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When Warped Tour kicked off in 1995, we’re guessing founder Kevin Lyman didn’t have any idea he’d be mounting a 30th-anniversary edition of his traveling rock fest in 2025 — or that he’d be named Billboard‘s 2025 Visionary at Monday’s (Nov. 3) Billboard Live Music Summit for all the ways he’s helped revolutionize the industry. In fact, he joked onstage that he thought he’d be receiving a different honor: “When you called, I thought it was maybe the ’64 Under 65′ now, and I finally made the list.”
During a panel titled “How Warped Tour Built A Lasting Legacy – And Returned In 2025” at West Hollywood, California’s, 1 Hotel, Lyman was joined by Steve Van Doren, an executive from the tour’s presenting sponsor Vans, as well as Warped vet Fletcher Dragge from the SoCal punk band Pennywise and first-time performer-but-longtime attendee Devin Papdol from L.A. pop-rock band Honey Revenge for a conversation moderated by Billboard editor Taylor Mims.
Below, find the best quotes from each panelist about what makes Warped Tour so special and how it’s evolved across three decades.
Warped Tour founder Kevin Lyman
It was always about trying to get people out to their first festival. You know, having the show end by sunset was a big part of it too. Because to me, 90% of the problems were caused by 10% of the people under cover of darkness at shows. So if we could bring it into the sunshine, we eliminated some of the problems we had, maybe of certain things in punk rock, but it gave people a chance to listen to the music and really observe. … Everything we did from the reverse daycare center [letting parents attend for free in a “Parents’ tent” so teens could attend], all these things I developed were how to get these young people turned on to this music at a younger age, so they can stay with us. I always said they stayed with us until they were 19, and then they wanted to go to a festival and burn up their student loans and do modeling in the desert.
Vans’ Steve Van Doren
I wanted to get skateboarding from Florida, Texas and California to the rest of the country. He [Lyman] wanted to get music in the rest of the country, 35 to 45 stops each year. I thought it’d be perfect. And no room for rock stars — learned that one early. Everybody’s treated the same. Being able to meet [Pennywise’s] Fletcher in the early days, where he invited me over to the barbecue area, and that’s where you get to meet everybody. Everybody’s done at 8:30, 9 o’clock at night. The buses aren’t leaving until 11 o’clock or 11:30, so everybody’s hungry, come back there. And every day is a little bit different.
Pennywise’s Fletcher Dragge
I never went to summer camp, but it was the best summer camp on the planet. So why wouldn’t you go do what you love to do: play music and hang out with the coolest people and do the coolest sh–? Kevin and these guys would always arrange off days, like river trips or wherever you were, and everyone would come, like, all crew, all bands. It was just completely, undeniably some of the best times of my life. So it was like a no-brainer. “You want to come?” Yes. Ten years later: “Now you want to come?” Yes.
Honey Revenge’s Devin Papadol
I went to my first Warped Tour in 2013 and it was kind of the first opportunity for me to be around so many people that liked the same music as me. … Going to Warped opened up this incredible community that I didn’t know was real locally to me; it kind of felt far away until I went. And I went every year until it stopped. … It was how I found all of the music I ended up listening to, and all the music that ended up influencing Honey Revenge.
Pop-punk icons Avril Lavigne and Deryck Whibley reunited onstage over the weekend for a surprise performance of Sum 41’s “In Too Deep” during Lavigne’s headlining set at the Vans Warped Tour stop in Washington, D.C. Explore See latest videos, charts and news See latest videos, charts and news Eight songs into her June 15 set, […]
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.
The pop-punk princess is making her Warped Tour debut at last. As announced Tuesday (Feb. 11), Avril Lavigne will perform at one of three stops on the iconic traveling rock show — which is set to make a comeback in 2025 after six years off the road — for the first time in her career. […]
The legendary Vans Warped Tour could make a return in 2025.
The traveling rock and punk tour, which launched in 1995, would celebrate its 30th anniversary next year, and founder Kevin Lyman hinted at its return earlier this week.
“We have something cooking for 2025,” Lyman told Pollstar. “Details should be ready in a few weeks.”
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See latest videos, charts and news
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Billboard reached out to Lyman to confirm the news but did not hear back by publication.
Warped Tour spent 24 years traveling around North America with acts like The Damned, Green Day, Incubus, AFI, Against Me!, Paramore, M.I.A., The Misfits and hundreds more before retiring the touring model in 2018.
