What is the Life Is Beautiful festival, and is the next one really being held at The Plaza?
Life is Beautiful Music & Art Festival was a centerpiece of Tony Hsieh's Downtown Project investment plan to revitalize the area when it debuted in September 2013 as a two-day music, cultural, and culinary festival. The inaugural event was presented all around downtown and drew a respectable crowd of 60,000; the following year it expanded to encompass three days and sold 90,000 tickets.
In 2015, LiB forged a relationship with Insomniac Events, the company behind the highly successful Electric Daisy Carnival brand, a move aimed at broadening the downtown festival's appeal by upping the EDM quotient. That was a good move and nearly 110,000 attended that year's festival.
By 2019, upwards of 200,000 people thronged throughout 18 closed-to-traffic blocks of downtown from Friday to Sunday and it was reported by Rolling Stone that the festival was one of the highest grossing in the world. It now included more than 100 acts -- major headliners on the main stages and minor bands and stand-up comedians on the outliers; a vast food and beverage lineup of more than 80 chefs and restaurants; immersive, multi-disciplinary, global, art extravaganza with murals, installations, and demonstrations; lectures and storytelling; pool parties; custom posters; and more.
The September 2020 festival was canceled due to COVID.
By the 2023 festival, it had hosted more than a million fans and 600-plus artists.
In 2022, a majority stake in the festival was acquired by Penske Media Corporation (PMC) via its subsidiary Rolling Stone. Rolling Stone acquired the remaining stake from the Hsieh estate earlier this year, so PMC now owns it lock, stock, and barrel. Apparently, taking over the entire downtown Las Vegas isn't to Rolling Stone's liking, so it started looking for alternatives, including the Las Vegas Festival Grounds and other vacant lots in the tourist corridor.
It's been announced, however, that as you write in the question, LiB has apparently found a way to keep the festival downtown: by locating it all over the big Plaza property. Some pundits have expressed doubts about the feasibility -- and wisdom -- of such a plan, both for the festival and the Plaza, and indeed, tickets haven't gone on sale as yet. Plus, the dates, September 20-22, haven't even been confirmed.
But as of this writing, it appears that Life Is Beautiful will take place at the Plaza.
