Business & Tech

Wonderland Producer Touts Economic Clout

Insomniac productions, whose Saturday night concert irritated residents in Alameda, San Leandro and Oakland, says a festival in Las Vegas produced millions. A case of follow the money?

As residents of Alameda and San Leandro wonder what possessed the authorities who allowed the weekend concert that prompted hundreds of noise complaints, the answer may be simple: follow the money.

Insomniac, which staged Saturday night's Beyond Wonderland concert at the Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum, Tuesday released an economic analysis of the impact of a three-day carnival that it held in June in Las Vegas.

That analysis said the event "pumped an estimated $207 million into the Clark County economy" and "created an estimated $13.1 million in tax revenue for state and local government."

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The Coliseum concert was a far, far smaller affair and would not bring in anything approaching that revenue.

But Insomiac touted its economic clout Tuesday in the face of adverse reaction to the concert and to the legal issues facing its leader, Pasquale Rotella. 

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Officials from the city of Oakland and the Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum Authority have issued a joint apology for the noisy event.

But Ignacio DeLaFuente, chair of the Oakland-Alameda Co. Coliseum Authority, said in a recent radio interview with KCBS that the manager of the Coliseum, the Anschutz Entertainment Group (AEG), has a free hand in managing the site and doesn't answer to the board.

AEG got the Coliseum new management contract on a 7-1 vote in June.

According to a San Francisco Business Times article in the wake of that vote, Alameda County Supervisor and Coliseum Authority board member Scott Haggerty is quoted as saying: “I see facilities that are actually making money and I ask myself, ‘Why can’t that be us?’”

Meanwhile, AEG, a behemoth in sports and live entertainment, is reportedly up for sale for $5 billion to $7 billion.

Tom Abate is the editor of San Leandro Patch.

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