[Exclusive] Pasquale Rotella Talks Sphere UNITY, Factory Town Upgrades & More
As Insomniac‘s first major collaboration with Tomorrowland, UNITY, comes to close, we sat down for a chat with Insomniac’s frontman and CEO, Pasquale Rotella to talk about a range of hot topics for the events brand and company. We discussed the origins of the UNITY team up, the future of Factory Town, how festival scheduling works, and so much more.
EDMTunes: Thanks for speaking with me today. I’m Scott here with EDMTunes talking to Pasquale Rotella. You guys have your big Sphere Unity finale this weekend (last weekend). So, first things first. Since you’ve been to probably all of the shows so far, what is your favorite viewing area for the show?
I would say the 200 section seats. I like those seats a lot. You not only have a good view, but you also have the energy. You get a perspective of the Sphere itself as well as the energy of the people, which I love. Because I’ve gone to every single one that, it is nice to go and explore the experience from all the different areas. It’s such a different experience depending on where you’re sitting or standing. It’s really enjoyable from all these different angles. But if I have a good friend or from the industry coming, and I really want them to see it and feel it, I put them in the 200 seats.
EDMTunes: Did you have the same experience as me in the Sphere, that you immediately start thinking about how this is like a new format for entertainment? Have you been thinking about a future where there’s a Sphere-type stagt at an Insomniac event?
You know, I love the idea. We explored, a long time ago, having domes at our festivals. That was kind of a new thing back then, but nothing like the Sphere in Vegas. There was a moment where entrepreneurs were making these kind of spherical environments that were in domes, so we played with that a little bit.
Even something less impressive than the Sphere would be very hard to pull off. Being at every single Sphere show, I’m still wowed every time at the grandeur of the experience and the technical marvel that it is and I am always striving for us to do something that is next level. I feel like a dome would never be able to feel the same, because it would have to be a temporary structure. However as far as a simiarly immersive environments, that’s something we’re always working on.
Actually, I was just on a call about a new Circuit Grounds at EDC and we’ve always meant for that stage to be immersive. I mean, it is a little bit, but not nearly enough. The challenge is that it’s such a big environment. It’s easy to do 360 in a smaller stage of maybe 10,000 capacity. When you’re talking 50,000 capacity in one area, how do you make that immersive? We’re constantly working on that every day and we’re constantly trying to think of innovative ways to create a different experience, like the Sphere or like a dome, that is an enhanced environment. The Sphere has absolutely inspired us and it’s been really exciting and fun to work on it.
EDMTunes: People have long awaited Tomorrowland’s re-entry int the US market. Can you tell us about how this partnership came about
It’s been great working with them. It came about because I’ve been talking to the Sphere since before it broke ground. The Owner, James Dolan, would come to EDC before the Sphere came to fruition, and he was loving it. It’s been a while that we’ve been dreaming up what to do there. In one of my meetings with them where we were getting closer to starting a Sphere project, they mentioned that Tomorrowland had reached out to them. I thought “oh, very interesting” because this is a really big building and it’s hard for dance music artists and promoters to get in there and get a date. At this point there’s been only Anyma, UNITY, and next is Illenium, but there has been a lot of bands and there’s a lot more coming. The reason there’s not as many dance acts in there is because it’s so expensive to produce the content and you can’t do two dates, you have to do 8 more – and that’s just to break even.
But you’re doing this because you’re passionate about playing in this beautiful building and not everybody can do that. It’s a little over 17,500 tickets a night. So when I heard about that phone call I was actually at the Sphere when it was brought up. I was already in discussions with Tomorrowland about CORE (LA) and we didn’t really have our concept fleshed out yet. We had a tentative name and some content prepared, but I was still tweaking it and playing with exactly what we were going to do there. When I heard about them reaching out I immediately had the desire to call them and say “are you open to doing this together? How do you feel about that?”. The answer was “wow, that sounds great”. So it really was that simple, it was one phone call. I think I might have suggested the name UNITY.
We’re two different companies on different sides of the world doing very different types of events but at a similar scale. When you think about all of the division in the world, wouldn’t it be cool for two big party promoters to come together and do a show called UNITY? So it was simple and came together pretty quickly. We met with them in person at ADE and that’s where we through names around and we chose UNITY for it.
EDMTunes: In bringing these two EDM titans together, what have you learned about eachother?
