Dennis RomeroIt looks like what raves in Vegas stays in Vegas.
The Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority, which kept its distance from L.A.'s controversial Electric Daisy Carnival event when it moved there last month, is now gung-ho about the party, with some officials talking about expanding it into an “electronic music conference in conjunction with the event” with “related events in the city,” according to an authority report.
In fact, the authority claims that EDC June 24 through 26 …
” … is considered the largest music show in state history.”
Some authority board members now want endorse the massive party, which promoters claimed drew 240,000 people over its three days (our own count was closer to 215,000).
EDC Vegas.; Credit: Colin Wolff-Young
“There was less trouble there than at similar events on the Strip,” said authority board Chairman Tom Collins. “The participants were the most polite young kids that I've ever been around.”
Of course, EDC brought lots of cash to the region at a time when the authority was lamenting the loss of this year's USA Basketball Showcase and the National Basketball Association Summer League as a result of the NBA lockout.
The three-day rave's 60 arrests were comparable to the numbers produced by L.A.'s two-day EDC in 2010. And the Vegas event's more than 330 medical emergencies — officials and the promoter never even produced the last day's medical numbers after we published that 330 figure — was more than L.A.'s 226.
But the biggest differences were that EDC Vegas didn't produce any deaths — a 15-year-old girl died of an ecstasy overdose after attending EDC in L.A. last year, and three deaths have been linked to EDC Dallas in the last two years — and crowds didn't misbehave like they did in Los Angeles last year.
The L.A.-based promoter, Insomniac Events, signed a contract for four more years of EDCs at the Las Vegas Speedway.
After it was revealed that the company employed a man who allegedly double dipped as a public L.A. Coliseum employee where raves were being held, it pulled out of L.A.
But it has made no secret of the fact that EDC wants to come back to its home town.
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