Companies Courting Insomniac?

Though electronic dance music was the genre du jour in 2012, the concert industry’s love for the scene hasn’t waned just yet with rumors of a possible Insomniac Events sale resurfacing.

EDM promoters such as Insomniac and Hard Events were being courted by billionaire Robert Sillerman’s latest incarnation of SFX Entertainment as early as last April and Hard Events was snatched up just a few months later by Live Nation, which also owns the U.K.’s Cream Holdings.

With Insomniac still potentially up for grabs, sources reportedly close to the matter recently told the New York Times the promoter continues to draw interest from Sillerman, who now faces competition from LN, AEG Live and Red Light Entertainment.

Insomniac is being valued between $70 million and $100 million, the Times reported, and the companies are looking to purchase 50 to 100 percent of the Electric Daisy Carnival promoter.

Whether a deal will actually transpire remains debatable. Insomniac head Pasquale Rotella told Pollstar in September he appreciated the growth in the sector, but hadn’t made any decisions on selling the company or long-term partnerships.

“There have been upswings like this before and people who have not been part of the culture, who have not been in the trenches to make dance music what it is, are jumping in,” Rotella said.  “So we’ll see how it pans out over time. But, yeah, I’ve talked to a lot of these guys. They just want to do well. They’re businessmen and want to have success, and they see this as something with potential.”

A sale to Sillerman could mean SFX’s return to concert promotion in a big way. Sillerman spent more than $1 billion to buy up national rock promoters in the late’90s and it seems he’s at it again after pledging last year to spend $1 billion on EDM acquisitions.

He inked an agreement with Disco Productions in Louisiana last year and recently invested in Opium Group’s Miami Beach nightclubs, according to the Miami New Times. A deal with another club owner, Miami Management Group, is also apparently in the works.