Emphasizing the Experience? Lucky 2015 Goes On Sale Sans Lineup

As a rave culture, it’s pretty easy to get fixated on who’s playing what event. It’s not entirely unreasonable either, given the high cost of events in terms of ticket prices, traveling, outfits, and more. It’s why festivals like Ultra, EDC, and even our local Paradiso, FreakNight, and up until now Lucky announce lineups well in advance of main ticket sales. It’s a strategy centered around selling the artists on the bill as much as the overall experience, and one that’s made the EDM industry here in the United States wildly popular (and profitable).

For Lucky 2015 though, delays in the lineup have forced USC Events’ hand. A month and a half out from the annual St. Patrick’s Day celebration, USC has put tickets on sale prior to a single artist getting announced, citing delays in getting artists approved and confirmed.

It’s an unfortunate situation to be in for any promoter, and has led to a fair amount of unhappy fans on social media voicing their discontent. The risk that USC has run here seems to be two-fold: Waiting any longer to sell tickets for an event a month and a half out, regardless of whether or not a lineup is confirmed, is just asking for a disaster. But also, it leaves them hoping for ticket sales to be driven by the experience sans a lineup, something that flies in the face of the strategy that’s gotten many production companies like USC as far as they are today.

Naturally, fans in an industry that’s told them for years that every festival is only as good as its headliners are going to be hesitant to pull the trigger on tickets without knowing who they’ll be seeing on stage. But in the end it’s all of our collective duty to ask ourselves: Why do we go to events like Lucky? Is it for the stage production, the show, and the headliners? Or the overall raving experience? In the end, sales for Lucky 2015 will be driven by fans answering these very questions.

You can grab tickets for Lucky 2015 over in this direction, or at participating retail outlets listed out below to avoid Ticketmaster charges (minus fees, tickets will run you a fairly low $71 a pop, likely a bonus for putting your faith in the experience). Coming up, we’ll be giving away two GA tickets and a fully-loaded PLUR Package to one Lucky fan, so stay tuned!