C3’s Huston Powell On How Lolla Continues To Define South American Festival Scene

Major music festival lineups can find themselves criticized for having “cookie-cutter” lineups — largely the same in each city, thanks to artist availability and other factors. While Lollapalooza’s South American lineups share headliners, that’s by design and by necessity logistically, creating a mini-tour of sorts in a difficult-to-reach market. And hey, there’s nothing cookie-cutter about producing music festivals in South America.

“South America is always very difficult to pull off,” says C3 Presents’ Huston Powell, who is credited with much of the success of not only Chicago’s Lollapalooza but its expansion to South America, which started in 2011 in Chile and this year includes four shows on the continent over two weekends in March. “It’s a big geographical territory with limited markets. There are logistics complications with cargo and flights and having to do things very quickly. Just the actual logistics of pulling off our two weekends where we have simultaneous shows going on the first weekend in Chile and Argentina, and the second weekend in Bogotá and São Paulo, that requires a level of complication with us and the production teams and the cargo providers that we don’t deal with in Europe or the United States.”

This year’s lineups are topped by superstars in Olivia Rodrigo, Justin Timberlake, Shawn Mendes, Alanis Morissette, Tool  and Rüfüs Du Sol.  The Lolla brand in South America has created anchor plays for many artists on a continent that might not otherwise be feasible to play, helping to develop a local fanbase and opportunity for other gigs while on South American soil.

“A lot of these bands, we’re bringing down for the first time, which puts a lot of onus on us to choose the right ones,” adds Powell. “We have to kind of thread the needle between keeping the budgets of the show in line and not asking the bands to lose money to do the shows. You’ve got to have bands that want to invest some time in South America, like a stepping stone, and we have a lot of success stories, but it’s difficult every year.”

Pollstar: I know it’s not easy, but landing superstars like Olivia Rodrigo and Justin Timberlake must go a long way.

Huston Powell: We got very fortunate with Olivia globally, because she actually wanted to have a step in her career as a festival headliner, so you’re seeing her pop up as a headliner in South America and on European festivals and at Bonnaroo and GovBall. The smart bands and the smart managers and smart agents want to carve out a two- to three-week period to put a toe-hold down there. If you don’t go and develop the market, the fans will move and go on to something else. You have to look at this as an opportunity to invest in a market like you did in the U.S. when you were selling 500 or 700 tickets.

It seems like, similarly to the U.S., festivals are often competing with stadium tours for headliners now.

I don’t know if it’s gotten more or less difficult, but bands globally have more opportunities. The touring departments at some of the places like Live Nation and AEG have done a good job building these massive tours. You’ve got a whole new wave of bands who have moved into the stadium world, whether that’s Billie Eilish or Post Malone or Kendrick Lamar. We’re selling a story that, if you want to get to the stadium level in South America, you’ve got to invest the time and we are a bridge to that. You can’t really make a lot of money relative to the United States at the arena level in South America, it really comes in at the stadium level. Sometimes we’re lucky enough to be in front of an act like The Weeknd, whose plays were a bridge before he became a stadium act.

Working with local promoter partners in each market – Rock World in Brazil, Lotus in Chile, DF in Argentina — what can be done to make the South American Lollas more feasible for artists and yourselves?

Bands travel lighter in South America than they do in the United States, and we provide video walls and things like that. All the bands, from the top ones down, are kind of streamlined. Video is something we can replicate. Nobody really carries much lighting because that’s expensive to cargo around. We will build a lighting plot kind of around what the headliners want, with substitutions. In the United States or Europe, you can get the latest and greatest fixtures, and you can’t always get them in South America,
certainly not at all four markets.

It’s not all arduous work, though, right?

Exactly. These are fantastic cities and fantastic countries with passionate fans. It’s fun to go down there and play. The fans are wild and know every word to every song. They don’t always have the opportunity to see a lot of these acts, and when they do come, they’re super appreciative. There’s a level of fandom in South America that they don’t get in the United States or Europe.