Coachella’s reputation precedes itself. Even so, the annual festival always finds new ways to one-up the previous year. This April, Coachella 2023 featured unprecedented headliners like Bad Bunny and Blackpink. While we wait for the 2024 lineup, information has been released about location and ticketing.
We can count on Coachella returning to the Empire Polo Club in Indio, California, but the number of people flooding the grounds across two weekends is anyone’s guess. According to The San Diego Union-Tribune, Coachella 2023 was “the first edition of the six-day, two-weekend festival at Indio’s Empire Polo Club since 2010 to not sell out in advance.”
The same report relayed the following:
“Coachella, which grossed $117 million in 2017, averages 125,000 daily attendees. About 20 percent of them each year are from San Diego County.
Coachella’s opening 2019 weekend sold out in 40 minutes, while the second 2019 weekend sold out slightly over five hours later. It is not uncommon for most tickets to be purchased the previous year, before even a single performer has been announced.
Intriguingly, the 2019 sell-out actually represented a slowdown compared to the event’s 2017 and 2018 editions. They each sold out in just three hours.”
Brittanica also noted, “In 2010 organizers angered some attendees by eliminating single-day tickets in favor of full three-day festival passes. Attendance was not hurt, however, and Coachella set a record by attracting about 75,000 people each day. By the early 2020s, average daily attendance was about 125,000.”
This year was the first that Coachella performances across six stages were livestreamed. But whoever chooses to attend the 2024 edition will be in for a treat, according to what Uproxx‘s Philip Cosores observed at this year’s edition.
“While YouTube can give you the feel of a performance and show you what’s happening, that shared emotion of being in the same space stays on the polo fields,” wrote Cosores. “Year after year, while people knock Coachella for changing — I prefer evolving and growing — it only takes one trip out there to realize that it’s still expertly curated, featuring some of the most exciting rising and established acts in music, and full of moments of pure joy.”
