State Champ Radio Touring
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In collaboration with Billboard, Montauk Yacht Club has announced the return of its Marina Music Series, kicking things off with NEIL FRANCES on June 21 and continuing with Paco Versailles on July 5, with more talent announcements yet to come. Explore Explore See latest videos, charts and news See latest videos, charts and news The […]
Colombian singer songwriter Fonseca is taking his Latin Grammy-winning Tropicalia Tour on a limited U.S. arena run that kicked off June 10 in Atlanta and will play in seven cities before heading off for nearly 20 dates in Latin America and Spain. The trek will mark the first time Fonseca has played songs from 2024’s […]
Rolling Loud is headed to India. The hip-hop festival – which already has editions in California, Florida and Thailand – will debut its first festival in Mumbai after bringing the signature event to eight other countries. The two-day festival will be exclusively ticketed and produced in partnership with District by Zomato, a discovery and booking app.
“We never imagined Rolling Loud would take us all the way to India — it’s incredible,” Rolling Loud co-founders and co-CEOs Matt Zingler and Tariq Cherif said in a joint statement. “The hip-hop scene in India has been booming, and bringing the festival to Mumbai felt like the right decision. We’re excited to create a space where Indian fans can celebrate the artists they love, while also introducing international acts to a new audience. For us, it’s always been about building community through hip-hop — and we can’t wait to experience how India shows up.”
The two-day festival in India — which will announce dates and venue at a later time — will feature two distinct stages with elaborate production, plus fans can enjoy a series of local food and drink options, art installations and experiential activations that all tie back to the celebration of global and Indian hip-hop culture. Rolling Loud India promises a spotlight on an array of global superstars and international talent and top and rising Indian hip-hop artists.
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“India’s hip-hop scene is on fire right now, it’s raw, it’s real, and it’s ready. Rolling Loud coming to India isn’t just another festival drop; it’s a cultural shift,” District by Zomato CEO Rahul Ganjoo said in a release. “For years, we’ve felt the need to bridge India’s sound with the global stage, and this is that moment. It’s bigger than music, it’s a loud, undeniable signal that Indian hip-hop is here, it’s global, and it’s got something to say. We’re proud to bring this home.”
Since the event was founded in 2015, Rolling Loud has held festivals in New York, Miami, Toronto and Los Angeles, as well as in Australia, Germany, Portugal, The Netherlands, Thailand and Austria. Rolling Loud lineups throughout the last decade have included Kendrick Lamar, Nicki Minaj, Future, Travis Scott, A$AP Rocky, Cardi B, Playboi Carti and more.
Rolling Loud India tickets will go live exclusively on the District app. For more information on talent lineup, ticket details, festival details and more, check the District app and @districtupdates page on Instagram.
In honor of the FIFA World Cup coming to North America next year, Liberty State Park in New Jersey — located across the Hudson River from Manhattan — has been selected as the official site of the FIFA Fan Festival, produced by Live Nation and DPS.
Met Life Stadium will host eight FIFA World Cup 26 games, including the Final Match. As a result, the NYNJ Host Committee chose Liberty State Park due to its stunning views of the Manhattan skyline and proximity to Ellis Island and the iconic Statue of Liberty. The FIFA Fan Festival NYNJ is expected to attract tens of thousands of fans during the 39-day tournament, which is set to take place from June 11 to July 19, 2026. Besides concerts and chances to participate in soccer challenges, fans can watch real-time match broadcasts and interactive fan activations, as well as activations for FIFA’s various corporate sponsors.
“The FIFA Fan Festival NYNJ will be the largest and most visible fan experience of the entire tournament,” said Alex Lasry, CEO of the NYNJ Host Committee, in a statement. “This isn’t just about watching matches, it’s about celebrating the game” and “creating lasting impact for our communities, partners, and millions of fans.”
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As part of its role programming FIFA Fan Festival NYNJ, Live Nation will present a number of premier concerts on non-match days, “creating marquee moments that celebrate the intersection of soccer, music, and culture,” according to a press release.
“The FIFA World Cup 2026 is one of the world’s most prestigious events and an unparalleled opportunity to highlight the region’s diversity and deliver unforgettable fan experiences,” added Geoff Gordon, Chairman of Live Nation Northeast Region. “We’re honored to support the NYNJ Host Committee on this historic moment.”
Production company Diversified Production Services will handle most of the logistics of the FIFA Fan Festival, said Darren Pfeffer, president of DPS, who said in a statement, “The FIFA World Cup draws billions of viewers from all over the planet, and the FIFA Fan Festival NYNJ will enable hundreds of thousands of fans to experience it in an immersive way.”
Christie Huus, chief events officer of the FIFA World Cup 2026 NYNJ Host Committee, added, “There’s nothing more powerful than bringing people together, and the FIFA World Cup will ignite our region with energy and excitement. The depth of experience Live Nation and DPS bring will ensure success in transforming NYNJ into one big block party.”
