Jonathan Mayers, Bonnaroo Co-Founder, Dies

Jonathan Mayers, co-founder of Superfly Entertainment and the co-creator of iconic festivals including Bonnaroo and Outside Lands, has died. His age and cause of death are unknown at this time.

Mayers grew up an hour outside New York City and attended Tulane University in New Orleans, graduating in 1995. He was first introduced to the music business through his work with famed New Orleans venue Tipitina’s and the long-running Jazz Fest celebration. He co-founded promotion company Superfly in 1996 with Rick Farman, Richard Goodstone and Kerry Black and staged its first concert during Mardi Gras with the Meters, Maceo Parker and Rebirth Brass Band. In 2002, the four men launched and sold out the first Bonnaroo after discovering the perfect festival site an hour outside of Nashville in Manchester, Tenn. Partnering with promoter Ashley Capps of AC Entertainment, agent Chip Hooper of Paradigm and manager Coran Capshaw of Red Light — and securing headliners like Trey Anastasio from Phish and Grateful Dead’s Phil Lesh and Bob Weir — the men created a 70,000-person festival that would become the blueprint for hundreds of other music festivals across the country.

In 2005, Mayers’ Superfly launched Vegoose in Las Vegas with programming at multiple
venues throughout the city. The first festival brought in approximately 37,000 visitors, and Mayers and his team ran the festival for three seasons before opting to shut it down. Mayers would also partner with Another Planet Entertainment in the San Francisco Bay Area in 2008 to launch Outside Lands in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park. In 2017, Mayers led efforts to partner with Viacom and Comedy Central to produce a large-scale indoor/outdoor comedy festival in San Francisco called Clusterfest that included performances by Kevin Hart, Amy Schumer, Jon Stewart and Trevor Noah.

While working on Clusterfest, Mayers began interfacing with major film and TV rights holders and created a new experience concept allowing fans to “step inside” some of their favorite TV shows on recreated TV sets. Mayers and team licensed rights from shows like Seinfeld, The Office, South Park, Arrested Development, It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia and The Daily Show to create immersive fan experiences visited by hundreds of thousands of fans. For the show Friends, Mayers led efforts to create pop-up experiences in multiple cities, including New York, Boston and Atlanta.

Despite his success, Mayers’ relationships with his co-founders at Superfly began deteriorating during the COVID-19 pandemic, and in August 2021, he was terminated from his position at the company. In early 2022, Mayers sued Farman, Goodstone and Black and accused them of civil misrepresentation, breach of contract and fraud for allegedly lowballing him for the value of his shares in Superfly. Also named in the complaint was Virgo Investment Group, a California private equity fund; Mayers alleged that its top executive, Jesse Watson, strung him along for months, promising $5 million in financing before firing him last summer. On Jan. 20, 2023, a New York judge dismissed the lawsuit.

After leaving Superfly, Mayers began work on a new project called Core City Detroit which sought to raise money to invest in a “culturally rich neighborhood anchored by a music campus providing world- class services, infrastructure, and housing for local/national artists & industry along with entertainment experiences for the public,” according to an investment deck on the project. Phase 1 of the Core City Detroit project included a drive-in diner by celebrity chef Kiki Louya and the renovation of an old pickle factory into a music production complex.

Mayers’ longtime friend Peter Shapiro, founder of Dayglo Presents and the Brooklyn Bowl, described him as a creative mastermind who had a deep love for live music and a vision for how it would evolve over the next two decades.

“Jonathan was one of the true real visionaries of the modern concert world and one of the core minds behind Bonnaroo,” Shapiro tells Billboard. “Modern-day festivals are all in some way built off of his vision.”

Company officials at Another Planet Entertainment issued a statement to Billboard following Mayers’ passing. “Jonathan was a bright light, always pushing new and creative ideas in the entertainment space,” they said. “He was a visionary who was integral in the founding and the spirit of Outside Lands. Everyone in the Another Planet family will miss him dearly.”