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“I’ve done everything I can in the format that this is in,” Lyman told Billboard at the tour’s final stop in West Palm Beach, Florida, In 2018. “It wasn’t supposed to be around 24 years. It wasn’t supposed to be around more than one year. But enough people saw what I was trying to do.”
In 2019, Warped Tour announced a slate of three 25th-anniversary editions in Ohio, New Jersey and California with a who’s-who of festival alumni including Blink-182, 311, Bad Religion, The All-American Rejects, Andrew W.K., Anti-Flag, Gym Class Heroes, The Offspring, Simple Plan, Bowling for Soup, Taking Back Sunday, Reel Big Fish, Less Than Jake and Good Charlotte.
Following the end of Warped Tour’s run, Lyman rebranded his 4Fini, which put on the annual Warped Tour events, to KLG (Kevin Lyman Group). The production and strategic branding group, KLG, continues to work on festivals and events throughout the industry.
Dry January seems like it’s everywhere, doesn’t it? At the top of every new year, the subject dominates social media posts and conversations with friends over mocktails. In 2022, an estimated 35% of Americans abstained from alcohol for the month of January — an increase from 21% in 2019.
After Dry January is over, many people will pour a drink in celebration of their achievement, while others may choose to make abstaining from alcohol a more permanent lifestyle. But for many Americans, the problem of addiction is more serious. More than 14 million adults in the United States have alcohol use disorder, and each year, we lose nearly 100,000 people to alcohol-related causes.
The music industry — known for “sex, drugs, and rock ‘n’ roll” — is among those hardest hit. A 2020 research project involving Tulane University found that a staggering 56% of music industry professionals cite problematic substance use. And we’re all familiar with the countless stories of artists who have tragically lost their lives or felt like they couldn’t return to the stage as they battled their addiction.
Now, the music industry is beginning to take the lead in supporting people in addiction recovery through community and empowerment, with musicians, fans, industry executives and crew showing what’s possible with innovative new solutions that go beyond the traditional recovery model.
Sadly, conventional approaches to addiction are not solving the problem at the same pace it’s growing. Despite the best of intentions, these traditional approaches can lead to feelings of shame and exclusion; many people in recovery say treatment programs can be too much sitting around and talking about their weaknesses. They can also feel isolating, and loneliness is one of the worst problems someone struggling with addiction can face. Because of this, there’s a negative stigma surrounding people in recovery.
But Dry January shows us something different. Instead of fostering isolation, it creates community, and it feels empowering because “everybody’s doing it,” It’s also inclusive of people who have challenges with substance use as well as those who don’t. There’s no demarcation: “We’re all in this together.” You feel freer to plan fun, sober activities with others. And whether you’re out socially or at a work event, you don’t have to make excuses for not drinking. People openly share how good they feel and how they’re gaining from it, not what they’re giving up.
It begs the question: What if this was how we supported people in recovery all year round? In music, at least, it’s a question that’s now being answered by a number of artists, companies and organizations.
The Warped Tour provided mental health and sobriety support on the road throughout, including bringing along a sober coach as a guide to artists and crew in recovery. This not only allowed the tour to help those who were trying to stay sober but also offered services to those whose habits were starting to affect their well-being before it became a larger issue.
Last year, Danny Wimmer Presents joined forces with 1 Million Strong, an initiative driven by Stand Together and The Phoenix (one of the most innovative recovery programs in the country) to create sober-supportive spaces or “wellness retreats” — for people in recovery and others — at last year’s Bourbon & Beyond Festival and the Louder Than Life Festival. In October, The Chainsmokers did the same at their concert at UC Berkeley’s Greek Theater.
This isn’t about turning the industry sober. It’s about giving people a better path to truly living in recovery so they can bring their best selves to music — allowing everyone to benefit from their unique contributions.
It’s clear that people across the music industry see the urgent need for something new. And perhaps it’s not surprising to see how the industry is uniquely able to offer it.
Just like the best aspects of Dry January, perhaps there’s no greater force on Earth than music at fighting isolation with community, overcoming shame by tapping into inner strength and beating stigma with self-expression and pride.
Colette Weintraub is the head of Stand Together Music, working alongside the music industry to co-create solutions around addiction recovery, education, free speech, and ending the war on drugs.
Kevin Lyman, best known as the creator of the Vans Warped Tour, has shaped youth culture for over 40 years with his award-winning expertise in the music and entertainment industry as well as business and philanthropic ventures.
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