Tickets for the FIFA Fan Festival go on sale soon at FIFA.com/tickets.
Turnstile is hitting the road this fall in support of their new album Never Enough, launching Sept. 15 in Nashville. The tour includes support acts SPEED and Jane Remover and special appearances by guests Amyl & The Sniffers, Blood Orange and Mannequin Pussy. Last week, the band released their new record and companion film Turnstile: […]
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 multiplevenues 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.
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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.”
While riggers hung massive lights and construction workers assembled the stage on a grueling day before Tyler Childers‘ June 2024 concert at the United Center, three young locals showed up: Cheryl, Larry and Ted. And Cheryl gave Kyle Crownover, Childers’ tour manager, a look.
“I was like, ‘I think that’s the one,’” he tells Billboard.
Cheryl, a small terrier-chihauhua mix who tends to “collapse in people’s arms and just look at them,” as Crownover puts it, was a delivery from Chicago’s One Tail at a Time, an animal-rescue group that admitted 1,126 dogs in 2022 and found homes for 1,066, a 97% save rate. Over the past few years, Chappell Roan, Sabrina Carpenter, Kelsea Ballerini, Ed Sheeran, Green Day, Pearl Jam, Blink-182, Maggie Rogers and many others have been beneficiaries of adorable furry deliveries to cheer up artists and crews.
“We’re usually on the road three weeks at a time, so that’s three weeks away from your family. We’re close with the crew, but, on a show day, there’s not time to go meet your friends in the city, so we’re confined to whatever spot we’re playing,” Crownover says. “To bring that in” — the puppies, and occasionally kittens — “and instantly see everyone’s mood change, it’s hard to be stressed.”
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The trend of bringing adoptable pets backstage kicked in about a decade ago, when members of Slayer, Testament and Carcass posed for adorable photos in which they were cuddling with rescued animals before a Seattle show in 2016. But it took off after the pandemic. Returning to work and dealing with strict COVID-19 protocols, inflation and supply-chain issues, crews could be glum.
In some cases, artists — especially those involved in their own animal-rescue charities, such as Miranda Lambert’s Mutt Nation — request the perk in advance. In others, venue managers emphasized “taking care of crew and making sure that the backstage is more of a place where they feel welcome and more at home,” says Amy Tavares, a Nashville-based Live Nation backstage experience manager who has worked with Wags & Walks and other groups to bring in puppies, kittens, goats and pigs to arena and stadium concerts over the last few years.
“It absolutely could be therapeutic. The road can be isolating for everybody, and it makes sense to me that these animals who are offering love and connection are highlighting a deep need for that,” Lucy Kozak Cesnik, a Nashville psychotherapist who used to work as a CAA music agent, tells Billboard. “Animals can lead the way to access being seen and heard, with people who’ve had trauma in their relationships, without their defenses up. Healing can’t just happen in the therapy office.”
Adds Marika Anthony-Shaw, a former Arcade Fire violinist who is founder and CEO of Plus1, a philanthropy group that partners with Carpenter: “You go from bus to backstage and bus to backstage, maybe a couple hotels and maybe a couple flights. There’s a sense of Groundhog Day. The mental-health benefits of interacting with animals reduces stress. There’s a mood boost.”
Working with managers and concert venues, the local rescue groups identify three or four young animals — usually pups — who are more likely to be friendly to people because they haven’t yet learned to be scared of them, then cart them in carriers to the show. They bring playpens, food and treats, and the venues provide a backstage room and bowls of water. So far, no dogs have been reported to have escaped and roamed the stage, disrupting shows, This Is Spinal Tap-style.
“They did not do that!” says Greta Palmer, chief communications and brand officer for Best Friends Animal Society — a Utah-based animal sanctuary with programs in New York, Los Angeles and elsewhere — which provided three puppies and three kittens at a Carpenter show last year, and six kittens as part of a “cuddle lounge” for a 2023 Kesha concert in Atlanta. “We have a bunch of staff that go, and we’ll set up an area with a gate, and people can come in and hang with them, play with them, love on them [and] ideally adopt them.” (Best Friends did not do on-site adoptions for the Kesha show, and none of the animals were adopted at the Carpenter event.)
The strategy worked for Crownover and Cheryl, whom the tour manager adopted shortly after Childers’ Chicago concert. Cheryl has been on the road with the crew ever since, meeting 100 new people a day and greeting visiting foster puppies in various cities. (Crew members on the Childers tour also adopted Larry and Ted after meeting them at the United Center.)
“The main reason we do it is to promote the dogs and promote adoption,” says Alli Rooney, One Tail at a Time’s marketing manager. “And everyone needs a bit more lightness in the world right now.”
