Las Vegas Sun

March 18, 2024

Rehan Choudhry says of Life Is Beautiful: ‘We’re already talking to headliners about 2015’

Life is Beautiful

Bill Hughes

Life Is Beautiful co-founder Rehan Choudhry.

2014 Life is Beautiful: Day 2

Rick Duncan of Las Vegas appears to be eaten by a polar bear as part of an art installation during day 2 of the Life is Beautiful Festival on Friday, October 24, 2014. Launch slideshow »

Life Is Beautiful: Day 1

The Huntridge Stage at Life Is Beautiful Launch slideshow »

2014 Life Is Beautiful: Kanye West

Kanye West closes night one of the 2014 Life Is Beautiful music festival in Downtown Las Vegas, Friday Oct. 24, 2014. Launch slideshow »

2014 Life Is Beautiful: Day 1

Josiah Johnson with The Head & The Heart performs within the band on the Western stage during the opening day of the Life is Beautiful Festival on Friday, October 24, 2014. Launch slideshow »

On Day 2 of Year 2 of Life Is Beautiful, the festival he founded, Rehan Choudhry meets with a group of downtown Las Vegas officials near the Fremont Street entrance in the shadow of the recently opened downtown grocery store the Market. The group holding an impromptu confab includes LIB partner Tony Hsieh devouring a burrito as he confers with Choudhry and fellow festival official Joey Vanas.

As is customary on any afternoon of LIB, Choudhry is wearing shades and a gray Life Is Beautiful T-shirt. He is nearly stopped at the entrance of his own festival until one of the yellow-shirted, blue-gloved security officials recognizes first his all-access pass, then his face. The young man calls out, “He’s good, he’s good,” as Choudhry strides in.

Choudhry is good, yes, though he concedes: “I’m running on four hours of sleep. I’m fortunate that I’m one of the lucky people who can wake up after taking Ambien.”

What was he thinking when he finally hit the pillow last night, an evening capped by performances by Kanye West at the Downtown Stage and Panic! At the Disco concurrently on the Ambassador stage?

“That this is not a fluke,” Choudhry says. “You never know after the first year how a festival is going to be received. Interest can kind of tail off. But we had a great opening night, and this year is shaping up really well.”

The attendance figures for this year’s festival are not easy to pinpoint, but there are likely to be at least 60,000 attendees on the LIB grounds through the course of the event. That does not necessarily mean 60,000 individuals paid for access each night, as many have purchased tickets covering multiple nights. But there will be tens of thousands of people, a large measure of them Las Vegas residents, attending the event.

The support in the second year of Life Is Beautiful is robust enough that Choudhry and the LIB team are talking of 2015 and beyond.

“Going into (Friday) night, all of the partners were universal in our dedication to make this happen every single year,” Choudhry says, allowing that the event has yet to turn a profit and won’t even after next year or the year after. “These types of events take a lot of resiliency from a financial perspective because you’ve really got to understand that these things take losses for three years. They just do. If you build anything of this size, that’s going to be the case.”

As an example, Choudhry holds up what is today one of the most successful and famous music festivals in the world.

“Coachella didn’t turn a profit for almost eight years,” he says of an event he attends each year and was one of the inspirations for LIB. “But we’re going to do this. We’re bringing it back. We want to do this for the next 30 years. But it should be known that it is largely due to the resiliency of our partners. It’s Tony, it’s the Downtown Project, it’s Another Planet, it’s everyone just knowing this is the right concept.”

That’s what the LIB partners were talking about this morning in a discussion that began Friday night.

“We’re already talking to headliners about 2015. Already, people are asking us to play,” Choudhry says. “We’re evaluating offers and looking at budgets. We’re coming back; it’s just a matter of how much bigger we want to make it.”

The festival bloomed from two days in its inaugural year to three this year. Will it be three days in 2015?

“Absolutely,” Choudhry says. “At least that big.”

His plans for today were to headline at the Western during the LIB Learning program, then become a fan.

“It’s Lionel Richie,” he says, smiling. “And Outkast. Some others, too. Look for something special out of The Flaming Lips tonight at the end of their set. They have a surprise planned.”

That’s typical of Life Is Beautiful, where groovy stuff is always yet to come.

Follow John Katsilometes on Twitter at Twitter.com/JohnnyKats. Also, follow “Kats With the Dish” at Twitter.com/KatsWiththeDish.

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