While 2021 was a challenging year for the live entertainment business, it also saw the triumphant return of many in-person events. Fans, artists, and brands were able to connect in a physical space once again, while also maintaining many of the digital opportunities that were developed in 2020.
Festival producer and promoter Danny Wimmer Presents (DWP) has had a great year recovering from the pandemic, hosting a record-breaking crowd at last month’s Welcome To Rockville festival, which was also livestreamed on DWP’s Twitch channel. Throughout its 2021 festival season, DWP has hosted over 500,000 fans across four events.
Earlier this month, DWP also held a livestreamed music event “Slay the Bellz” to raise money for St. Jude’s Children’s Hospital. XLIVE caught up with DWP Chief Marketing Officer Chamie McCurry to reflect on the past year and discuss how DWP is preparing for the exciting year ahead.
XLIVE: What are some of the key learnings or strategies from this past year that allowed you to safely resume in-person shows?
Chamie McCurry: We learned to be incredibly flexible. Every day we had a new obstacle that didn’t exist the day before. We had vendors confirm, only to cancel a day later, bands had to cancel due to COVID, our international fans weren’t able to travel due to restrictions, operation costs changed hourly, the lack of local staffing and on top of that, we weren’t able to predict the consumer buying habit as efficiently as in the past due to certain uneasiness when it came to large events. Our strategy was to control the variables that we could control and to be prepared with multiple solutions to the scenarios of our control.
XL: How did this year shake out in relation to what you wanted and aimed to accomplish? Did it exceed your expectations?
CM: We had a record-breaking year. The appetite for live events, especially festivals, was at an all-time high. We were so excited to finally be reunited with our fans and to finally be able to deliver the lineups that everyone had been waiting two years for!
XL: What role have digital strategies, including your partnership with Twitch and festival livestreams, played in keeping fans engaged and interested in your artists and content over the past year and half?
CM: When the pandemic started and we had to pull down our 2020 shows, we pivoted quickly to digital content curation with Offstage With DWP and pay-per-view livestreams, which ultimately resulted in our Twitch partnership. We launched the official DWPresents Channel in June with That Space Zebra Show and have had over 6.8 million live views so far! We had our Twitch team at all of our festivals this fall doing exclusive behind the scenes interviews and backstage content and then streamed over 60 acts LIVE from Welcome To Rockville as our Rock & Roll Finale to 2021. We are very excited to grow the channel in 2022 and beyond.
XL: How do you see the digital engagement side of things evolving over the next year and beyond? Is it something you will keep pursuing? Are you looking into things like NFTs for fans to connect even more with their favorite artists?
CM: We are talking to a lot of companies and watching daily how we can use NFTs to connect on a deeper level with our community going forward.
XL: Your Slay The Bellz livestream to benefit St. Jude’s Children’s Hospital was a great way to leverage your Twitch channel and online influence for a good cause — do you foresee doing more of that in the future?
CM: We did three charity streams via our Twitch channel this year; Living The Dream, Game To Give and Slay The Bellz, resulting in over $73,000 raised. We definitely will be doing more of these events in 2022 as a way to give back to charities that are core to DWP.
XL: Can you share a bit about what planning for 2022 is looking like? How are you handling the lingering uncertainty and remaining flexible?
CM: We are already on sale with four festivals and will be announcing our full calendar for 2022 in January and we are busier than ever exploring new opportunities for growth.
XL: Despite the many challenges, what is an opportunity or positive outcome for DWP that resulted from the pandemic?
CM: We had several key takeaways. At our core, our business is all about our fans and the pandemic gave us an opportunity to really explore, connect and cultivate that relationship on a much higher level — from pay-per-views and Twitch to customer service and the on site at our events, we were able to focus on the fans to give them a top notch festival experience. And, obviously the digital content growth for DWP in the last 20 months has been major and is something that will continue to be at the forefront of our company going forward.