So far the "who", in terms of who paid for the private event that took place poolside at the Palms on Wednesday night remains very vague -- "a private tech company" is the most detail we've been able to dig up to date and, with the G2E gaming convention in town, the city's awash with techs, although we don't know if these two things are in fact in any way related.
What we can tell you is that the equipment you saw belonged to none other than Beyoncé, who reportedly was paid $6 million to perform a private concert at the off-Strip property on September 29. According to DJ Matt Winter, who performed with the singer at the beginning of the show, "Queen B shut it down" (which you would hope she did for that kind of compensation), although the photograph with that caption that he posted to Instagram was later deleted. After leaving the stage, Winter retired to the audience to watch the rest of the spectacle with Jay Z, who accompanied his wife to Las Vegas.
It's pretty impressive how undercover the whole event succeeded in remaining -- we'd still seen zero coverage in local Las Vegas media as we wrote this last night -- not least since the cat was somewhat let out of the bag more than a week ago, with a contributor to website Styleite.com reporting on September 24 that they had randomly overheard two members of Beyoncé's crew discussing this upcoming event in New York's Chelsea Market and describing it as "a smaller production [than the Global Citizen’s Festival in Central Park, at which she performed on Tuesday]. No smoke box, or anything just an LED screen." Aside from that one little slip, that actually went no further, it appears that both Beyoncé's crew and whoever in the Palms was "in-the-know" managed to keep totally mum about the whole thing, likewise whoever it was who paid for the show and its attendees -- who were numerous.
While from the tiny clips circulating on social media it appears that everyone who officially attended the performance, both on-stage and off, had a good time, the same was not so for some of the show's "accidental" audience members. A guest of the hotel named Ryan Brown took to Twitter complaining "Walls shaking in my hotel room on the 25th floor b/c @Palms booked private pool event for tech company. #notideal #nosleep" and "#beyonce is in Vegas for a private and unannounced tech party. Thx @Palms for no sleep on a work trip." Here's the clip of the show Mr Brown recorded from his hotel window, with the sound clearly audible, although it appears that the Palms somewhat made good by providing him with some ear plugs.
For anyone who's interested, some more photos are available to view via Instagram account beylite.
