Governors Ball Starts Petition To Stop AEG

Organizers of New York City’s Governors Ball festival are taking a novel approach to fight competition – they’ve started a Change.org petition asking Mayor Bill de Blasio to reject a proposal by AEG Live for a “Coachella East”-style event in Queens next year.

While it might seem that the Big Apple and environs has a population base large enough to sustain two major festivals, there’s a catch: AEG’s proposed fest would take place just two weeks after Governors Ball on Randall’s Island.

And that seems to be the impetus for Founders Entertainment to take the petition route to stop it.

“The timing of this proposed event is an aggressive, greedy attempt by AEG to push a small independent company of born and bred New Yorkers out of business and out of the market,” the letter, posted Oct. 15, says.

It’s garnered more than 5,000 signatures one day later. But the New York Daily News reports a second letter from the Governors Ball organizers addressed to de Blasio asks the mayor to consider allowing AEG Live’s event, tentatively called Panorama, to take place but at another time.

“We are excited about the idea of more than one festival in New York,” Founders’ exec Jordan Wolowitz told the paper. “(But) having the same artists two weeks apart is not going to work.”