OCEAN CITY — With the first-ever Jellyfish Festival in June providing something to build on, organizers this week filed an application with the Town of Ocean City to bring a bigger and better event back to the resort next year.
The inaugural Jellyfish Music Festival, held on the beach downtown and at venues all over the resort in June, provided a blueprint of sorts for future events. The event featured a live entertainment festival combined with action sports, family-oriented interactive entertainment and arts and culture in and around the Jellyfish Tentacle Village.
It utilized the town’s best assets including a state-of-the-art sound stage on the beach downtown and brought in significant headline acts for the first year. The live entertainment at the main stage on the beach downtown featured three theme nights.
Fresh Friday catered to a younger, millennial crowd with acts such as Badfish and Ballyhoo. Classic Saturday featured acts catering to a slightly older demographic including Styx, Crack the Sky and the Rayvns, for example. On Sunday, the festival transitioned to a family-friendly “music with a message” theme with acts such as Newboys and Crowder.
Hoping to build on the momentum from this year’s first-ever Jellyfish Music Festival, Live Wire Media and Events this week filed a special events application with the town to hold the second annual event next year.
“We’re excited to move forward in 2020 with the opportunity to bring something back to Ocean City that was so well received in 2019,” said Live Wire President and Jellyfish Festival co-founder Brad Hoffman this week. “We were the first to bring a show of this caliber with these specific components. We broke new ground. My team worked for years to create this event with the excitement and interaction that was needed to fill a void in the early summer season.”
Last year, Ocean City provided nearly $200,000 in seed money to the inaugural Jellyfish Festival through Tourism Advisory Board (TAB) funding. It remains to be seen if the town will provide funding for a second Jellyfish Festival and at what level. Hoffman will soon present a final wrap-up to the Mayor and Council. Hoffman said the inaugural event created a buzz in the entertainment community.
“The word is out the Jellyfish was a thrilling event to be a part of and we’re excited to say that artists are calling us and asking to play Jellyfish next year,” he said. “We’re starting now to compile a list of possible performers, from rock to reggae, blues to alternative. The 2020 lineup will bring the wow factor.”
