park, Deftones and Foster the People will kick off the festival with a gigantic "rock" weekend, that also features Sepultura and The Pretty Reckless.
It remains to be seen if the lineup is enough to turn this $75 million venture a success in the first year.
Does Las Vegas need yet another big event?
"Our biggest challenge now is showing people what Rock in Rio really is. Because there's no reference", says Roberta Medina, vice-president of the festival, now in its 30th year. I caught up with her in Los Angeles, where she met a handful of brands and pitched the fresh concept of the event.
She believes Rock in Rio will be nothing short of a revolution for the American market.
The "candy store for brands" concept is hard to explain in a country where companies don't invest in advertising inside music festivals. But that's how it all started 30 years ago, in Rio de Janeiro. "Our relationship with brands emerged because we didn't have any other way of paying the bill", Medina says.
"Selling tickets alone would never do, because consumers didn't have enough purchasing power", she adds. "It's different here [in the US]: you hire the artist, you hire the venue, you sell the tickets and you're done."
MGM and Cirque du Soleil are backing the construction of the venue, located near Circus Circus, in southwest Las Vegas Strip. It will be big enough to hold 85,000 people and will feature a mini-city within Sin City. It's also meant to last: Rock in Rio signed a deal good through 2019, for 3 editions of the festival. Roberta Medina hopes to see the venue half full during the two weekends, adding up to 170,000 festivalgoers.
Rock in Rio started in Brazil in 1985 and had the first international breakthrough in 2004, when it arrived in Lisbon, Portugal.
A short venture into Madrid, Spain, didn't go according to plan and the Spanish edition was indefinitely cancelled. Now, the creators of the most successful Brazilian festival plan to conquer America. If they succeed, Medina tells me, there is a chance it might spread to Miami, Florida. "After that, we're made: everything else will be a natural consequence."
