Coachella Leads The Highest-Grossing Music Festivals Of 2015

Music festivals continue to be some of the biggest moneymakers in the music business, and their popularity only seems to increase year after year. In 2015, the world’s highest-grossing music festivals raked in the dough like never before. A total of $195 million (and change) was collected in ticket sales by the ten most successful events, with Coachella in a distant first place. Now that the California music festival staple has expanded to two consecutive weekends with almost identical lineups, the cash keeps coming in. In 2015, Coachella made just over $84 million in ticket sales, and that says nothing of merchandise, food and beverage sales, and the like. With an exciting lineup prepared for 2016 and a brand that simply cannot be beat, there is no reason to believe that Coachella won’t also come out on top of this ranking the next time around.

The remaining festivals all pale in their receipts, with the second place name, San Francisco’s Outside Lands, collecting less than a third of Coachella’s gross revenue. Though a plenty of international events made it onto the list, it is clear that the United States is the land of the music festival, as American shows control the top four slots (though only those four).

Over 1.1 million people went to just these ten festivals alone, with at least one several-day party surpassing the two hundred thousand threshold. Those numbers may climb in the future, but probably not as much as revenue, as many of these events have finite space, and they can only fit so many revelers—though the potential to make more money is seemingly endless.