Comedian Jerry Seinfeld’s line “There’s no precedent baby” came to mind flipping through the Oceans Calling Festival schematics and reviewing new details associated with the event, which is set for late September in down-town Ocean City.
There were several new pieces of information reported last week, including the news 50,000 tickets will be sold for each day. The per-day sales were capped at 37,500 for last year’s event, which was canceled the day before it was to begin due to a coastal storm. Before the poor weather rolled in, it was clear the music festival was going to be unlike anything Ocean City has ever seen.
Three months before this year’s e-vent, Friday and Saturday, Sept. 29-20, are sold out at 50,000 each day, while some tickets remain for Sunday, Oct. 1. It’s tough to put some perspective around that crowd size, but safe to say Ocean City is entering a new frontier with this event.
Perhaps the best news to come out of last week’s Board of License Commissioners meeting in Snow Hill was the decision on the festival grounds. Last year festival organizers wanted to include a large swath of the Boardwalk in the event grounds but pulled back ultimately based on the city’s concerns. The topic has been revisited with merchants and some concessions appear to have been made to gain unanimous buy-in from businesses from Trimper’s Rides to N. Division Street.
Over the winter, there seemed to be a number of concerns among Boardwalk businesses near the festival grounds over the proposed footprint. In exchange for being part of the festival grounds. the concert promoter wanted 15% of total sales and for operators to use a different point of sale system to track revenues. After hearing the concerns of impacted businesses, the concept was tweaked, and a cooperative spirit prevailed, confirming good faith by the event promoters and the city’s ability to work through a conflict.
The new and agreed upon approach is the entire area from about the Inlet to N. Division Street will be fenced and only available to those attending the festival. The general public will not have access to those 65 businesses that weekend. It may sound harsh, and some members of the public could take umbrage, but for the businesses the benefits appear to far outweigh the negatives. The concept of 50,000 people having access to their food, drink, amusement rides, arcades and retail wares won the businesses over, especially once the concept of a universal register system was evidently dropped.
One large encompassing footprint should make for a tremendous festival scene and benefit the Boardwalk businesses. There would have been a missed opportunity for revenue if there was a fence where the Boardwalk meets the beach. Including these businesses was a wise decision, but the better call was showing a willingness to be flexible and cooperative.
The festival will be incredible to witness, albeit there are numerous practical concerns involving transportation and public safety connected to moving that many people, many of whom will be under the influence, out of the downtown largely at once. In the first year, there will likely be lessons learned along the way. One thing is for sure e-vent preparation is well underway and all indications are there is a strong public-private partnership between Ocean City officials and the promotion company.