Although we were talking about CORE before the Sphere show and other collaborations, I never really worked with them before. So this was the first time working together. I knew it would be fun, but it was even more enjoyable than I expected. Socially, learning about the different characters over there and them learning about our cast of characters. It was a learning experience socially, but also stylistically.
We are culturally, very different. What they do is beautiful and I respect it a lot. I’m so excited that we’re working together, and I got the same feeling from them. I think they also didn’t know much about us, like they do now. I know this because we talked about it a little bit. We were always friendly, even though most people might assume we were super competitive. I’ve gone to their shows and they show up to ours and we host each other at a high level. You can see the differences in the show as an attendee, you know? There’s people of Tomorrow, and then we have headliners. Even that, it’s very different, but it’s been a lot of fun and I’m learning every day. We have partners all over the world. You learn that there are just so many people doing amazing things.
We’ll get behind a promoter that does underground parties or 2000 person events and I’ll learn from them too. That also applies to promoters we aren’t working with – you know? They’ll call us for advice and I’ll get a gauge on something. I listen to as much things as I can but sometimes there will be a guy putting on amazing underground parties and I’ll ask “hey so who;s playing these parties and who are people loving?”. I love that about our scene and that’s the way it should be. Sometimes it might not seem that way to an outsider, but that’s what we’re always striving for. This experience has been all about getting to know the teams and seeing how they do things vs how we do them. It’s going to make us stronger for our next event, CORE in LA.
EDMTunes: You knew were I was goiung next. You already namedropped it, but our readers are very excited about CORE coming to LA. Is there anything you can tease about future collaborations plans?
Well I would not want to tease something unless we knew exactly what it would be and we were both aligned on that. I can speak for Insomniac on this that we love working with them and we’re looking to do more stuff together. This has nothing to do with business but some of my favorite moments from the Sphere was hanging out with their team afterwards at Pepper Mill . I don’t know if you’eve ever heard of it, but you gotta check it out. It’s like a diner.
You know when we did our partnership announcement, and we didn’t say what it was, but we just showed the butterfly and the owl. For me, that was not only announcing the Sphere shows, but also announcing that we were working togrther. I had to actually respond because people got so hyped up thinking it was a one-off Sphere deal and I always have to correct them and say that we definitely plan on doing more together, and then we announced CORE shortly thereafter. I look forward to doing more, and I cant say what those things are but we dream big and so do they and they’ve been great.
EDMTunes: It’s great because Tomorrowland, being a closely held company, a lot of their team has been together for over 20 years. They have a very family-type vibe at their events and it’s cool that you guys get to learn that about them and they get to experience that same vibe on your side.
There’s a lot of narratives out there that people do things just to make money, but it’s much more than that. This has to be part of your lifestyle, your family, friends and all come together to help. It takes so much to accomplish these things that we do. Event producers and artists that have been able to reinvent themselves are still here. There’s a reaosn why thousands of people in events and the music world have come through and don’t survive. It’s so hard.
It applies to artists as well. Look at Tiesto and how he’s been able to reinvent himself so many times because he’s so passionate and he loves music and the culture so much. That takes work, a lot of work. There have been tens or hundreds of thousands of people that have contributed to this culture and this scene that are not here anymore. Look around – I can count maybe 5 people in the whole nation that are still around from “back in the day”. It’s not because they didn’t want to – it’s just very very hard.
So you have to have good people around you that love it as much as you do. It’s a big commitment, and at Insomniac and our partners at UNITY are all lifers, and people have to love it because if you don’t you’re just not going to make it. It’s beyond the job, you have to wake up in the morning thinking about it and go to bed thinking about it, you have a chance to keep doing it. If you clock in and clock out – it won’t work. We don’t, and those guys, do not clock out. It’s not a 9 to 5, that’s for sure.
EDMTunes: Let’s pivot over to the East Coast for a bit. There’s been a lot of talk about Insomniac and Factory Town and a plan to reimagine the venue. They say the plans call for permanent staging and year-round events – so can you tell us what you envision for that space?
I LOVE Factory Town, let me just start off saying that. I wish I could pick it up and duplicate it in Vegas ad LA and other places. I love wearhouse vibes and it’s where we come from. I still love the rattling of the warehouses and the aesthetic of those parties. The first day I walked into that property and we were thinking about whether we should do it or not – it was an immediate “yes”. I think it’s a crime to only use it a handful of times a year. We definitely want to do more there.
