MIAMI – While marking 20 years, Ultra Music Festival once again drew six-figure crowds to Miami’s Bayfront Park with 175 of the top EDM and DJ acts in the world, performing on updated Main, Carl Cox and World stages March 23, 24 and 25.
But 2018 also marked another milestone for the festival, which shares its brand with bass-heavy offshoots that now take place every year in more than 20 countries around the world. The festival’s owners purchased the Winter Music Conference (WMC), the venerable electronic music industry event from which Ultra sprang.
In its heyday, Miami’s WMC, which launched in 1985, spanned 10 days, drawing tens of thousands of participants to as many as 500 workshops and events. Some of those attending the WMC in 1999 also checked out the first Ultra Music Festival, a one-day event that drew about 10,000 to Collins Park in Miami Beach with artists like Paul van Dyk and Rabbit in the Moon, but still managed to lose between $10 and $20K.
Since then, of course, Ultra Music Festival has grown, both in size and profitability, moving from Miami Beach to the downtown area three years later, and expanding from one day to two in 2007, from two days to three in 2011, and from three days to six in 2013.
While the two-weekend format allowed ticket sales to peak at 333,000 in 2013, the year after the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival also moved to a two-weekend format, Miami’s city government responded to complaints from its big-city neighbors by issuing a permit for one weekend only, effectively capping the total ticket sales below the 175,000 mark.
The 2014 event drew an unruly crowd and included a gate-crashing and trampling incident that left a security guard in critical condition, prompting a move among some to cancel the festival altogether. In response, organizers beefed up security and raised the minimum age of admission. Those efforts appear to have paid off, with the number of arrests declining from 67 in 2016 to 35 in 2017 to 27 in 2018.
For its 20th year, some of the original artists who performed on the beach in 1999 were back, including Rabbit in the Moon and Josh Wink, along with such venerable DJ mainstays as Armin van Buuren, Carl Cox, David Guetta, Kaskade, Steve Aoki, Paul Oakenfold, Axwell & Ingrosso and Tiësto.
Other headliners included Afrojack, The Chainsmokers, Hardwell, Porter Robinson, Infected Mushroom and The Wailers featuring Julian Marley, with surprise guests including Will Smith during Marshmello’s Saturday set and Swedish House Mafia capping things off Sunday night.
Along with the main event in Miami, a total of 45 Ultra-branded events in 20 countries, with more than 1,000 top acts drawing more than a million fans to events employing more than 10,000, are now being staged, according to reports, with more than 20 events added to the calendar in 2017 alone.
In addition to the U.S. and Puerto Rico, Ultra Music Festivals and affiliated events are happening this year in South America (Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Paraguay and Peru), Europe (U.K., Croatia, Ibiza), South Africa, Asia (Beijing, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore, Thailand, Indonesia, India, South Korea, Japan and the Philippines), the Middle East (Abu Dhabi, UAE) and Australia.
