Mash-up

Insomniac Events

Insomniac Events founded by Pasquale Rotella, is an American music tour promotion company primarily focusing on electronic music events. There are many extraordinary music festivals under Insomniac’s label including Electric Daisy Carnival, Beyond Wonderland, and Nocturnal Wonderland. You can also find Insomniac’s influence in the Los Angeles’ nightclubs Create and Exchange LA.

Insomniac and Pasquale Rotella create events and excitement that is fan based. Rotella does not focus solely on ticket sales and profits, but bringing DJs, lights, and sound that speaks to EDM’s fan base. Insomniac partners are high-quality music corporations that also focus on fan experience.

Insomniac has not always been light and music. Founder and promoter Pasquale Rotella has had his share of growing pains along the way. He has fought the media bringing down the reputation of EDM music events and raves, battled an embezzlement lawsuit, and faced the tragedy of the 2011 death of a teen at EDC Los Angeles. The tragic death of that 15-year-old girl, who died of a drug overdose at Insomniac’s dance music festival in the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, led to criminal charges and a lawsuit. Prosecutors claimed that the EDC founder bribed city officials with millions to book this event at the Coliseum. The criminal case is still pending and casts a shadow over EDM events.

Over 20 years ago Insomniac and Rotella threw illegal raves in warehouses on Los Angeles’ Crenshaw Boulevard. DJs would come to play at these raves, but were put on the floor and in the corner. Insomniac’s first Electric Daisy Carnival in 1994 held at the Shrine Expo Hall to an audience of 5,000 people presented DJs who were willing play for peanuts. Now, Rotella and Insomniac continues to work their magic, bring in headlining DJs and develop events and raves.

Forced to move Electronic Daisy to from its LA roots to Las Vegas in 2011, the attendance and brand recognition has since more than doubled, and Insomniac’s other festivals continue to expand. Insomniac recently signed with Live Nation, who received 50% of Insomniacs shares for $48.1 million. Insomniac and Rotella has also partnered with Dick Clark Productions to produce a dance music awards show in 2014.

Hard work, luck, a tremendous fan base and the rise of electronic dance music as the number one music craze, has turned Insomniac into a huge investment and its events into the EDM event standard. For example, Insomniac continues with its spare-no-expense mentality that led to a 60,000 people capacity, 116 footman stage built for this year’s Daisy event. Insomniac hosted more than 134,000 people a night at the Las Vegas Motor Speedway in a three-day extravaganza that cost Rotella and Insomniac more than $36 million to create.
The stage alone cost $3 million to build. What other venue goes to that amount of expense and work?

Insomniac continues to expand its influence and Pasquale Rotella announced the formation of Insomniac Records in May 2014. Insomniac Records is an EDM record label created with Interscope Geffen A&M. Insomniac Record’s goal is to attract undiscovered talent and promote established DJs and producers. Arty was the first artist to sign on with Insomniac Records.

Key Executives

Pasquale Rotella grew up in Glendale, California. He is a first generation Italian, and his family owns a restaurant in Venice Beach, California. He spent most of his teenage years breakdancing on the Venice boardwalk and hanging out with a slightly off-crowd. Rotella attended his first underground EDM party at La Casa in LA and immediately feel in love with the music, the people, the colors and the communal spirit.

Founder and key player Pasquale Rotella started Insomniac Events in 1993 and has taken his small company into an organization that is responsible for 12 major festival-styled events per year and in more than fifteen cities around the world. Insomniac major brands include SoCal’s Nocturnal Wonderland, Audiotistic and Bassrush, plus the infamous Electric Daisy Carnival.

Rotella owns nine crates of vinyl and has a huge passion for electronic dance music. He was even DJ Minder for years. Now he develops his EDM events to highlight the crowd instead of the DJs and takes his inspiration from movies and theme parks. EDC, Wonderland events and Enhanced Concert Series has played to more than three million attendees in California, Nevada, Washington, New York, London, Colorado and Puerto Rico. December 31st, 2014 Rotella and Insomniac will ring in the New Year in Anaheim, California for the third annual White Wonderland.

Live Nation acquired 50% of Insomniac’s shares in 2013 and caused Electric Daisy fans to cry “foul.” Live Nation realized that Pasquale Rotella is fantastic at creating experiences and his Electric Daisy Carnival has cultivated the electronic music festival scene. EDC captures the energy and emotion behind dance music with vivid art displays, DJ stage performances and awesome light shows. Fans need to realize that this gives Rotella and opportunity to do bigger and better shows and be a more hands-on creative director.

Live Nation’s President, Chief Executive Officer and Director, Michael Rapino, led Live Nation Entertainment into the number one live music brand in the world. It now boasts operations in more than forty countries and has an annual revenue of over $5 billion. His background and affiliations include House of Blues Entertainment, Ticketmaster Entertainment, iHeart Media, Inc., Live Nation Merchandise, Live Nation Worldwide, Inc. and Clear Channel Music Group.

With such an impressive resume, Live Nation has the relationships in place to book the unusual venues and the legal team to support Insomniac. Insomniac fans and Electric Daisy Celebration should have very little worries. Their festivals and events are definitely not going away, and they will only get bigger and better. Michael Rapino has vowed that Insomniac’s style will stay the same. Now Insomniac and Pasquale Rotella have more resources to work with and more money to fund bigger and better events. The difficult jobs of contracts, finding venues working with finances and taxes will have a larger group to handle them.