The animal visits are pure good-vibes publicity too. When Motley Zoo Animal Rescue brought dogs to the 2016 Slayer-Testament-Carcass show in Seattle, the most tattooed and scowling of metal stars melted in photos with adorable puppies; when Brighter Days Dog Rescue brought dogs to Billie Eilish’s Denver show in November, the organization’s social media post showed the singer-songwriter cheek to cheek with puppies and said they were “showered with love” by the star; and Sheeran has posed with tiny backstage-delivery kittens multiple times, including in 2017, when the SPCA of Wake County surprised him before a Raleigh, N.C., show with animals rescued from a nearby horse farm. At CMA Fest’s kickoff in Nashville June 5, Wags & Walks provided adoptable puppies at an “artist oasis” area, luring country performers such as Gavin Adcock, Ashley Cooke, Meghan Patrick and Kaylee Rose.
Gavin Adcock
Wags & Walks
Some venues, according to Mallory Kerlie, marketing director of Muddy Paws, a New York dog-rescue group, have restrictions on both dogs and cats, many relating to the potential for rabies or injuries. And some rules disallow pit bulls or dogs heavier than 25 pounds. “Here in New York, that’s a particular challenge,” she says. But Muddy Paws accompanies the puppies with trained staff and reliable carriers, and navigates public transportation in case parking is an issue. At the venues, she adds, “It’s a small room with doors. That’s usually the best way to keep them safe.”
Kittens are slightly easier to haul into concerts than dogs, notes Best Friends’ Palmer. She explains: “We can just set up an X-pen and they tend to stay pretty contained.”
Wags & Walks has provided puppies, kittens and even baby goats and pigs for Nashville arenas and stadiums. The non-profit animal rescue group placed the dogs in a soundproof room during Rufus Du Soul’s Ascend Amphitheater soundcheck in May (“So they wouldn’t get scared,” explains Taveras), and also surprised Kelsea Ballerini at Crypto.com Arena in Los Angeles by presenting her with three small sibling puppies for a photo op.
Neither Ballerini nor her team was available for a post-pup interview, but Lesley Brog, founder of Wags & Walks, knew the country superstar’s own dog, Dibs, was going through cancer treatment. “She’s a huge dog lover, and they thought it would make sense,” she says.
Shortly after the puppies arrived before Ballerini’s show, Wags & Walks set them up in a conference room near the office of Cara Vanderhook, the arena’s vp of marketing and communications. The exec mentioned them in a staff chat, and within half an hour, Vanderhook tells Billboard, “I’m not joking, I probably had 30 people in the conference room playing with these puppies. It gave everybody a moment to take a breath when they needed it.”
Last month, Billboard Boxscore revealed its midyear touring recap, dominated by Coldplay, K-pop and Las Vegas’ Sphere. With the launch of Billboard’s comedy hub, we’re taking a closer look at the top-grossing comedy acts at the midyear mark. The 2025 midyear recap provides a switch-up at the top of the list. Kevin Hart led the […]
The “Powerpuff Girls of Pop” descended on Barcelona, Spain this past weekend (June 5-7).
Vans Warped Tour might be one of the best-selling festivals of 2025, but organizers say no one music act is responsible for moving the bulk of the 240,000 tickets sold so far across three U.S. cities. Indeed, the brand name alone seems to have been enough.
“We sold the vast majority of those tickets before we had a lineup,” says Kevin Lyman, founder and producer of the traveling punk show, which ran from 1995 to 2018 before returning this year for a limited 30th anniversary run. Lyman, who has partnered with Live Nation festival company Insomniac for this year’s Warped, is working from a makeshift office and headquarters after the Los Angeles wildfires earlier this year forced him to leave his Altadena home, which was damaged but largely spared from the blaze.
“I think there’s nostalgia in the market, but it’s not just for the music — people are longing for events that are affordable and give them a chance to discover something,” says Lyman. Prices for this year’s Warped Tour are $149 for a two-day pass, and the tour is much shorter, with just three stops this year instead of the typical 36 markets. Two of the three markets piggyback off events organized by Insomniac: Warped’s Washington, D.C. stop, from June 14-15, comes two weeks after Insomniac’s Project Glow EDM fest; while the Orlando stop, Nov. 15-16, takes place one week after EDC Orlando at Camping World Stadium. Warped Tour is also coming to Long Beach, Calif., from July 26-27 at Shoreline Waterfront Park.
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Each of the three two-day stops on the tour accounts for nearly 80,000 tickets sold. When combined, the fans attending all six days of the Warped Tour this summer will have purchased 240,000 tickets. That’s likely more tickets than were sold at Coachella this year, which took place over two consecutive three-day weekends, sources tell Billboard. It also likely surpasses the number of tickets sold at the three-day Electric Daisy Carnival in Las Vegas.
