There’s never been a music festival quite like Desert Trip, the classic-rock bacchanal scheduled to take place in California this October.
That singularity is something the event’s organizers—who already put on the money-making extravaganza of Coachella every year—are certainly taking advantage of, at least judging by the exorbitant rates they’re charging baby-boomers to see their heroes for the last time. And minutes after Desert Trip ticket sales opened Monday (May 9), organizers announced a “surprise” second weekend that will undoubtedly rake in even more cash.
Despite some grumblings, it seems plenty of fans out there are okay with the high price tags. Desert Trip’s organizers told the Los Angeles Times that passes sold out within five hours, and that there were “over 400,000 people trying to place orders” that day.
What’s more: according to ticket-resale platform Rukkus, the festival has sparked an unprecedented level of activity on the secondary market.
“In the first two hours of Desert Trip on sale, we sold more tickets than in the entire week following Coachella’s on sale,” Rukkus content manager Spencer Stein told us. Prices spiked immediately after sales opened—likely due to people’s fears of not being able to grab a ticket in time from the official site—and stayed relatively high throughout the day.
Three-day general admission passes, which cost $399 from the festival’s site, were going for as much as $1,100 on Rukkus by the afternoon.
Considering that most summer music festivals are starting to show a certain bland homogeneity, Desert Trip—featuring an impressive and unique lineup of rock icons like Paul McCartney, Bob Dylan, and the Rolling Stones—may have hit a new kind of jackpot with its offerings. The amount that classic-rock fans are willing to splurge, at least, indicates that Coachella’s new sister festival could see its profits easily surpassing that of the original Coachella, which made a record-breaking $84 million in 2015.