Nederlander Wants Its Sunset Money

The Sunset Strip Music Festival in Los Angeles is officially defunct after years of hemorrhaging cash and its recent co-promoter, Nederlander Concerts, is seeking recourse for what it says is unkept promises.

Since then it was a fenced affair, with traffic redirected from the boulevard.

“The idea of closing down a street on the Sunset Strip is unbelievably romantic,” Maribel Louie, the city’s arts and economic development manager, told the Los Angeles Times. “The practicality of that is it’s probably the most expensive way to put on a music festival.”

With the addition of an outdoor mainstage plus bleachers and acts like Linkin Park, Marilyn Manson and last year’s headliner,

The street fest began in 2008, organized by the nonprofit Sunset Strip Business Association. It originally was a promotion of the various famed music venues along the Sunset, with clubs like the Whisky A Go Go, expenses grew despite contributions extracted from nearby businesses, according to the Times. The festival lost $577,431 in 2012, $389,414 in 2013 and more than $1 million last year. The difference is, last year Nederlander agreed to be a co-promoter, not knowing of the previous years’ losses, the company claims. It did, however, cover itself with the stipulation that it would only take a $50,000 hit if the event went sideways.

Meanwhile, after two years of operating in the red, the Sunset Strip Business Association doubled the size of the festival, the paper said. Sunset Strip Music Festival LLC – a limited liability company entirely owned and managed by the business association to operate the festival – asked for an emergency loan of $150,000 from Nederlander days before the festival began last September, according to documents, and agreed to repay it by June 30 with sponsorship money from Jack Daniels.

Instead, Nederlander claims it is still owed about $610,000 that includes about a half-million dollars in artist deposits.

Photo: Invision / AP

Sunset Strip Music Festival, West Hollywood, Calif.

Alex Hodges, Nederlander Concerts CEO, told the Times that he is “always surprised when people don’t honor what they say,” and provided Pollstar the following statement: “Our contract to promote the 2014 Sunset Strip Music Festival called for a small upside and a small downside, and our primary objective was to protect the artists involved. The parties are working to reach an amicable resolution, and we are optimistic that this matter can be resolved.”

The nonprofit group did not make many friends with the businesses near the Sunset Strip, which said they had “no choice” but to pay up to $35,000 for the fest’s maintenance and marketing.

“The fees that we pay annually are exorbitant,” a group of owners of businesses like BOA Steakhouse, The Viper Room and Pink Taco wrote to the city. “In the current economic climate, we simply do not have the ability to spend this amount towards something that does not benefit us and actually hurts us at times.”

The Times tried to contact the Sunset Strip Business Association but got a voicemail that said the lineup for the 2014 event would soon be announced. The organization’s office is now a construction pit where the Marriott Hotel is being built, the paper said.