Coachella 
For this assignment, I have decided to discuss and research the phenomenal Festival of Coachella, also known as The Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival. The hallmark event takes place every year in an American city called Indio where the first festival was in the year of 1999. The festival takes place across two weekends in April, 14th-16th and 21st-23rd, even though it initially started out as one date, the event grew in popularity where it was decided to extend the days of the festival. Coachella is classed as a Mega event due to having a large scale of guests, large area, costs and impact on the population. The event falls under the public sector with the motives of the event being social, organizational and personal. The social aspect of the festival is the interaction with others as well as the sense of community. The event has organisational motives with regards to making sales and receiving recognition and status. Lastly, for many, they will have personal motives to seek new experiences and fulfil ambitions. According to VickyFlipFlop (2022),  Apart from enjoying the usual festival expectations of watching artists perform, it’s the perfect opportunity to celebrity watch with many attending to join in with the rest of the ticket holders. Coachella includes a variety of food options, offering over 15 food stalls for you to choose from in the food village called Indio central market. As well as food they have the necessary beverage of alcohol which is a must for many people when attending a festival! They provide multiple bars that sell wine, cocktails and beer. The Coachella website Coachella (2022), states that as well as having the option to camp on their grounds, there is the option of choosing the luxury item of staying at a local resort which includes transportation to and from the festival. Their website shows past performers all the way back to 1999, with artists ranging from Fatboy Slim, Oasis, Coldplay, Paul McCartney and a handful of others. Due to the festival's size, capacity and A-Lister celebrities in both attendance and performance, a three day camping experience ranges from $550 to $1400, Stated on Coachella (2022).
This festival has been a reoccurring event since the year of 1999 so changes and developments are expected from 23 years of taking place. The Coachella Festival history started with a band called Pearl Jam as stated by Pryor, D (2022). The rock band performed on the Empire Polo Fields in Indio in 1993 with roughly 25,000 fans watching. This concert proved to be the perfect location for a large scale performance and that’s where the first Coachella festival took place, in October of 1999. The event has had its backlash and downfalls with the festival not having enough funding to take place in 2000. Pettas, M (2016) talks about the Festival not being profitable with tickets being sold at a cheap rate compared to today’s prices. People were paying approximately $50 to experience high quality performances. For many artists, Coachella has been the highlight of their career, Coachella has always focused on music, artists, and genres that don’t get as much attention or have as much pull in the popular media, they are fairly new to the industry and lacking popularity and support, that is until they receive recognition at this event and reach the top hits. The founder of the festival was Paul Tollett. As stated by Meehan, R (2011), Tollett and his partners wanted to “revitalize the city and create something different for the people who reside within the city”. The source also backs up how the festival grew in popularity. In 2011, it was the events 10 year anniversary, being the fastest ever sell out in ticket history. Every year, the festival intends to bring new ideas to the event, in 2019 according to Wood, S (2019), technology was the main focus. The new and improved Coachella app was introduced to integrate into the festival experience using augmented reality. The audience was able to use their mobile devices to see AR (Augmented Reality) that changed based on audios coming from the festival speakers. Because of this improved and fascinating technology, Coachella received a big amount of media coverage which supports the annual increase in popularity of the event. However, the festival didn’t always have its best reputations, over the years there has been many reports of sexual assault during the event. Papisova, V (2018) explained her experience at the festival where she was inappropriately groped over 20 times. It also reads that 54 other women had reported to teen vogue of their experiences of sexual assaults at the festival. The text from Informa (2019), states that “Coachella announced its most thorough efforts yet to prevent and combat sexual harassment and assault”. A new endeavour was set up called “Every one” to prevent sexual misconduct as well as improvements on how its dealt with. Multiple organizations have pressured events to implement such policies and work harder to prevent these crimes from occurring. 
