Emag!c Conjures Up Bucharest Festival

Guido Janssens admitted it’s the biggest project his company has taken on, but he’s well on course to producing the first major outdoor festival to be held in Romania.

The Emag!c Entertainment chief has already confirmed Marilyn Manson, Faithless, and Reamonn will play B’estival, a 30,000-capacity, three-day event on two of the parking lots surrounding the city’s RomExpo Exhibition Centre.

The June 29th to July 1st festival is a bigger logistics exercise than anything that Emag!c’s been faced with in its 12-year history, although last summer’s 45,000-capacity sellout Depeche Mode show in the national soccer stadium was the biggest contemporary live music event Romania has ever seen.

"It’s harder here because of the red tape that you have to go through and the problems caused by the lack of infrastructure. If I’m planning out the site, I can’t just call someone in from Mojo Barriers."

Janssens, who is Belgian, has studied the local market enough to know that people don’t like standing in fields or traveling too far to see any sort of event, which means the traditional idea of the rural European camping festival is out of the question.

Since Janssens, Laura – his Romanian wife – and Dutch promoter Leon Ramakers set up the company in 1995, it’s provided some major U.S. and European touring acts with a safe partner in a relatively unknown and uncertain emerging market.