Features
Optimus Tops
It didn’t quite match up to last year when 160,000 came through the gates, but this year’s Optimus Alive will likely end up being Portugal’s biggest fest of 2013.
On Lisbon’s Alges Park, a vast expanse of grassland next to the now-scenic old docklands, Optimus Alive also appears to have twinned itself with Spain’s BBK Live, which ran over the same weekend.
Headliners Green Day, Depeche Mode, and Kings Of Leon played both events, as did Vampire Weekend, Biffy Clyro, and Two Door Cinema Club, among others.
This year’s festival was a three-dayer with attendance of 150,000, producing an average daily crowd of 50,000. Last year’s three-day festival attracted 160,00, as did the four-dayer that took place in 2011.
Nuno Vieira from event promoter Everything Is New puts this year’s Optimus as “the second-best year ever” clearly determined to see the festival – which started in 2007 – one day break another record by pulling more than 160,000.