With Coachella being such a major event with huge grounds that last over two weekends, the expectancy of the stakeholders can be predicted as a large number. According to Armstrong, M (2022), Coachella has many stakeholders including the sponsorships of American Express, BMW, Ray-Ban and many others. In the festival of 2022, the event had a total of 23 brand sponsors. Fans and supporters are involved with the stakeholders as they are a part of the entertainment industry and raising sales of tickets. Hedlund, H et al (P4, 2018) shows that Coachella collaborated with Snapchat back in 2018 with its stories reaching 40 million views from all over the world. Uber is a stakeholder who is a part of Coachella with setting up a lounge at the venue for people to wait for their Uber rides. The festival is also known to partner with bloggers and social media influencers to reach followers who will interact with the event throughout the weekend. Artists who are in the rock, hip hop, indie or EDM genre have their chances to benefit their career when it comes to Coachella booking artists, the artists are another side of the stakeholders where over the years they’ve consisted of Beyoncé and Kendrick Lamar, Hedlund, H et al (P5, 2018). Sustainability and keeping green is a goal Coachella has worked on over the years, Larasti, A (2019) states that Coachella has organised to reduce environmental impacts during the festival. The event put together a “waste sorting programme” to minimise litter generated while the event takes place with the programme being efficient in managing waste. 
According to Getz, D & Andersson, T (2010 P534), researchers have found that stakeholders have a theoretical implications on the set up of a festival as well as their development or potential failure. Stakeholders offer a lot of potential and festivals may not be able to take place without them. Festivals are planned with a great deal of communication and cooperation between stakeholders with them all having one common goal. Weather festivals are private or produced for not for profit businesses, there’s a high possibility that there will be a range of external stakeholders that will have a lot of influence on the event. Getz and Andersson carried out a questions air and created a table on the importance of each stakeholder when it comes to the planning and preparations of the event. The three most valuable stakeholders to a festival taking place are the venues, local government and paying customers Getz, D & Andersson, T (2010 P539). The media came fourth in the list when artists and performers was ranked fifth place and lastly, Police and public services were ranked at last place. 
To come to a conclusion to weather events have grown in popularity and developed more objectives towards their audience over the years, I can agree that the event of Coachella valley music and arts festival is a specific example of how the festival has increased in popularity, recognition and status since 1999. As mentioned, as troubles aroused they were quick to tackle the problems such as sexual harassment with launching a campaign to improve the ways its dealt with and offer support for people and to prevent the harassment from occurring. 




Word count 1,358 (not including reference list)

Reference list 
Armstrong, M (2022). Boardroom. Coachella: A brand breakdown. https://boardroom.tv/coachella-brand-roundup/. Accessed on 22nd November 2022 
Cirisano, T (2019). Unreal festival tech. LA: California. P34
Coachella (2022). https://www.coachella.com/fees. Accessed on 21st November 2022.
Coachella (2022). Past festivals. https://www.coachella.com/past-festivals. Accessed on 21st November 2022. 
Getz, D & Andersson, T (2010). Festival stakeholders: Exploring relationships and dependency through a four- country comparison. University of Queensland.
Hedlund, H et al (2018). Coachella: Coachella valley music and arts festival. P4 
Informa (2019). Coachella Festival announces plan to fight sexual harassment. LA: California. 
Larasti, A (2019). Environmental impacts management of the Coachella valley music and arts festival. University of Glasgow, P1. 
Meehan, R (2011). 3 days of peace and music. NY: White Lake, P4.
Papisova, V (2019). Teen vogue. Sexual harassment was rampant at Coachella 2018. https://www.teenvogue.com/story/sexual-harassment-was-rampant-at-coachella-201. Accessed on 23rd November 2022. 
Pettas, M (2016). Culture trip. A brief history of the Coachella valley music and arts festival. https://theculturetrip.com/europe/united-kingdom/england/articles/a-brief-history-of-the-coachella-valley-music-and-arts-festival/. Accessed on 22nd November 2022. 
Pryor, D (2022). Musicalexpert.org. What is Coachella? https://www.musicalexpert.org/what-is-coachella.htm. Accessed on 22nd November.
VickyFlipFlop (2022). Vicky Flip Flop. 12 Awesome things You HAVE to Do at Coachella Festival in 2022. https://vickyflipfloptravels.com/things-to-do-coachella-festival/. Accessed on 21st November 2022.