Festival 411: Baja Beach Fest Doubles Down On 2021

Chris Den Uijl: So every year, we announce the art direction and overall vibe of the festival and a blind presale that gives you $50-$100 off the ticket, depending if it’s GA or VIP. We sold those – about 6,000 tickets – were ready to go with lineup for 2020, we had Bad Bunny and J Balvin confirmed as co-headliners with their Oasis album show on the final day. It was the first time we were having two headliners billed together, we were really excited about doing something like that. Unfortunately that was where we left it, we never felt comfortable announcing it once COVID started ramping up. We just felt ‘Damn, there is a real chance we are not going to be able to make this happen’ and we didn’t want to misrepresent the lineup if it was going to change, so we just never announced and never went on sale.

Aaron Ampudia: We were supposed to announce the following week (after March 13), and when we had to cancel all of our shows around Spring Break, we made the call that same day to not put out the lineup because we didn’t know how long the shutdown was going to last. And obviously it was the right call, looking back.

Den Uijl: Aaron and I have self-funded this thing together, we put our life savings in on year one, we put it all on the line on the shared belief that we were doing something different that was inclusive of a genre and demo of people that were underserved. We used consumer feedback to inform that and the response was incredible. 

We then reinvested back into year two and again put our life savings into it. And year two was really the ammunition, the horsepower we needed to grow to where we are now. We have added a third day, expanded the grounds, weekend one we will do 35,000 – all 3-day passes, no single days – and our goal is hopefully to do the same weekend two. …

Aaron and I have been really careful with how we have taken money out of the business, what we have kept in, how we reinvest in the product. It was a stroke of luck with us not going on sale, we didn’t go all-in on every marketing effort and all the things you normally would do when you put a full onsale on. Sure, we lost some incremental money in marketing, overhead, investment in vendors, leading into 2020. But we got a little luckier than other festivals that went completely on sale because we were able to shift quickly when we realized there was a big chance 2020 would not happen. We shifted all of our efforts to our relationships with the artists, made sure we had really good communication about what our goals were for 2021 and we just pivoted to that.

We opened up full refunds for anyone that wanted refunds for the 2020 presale. That was a big vulnerability point for us, that could have put us in a bad spot, but we saw 15-16% request refunds. We still had about 5,000 tickets already locked when we went on sale for 2021.

Ampudia: The first thing we did – at the beginning no one knew where it was going – Chris and I were talking every day, looking at the cash flow we had and the months ahead, and then strategizing what would be the best route to take with the team. We decided to open up refunds, but if more than “x amount” would have asked for them, we would have been in a bad spot, but thankfully our fans believe in the product, and know we are good for it, so only 15-16% asked for a refund. 

It was definitely hard, I don’t want to say it was nerve-wracking, but it was tense in terms of figuring out what we were going to do. But we have such a good product we were able to deal with these problems and come out of them the right way. The first thing we did was cut our own payroll, myself and Chris, and made sure we had enough cash flow for the team to stay on and be motivated. It was definitely a task and half, but we’re pretty pleased with the outcome.

Ampudia: We have a year now to really plan and make it extra special for everyone, that’s one of the parts I’m super excited about. There is all this experiential, cool stuff we can plan for 2021 as soon as we get greenlighted; we are introducing a tour, a road to Baja Beach fest.  

Den Uijl: As a promoter, there’s a couple things you get excited about. You get excited about bringing artists and talent fans have never seen before and introducing them at the ground level, before they get big. As a promoter of festivals, it’s all about knowing who is going to be big by the time the festival happens. It’s also bringing their favorite artists to the big stage. And beyond the talent side it’s about the creativity, marketing, and the family style you create within your company.

You get such a short window of planning these incredible, experiential moments, things the fans get to experience leading into the festival from such a digital perspective, but also the physical moment. We’re excited to go back to that. 

How do we enhance our customer’s journey? Our plans are – COVID circumstances permitting – we want to do a Road To Baja Beach Fest in multiple markets where our fans come from in North America, we see that as an opportunity. 

We’ll continue to invest in our own content digitally, something we pride ourselves on. We will be figuring out ways to keep our fans engaged and excited, through merch and different elements. Instead of putting it all in one package and giving it to the fans at announce, we are kind of spreading it out and continuing to introduce new pieces of the festival as it gets closer.

Ampudia: We’ve been working with the city and Secretary of Health for the State. They’ve already asked Papas And Beer (my family’s restaurant) to open, because we are an outdoor venue. 

Basically, we are one year out, so nobody knows what the regulations are going to look like come Baja Beach Fest 2021. Hopefully we are back to some kind of normal and don’t have to maintain 6-feet apart regulations, but we are for sure going to take some of the new measures into consideration. 

Just the overall health and sanitation, for example having hand sanitizer stations throughout the grounds, all of those little things are still going to matter, that is going to be part of the culture now and we are going to have to be one step above whatever is standard, but we don’t know exactly what it will look like. But I’d be lying if I gave you details and said I know exactly how it will be.

Den Uijl: We are excited about bringing new people to the forefront – Anuel AA is somebody people have really been asking about. One big goal is to highlight more women, we made it a big initiative to find people we believed in and people we had been trying to book. Karol G, Paloma Mami, Mariah, Luisa Sonza from Brazil, Gabi from DR (who is signed by J Balvin), Kali Uchis – who has never really done a big Latin festival but is putting out a big Latin EP and is telling a big Latin story – we’re really trying to incorporate that, which is something new.  

Also, last year we put a lot of focus on the top line. We wanted to get the biggest superstars possible and we didn’t really know what our true potential was. We didn’t know if we could sell 30,000 tickets, we thought we could but we hadn’t checked that box yet. 

This year we wanted to focus on bringing the new stars that we believe are the next generation of headliners. We looked at up-and-comers like Lunay, Myke Towers, Rauw Alejandro and strong acts like Farruko, Becky G.

Ampudia: I think the headliners are always a highlight. We haven’t had Anuel for the past two years, so I am stoked about that one. Also some of the originals like Farruko coming back – he was a part of our year one. 

And all these new kids coming up, we’re betting on them early and we know they are going to go the distance. Having them start here, being on one of the biggest festivals for them to perform in their career, it’s pretty dope. Also, I don’t want to get into it too much, but there will be a lot of special moments, the festival will be full of surprises. 

Den Uijl: I think a lot of the headliners have become more like partners for us. When are doing other events like Coca-Cola Flow Festival, or hard-ticket arena tours with some of these artists, we look at them as partners now, not just artists we pay to perform. Guys like J Balvin and Ozuna and their entire teams have grown really close to us, these artists want to be a part of this cultural movement and have said “We want to play on this festival again.” It’s such a humbling thing to have that type of dialogue with these artists and we actually worked with some of them to curate content on the lineup for next year, we took it one step further and communicated with them about what types of content they would like to see.

 

With J Balvin specifically we booked Matt Paris, Gabi, and Sky Rompiendo to build around the culture that he is helping to develop. 

Ampudia: If there was one thing I want to get across it’s that we are super proud to be part of this Latin movement. There weren’t any major Latin festivals before us and the genre didn’t cross over the way it has now. I have American friends that sing Ozuna, J Balvin, Bad Bunny and they don’t know what they are saying, what it means because it’s in Spanish. I remember as a kid in Mexico, I would sing the American songs but I didn’t know what they meant, that was just the top genre of music. 

Being a part of this Latin movement, being able to put together two weekends of straight Latin artists, Chris and I are super proud of that. s