In regards to production, we always want to enhance the experience and make it better. We can make things feel, such a way, that the regulars can feel the love that we’re putting into it – that there’s something new and we’re not just leaving it be. There are some things that we can do to make things more efficient. Why should we always have to rent barricades and and bring the same stage back in and out every time? So we’re definitely goint to add some permanent infrastucutre there, but that’s not just for us. That’s also so local Miami promoters can come in there for events, and their costs are lower because they don’t have to bring their own stage. We’re not only wanting to make it a great venue for attendees, but we also want to make it better for Circoloco and other promoters to have space to be able to afford to do more there. Whether it be music or art installations, we’re trying to make it a better venue for attendeess, fans, promoters.
We want it to be an asset for the community -we want to contribute to the community and support locals so wif we can do that, that’s the goal.
EDMTunes: When will attendees be able to see the results of these new efforts?
EDMTunes: Moving up north a bit, at the end of EDC Orlando 2024 you wrote about expanded grounds to improve crowd flow. Can you tell us more about the plan for that this year?
We have pushed it and we’re pushing it more to get every foot we can get. Last year, there was talk online about events being over capacity – but we never do that. The event would get shut down. Everything is monitored by Fire Marshalls and it’s all extremely legit. They use ticket scanners as soon as people walk in. The Fire Marshall is going to have live information on this.
What happens is that these events are booked a year and half in advance. Behind the scenes we’re doing a lot of work. So maybe an artist you’re booking at the time is a smedium-sized artists or a decent sized artist, but by the time the event happens that may change a lot. You have to talk to agents and managers to decide what stage the artist is going to be on, the time slot, who’s on before and after them. Sometime it happens that in the months leading up to a festival an artist will simply blow up. If the festival is 2 stages and a capacity of 50,000 – that means it’s 2 stages with 25,000 capacity each (for this example). Then before the festival one artist blows up from a viral moment or something else. Now one stage has 30,000 people and the other has 20,000. It’s not oversold, it’s just the flow of the crowd and the growth of the artists.
Sometimes we’ll call an agent or a manager and say “you’ve gotten too big and we want to move you”, but then we have to call the other artist that is getting moved and sometimes they say “you’re not moving me! I have a great time and I want my big moment”. So there’s a lot going on that you don’t realize. So when people say the stage was crowded and that the festival must have been oversold, it’s not that. We are always getting better at this and sometimes we even consider cancelling an artist if they got too big. Safety comes first – and we counterprogram. You have to try to predict it in advance and maybe one artists didn’t counterpogram the way you expected in a certain market.
I think we did that really well this year. After time slots were set (internally) we had to go back and make some changes. We didnt announce them so you’ll never know what they were. We also pushed out as far as we could – VIP areas are bigger. We’ve come up with some other ideas like maybe purchasing some land adjacent to Tinker Field. We are always tweaking and adding every inch we can get. We’ve moved some storage offsite to add space. We look at who people have scheduled in the Insomniac App. If we have to make another change we will. The long story short is that it’s so much deeper than you realize.
EDMTunes: Next year the Tinker Field stadium is undergoing a huge facelift that will take a few years. How are you going to deal with that?
We’re in the plans so there’s no disrupting EDC Orlando even during construction. There can always be changes or somethign that isn’t anticipated, but the city loves the event so we’re making sure there’s no skipping of years. The construction will improve the operations of the site for sure. This is part of that discussion I mentioned about purchasing adjacent property, and even tearing down some buildings on the property. Planning is still going on and nothing is solidifed yet, but the overarching goal is more room for us. The construction will not disrupt EDC or make the site smaller or anything like that.
EDMTunes: And finally, are there any artists you’re watching at the current moment?
Yes and they’re not new artists. With the 30 year anniversay I’ve been really deep in conversations with artists and internally about highlight artists that younger generations don’t know about. We’re talking Frankie Bones – he’s a legend in the scene. He coined the term PLUR, and I’m not just going to throw him on a stage. It’s not going to be an art car – it’s going to be a big stage. We need more of that. It’s not just a respect thing, but these guys are still making great music.
We’re going to be putting out information about these artists and it’s not going to be a one-off. I think it’s our duty to do this. I think we need to support tose who have put their blood sweat andtears into this. If they’re still doing great things we should highlight that. This scene is always about what’s next and things move so fast – we need to take a beat and appreciate more.
My head spins from all the new artists. I discover them literally all the time. We have an entire team dedicated to this and yet there is still not enough hours in the day to listen to everything out there. For now the goal is to continue to give love to those who have really contributed to the scene and what it is today.
EDMTunes: It’s been a pleasure speaking with you. Thank You so much!
