The Rise and Collapse of TomorrowWorld

Transcript

In 2013, Tomorrowland was brought over to America, and at first it was going great. In its first two years, the festival drew over 300,000 attendees. People loved it. But by the third annual festival in 2015, that all changed. Instead of being remembered as a spectacular event, it would go down as a fatal disaster. The festival's parent company would go bankrupt, and tens of thousands of people would demand refunds.

The festival was called TomorrowWorld. It was Tomorrowland's way of bringing the magic of their legendary European festival to the US. Except it wasn't really run by Tomorrowland. Just a few years prior, they had sold a 75% stake in their company to this guy, Rob Sillerman, the man who planned to corporatize EDM. His company, SFX Entertainment, wanted to turn TomorrowWorld into America's next festival empire. They had gone on a year-long buying spree of EDM festivals: Electric Zoo, Mysteryland, and Life in Color. So when they bought Tomorrowland, it just felt like another step in their plan.

For the first two years of the festival, everything went well. People were saying it was one of the best festivals they'd ever been to. "Best festival of all time." "Easily top three experiences of my life." The festival even brought in over $70 million to the local Georgia economy in its first year alone.

But then, in 2015, it was different. SFX was going bankrupt. Just a couple of months before TomorrowWorld 2015, the stock price had dropped to $1.26, a significant difference from its original price of $13 back in 2013. Which meant one thing: there had to be budget cuts, meaning they hired fewer workers and had cheap, unprepared transportation systems. There was no plan B.

While the SFX team was attempting to prepare for these challenges, a very different story was unfolding near the site of TomorrowWorld. A storm was rolling in, nothing too crazy, maybe half an inch of rain over the weekend. Meanwhile, at the TomorrowWorld campgrounds, over 40,000 campers had arrived on Thursday and Friday. Festival organizers were relieved that a storm from the night before had cleared up just in time for the event to move forward as planned.

But as the weekend wore on, the weather once again began to shift. The rain returned on Saturday, and this time it wasn't stopping. It wasn't a violent storm, but a steady one, soaking rain that lasted for days. The Chattahoochee Hills site, 8,000 acres of grass and red Georgia clay, quickly turned into a muddy mess. And the ground, already wet from Friday's rain, was now being trampled by tens of thousands of people, making things worse by the hour.

But the attendees were ready. They threw down tarps, pulled on their boots, and were okay with a little bit of rain. Festivals turning into mud pits isn't exactly uncommon. Glastonbury, one of the biggest festivals in the world, gets hit with rain almost every year. But the thing is, they planned for it. They have drainage systems and gravel walkways in place. They have backup plan after backup plan. TomorrowWorld did not have that.

While Friday, the first official day, went well, Saturday was when the real breakdown began. By mid Saturday, the rain had drenched the entire festival grounds. The walkways became slick and unusable. And more importantly, the roads leading in and out of the site were unpaved, meaning it was nearly impossible for shuttle buses to get through. Some literally got stuck in the mud. Others couldn't even make it close to the pickup zone. So festival organizers made a drastic decision: they shut down all access roads and canceled all shuttles to and from hotels.

Here's the problem: over 60% of the attendees weren't staying on site. They had hotel rooms or cars parked over 10 miles away. When the main parking lots flooded with mud, attendees were redirected to remote lots further away, where shuttles were supposed to transport them to and from the grounds. But that system collapsed too. So now you have thousands of people at the festival having a great time, but they haven't realized one thing: they have no way to get out of there, back to their hotels and cars.

As the last act of the night finished up on Saturday, they realized the shuttle station was closed. A crowd of people arrived at the shuttle station expecting to be brought back to their cars and hotels, only to realize they had to walk even further. People were told to hike through mud for miles just to reach an area where a shuttle might still be operating. And even when they got to the second shuttle station miles away from the festival, shuttles were scarce there too. They had apparently shut down those shuttles as well without telling anyone, even the employees. Now thousands of them were stuck at this shuttle station, and they were left with two options: they could either sleep there, waiting for a shuttle to hopefully save them, or continue walking however many miles back to their cars.

Fearing another disaster, organizers restricted access for Sunday. Only those staying at the Dreamville campground were allowed in, and this made everyone pissed, because over half the people going on Sunday were not at the campground. A statement was released by TomorrowWorld: "Friends, today, Sunday, September 27th, Mother Nature has decided otherwise. TomorrowWorld will only be accessible to visitors currently camping at Dreamville. Continuous rainfall over the last three days has severely limited the capacity of parking lots, entrance roads, and drop off locations."

That meant tens of thousands of guests were turned away, many with tickets still in hand. Day pass holders, hotel guests, even people on the guest list were all denied. As the backlash spread online, TomorrowWorld finally announced a refund policy. Refunds were offered for Sunday passes, parking, lockers, and shuttle tickets. Three-day passholders received a partial refund, about a third of the ticket price. Eventually, a full refund was issued.

Organizers blamed the weather, but for many, the real issue wasn't that. It was a lack of planning. They had no real emergency response and no way to handle the rain. It was a complete logistical failure. And in 2016, TomorrowWorld did not return. Its parent company, SFX, filed for bankruptcy.