Billboard recently caught up with Lyman to discuss the 30th anniversary tour, including how he pitched it to Steven Van Doren, son of Vans founder Paul Van Doren; his expectations from the fans; and whether the 2025 outing is a one-and-done or has the potential to return in 2026 and beyond.
What made you decide to bring Warped Tour back?
People don’t miss something until it’s taken away. I had a fantastic crew; we did a lot of marketing for bands and helped a lot of younger artists. And then, when we took it away, people realized that there was a place for something like Warped Tour. But by then I was busy doing other things — traveling, teaching my class at USC and working on other projects. And then the pandemic hit, and being on a college campus and being around young people, I could see a new need for Warped Tour arise.
What kind of reception have you received so far?
I think it’s been exciting because the bands that remember Warped Tour remember how important it was to their careers, and the younger bands now are super excited to be able to have that experience and be part of it.
Why did you bring in Insomniac for this year’s Warped Tour?
There’s a lot of people over there that grew up around Warped Tour, attended in the past and even worked on Warped Tour. Maureen Valker-Barlow, who works as a senior vp at Insomniac and landed her first job at Warped Tour, approached me, and it was easy for us to figure out how to work together. And then it was like the green light came on, and we just ran with it. They have great people over there like Amanda Phelan, who is a great booker, and Maureen, who I previously mentioned, handling sponsorship, as well as Chris Barlow and Nathan Armstrong in production. I’ve always operated as very small and independent, working in a garage, and they’re a big company, and they know how to run festivals. They handle a lot of the day-to-day stuff, absorbing a significant part of the logistics. And marketing. They’ve given me a little bit more of that structure. What was it like approaching Vans to do another tour? That was easy, because Steve Van Doren and myself go back — we’re talking 25 years of Warped Tour and years before that. It was easy to go over there and say, “Hey, here’s the idea, let’s bring it back with these people. I have faith in them.” Sure, there was a lot of paperwork, but it only took ten minutes of conversation to get this thing going.
Was it difficult to come up with a budget around a $149 ticket price?
Not at all, because I knew from the beginning that Warped would only work if we kept the ticket price fair. I feel strongly that a $149, two-day ticket is affordable to our fans. I think 90% of the reason that people are getting turned off by festivals is because they’re too expensive. Warped was always the show for people that maybe didn’t have that money for some of the other festivals. Both myself and Insomniac felt $149 was the right price, and a lot of people have responded to that price. It also helps that we delivered the lineup. It’s an eclectic lineup that touches on our history and past, but it also looks forward to the future. I’m excited to see which of the younger bands we’ve booked get the biggest reaction from the fans.
You’ve got some big names on the lineup this year like Avril Lavigne, Fishbone, Less Than Jake, Dropkick Murphys, Pennywise and Sublime. You’ve also got dozens of baby bands and newcomers scheduled to play. How do you strike the right balance between old and new?
Well, it’s partially an economic exercise. Every band you book, no matter how big, makes up part of your ticket price, and you always have a few that are reliable and a few that are more of a gamble. We’re booking some of these bands in January, wondering how big they will be in August? Are they going to be bigger than what we paid them? Can the $5,000 band generate $25,000 in value from fans who are excited to see them? If you look at our social media right now, we really don’t need to push Sublime or Rise Against. They’re already known. People are going to enjoy them, and they’re going to have a big, big crowd. We want to grab onto those younger acts like LØLØ or Honey Revenge and really boost them on our social media so they have a big audience at Warped Tour. A lot of what we focus on is leveraging the Warped brand and the larger bands to help raise the profile of the smaller acts.
Did you get the idea to list the bands on the lineup poster in alphabetical order from Insomniac?
No, that’s something I started doing in 1996 because I hate arguing over billing. I think we waste so much time arguing over font size on the poster when we should be marketing to fans and getting behind the show. People are smart. People will come and find the bands they want to see. If you could put Korn in the bottom corner of a festival lineup, people would find them and be excited about them.
What about scheduling? How do you keep egos in check with the schedule?
We don’t announce the set times until the day of the show. I do that because I want people to come early and enjoy all the young bands. I go to too many festivals where people come in at sunset and miss all the great young bands. And my thing is, Warped fans are diehard music fans. They’re not fashion fans, they’re there for the music. And they’re going to figure out the lineup. And I think everything we’re doing so far is working. Hopefully, we deliver the show that people will want to come see next year.
So Warped is not a one-and-done? This is a multi-year project?
I want to really go see what the first show is like in D.C. before we make any final decisions on that. I want to go see the audience and who’s coming. Is it people that want to be part of something moving forward, or people trying to capture a memory? My guess is that it will be a blend of both, but we’ll see.
Could it return as a true touring property, going from city to city, buses and all?
No. Definitely not. I can’t do that to myself, hitting the road for two months straight. I’ve had seven different surgeries because of the Warped Tour. I don’t need any more.
