The new king of American hip hop Kendrick Lamar, Pharrell Williams NERD’s collective and the famous French rap band IAM will star in the Paris Summer Jam, a new event created by the French subsidiary of the powerful American promoter Live Nation, which will take place at the U Arena in Nanterre on August 24th. This date is not insignificant: it is also the first day of Rock en Seine.
Faced with this new event rather focused on urban music according to the organizers, the 16th edition of the Rock en Seine festival will be held at the National Domain of Saint-Cloud until August 26, 2018.
Live Nation’s offensive against Rock en Seine is becoming clearer
With this announcement, Live Nation France , a subsidiary of Live Nation, one of the biggest promoters of shows in the world, tackles a little more frontally to one of its direct rivals in the Parisian festivals market, after having already successfully installed (100,000 admissions in two days) last year the Parisian edition of the mastodon Lollapalooza .
While other names will soon be unveiled for this Paris Summer Jam and that the second edition of Lollapalooza (July 21, 22 at the Hippodrome de Longchamp) will be raised with Depeche Mode, Gorillaz or The Killers in heads of poster, Rock en Seine still has not communicated about its programming.
Paris Summer Jam has already posted its first YouTube teaser on Wednesday.
Rock en Seine in full swing since 2017
The rock festival in the Paris region was disrupted last year, as its founders François Missonnier, Christophe “Doudou” Davy and Salomon Hazot sold it to Matthieu Pigasse , head of the Lazard bank in France, via his personal holding LNEI. And after 15 years at his head, François Missonnier was replaced at the direction of Rock en Seine by Sarah Schmitt, who was until now his assistant.
Towards a shock of American titans of the show?
Above all, there seemed to be a new change in the shareholding of the festival, since LNEI had indicated in September to AFP to be in negotiation with the American promoter AEG, world leader of theaters, to sell him shares. Questioned by AFP in recent weeks, LNEI did not wish to communicate on the evolution of this file.
A sensitive issue, especially as the hypothesis to see AEG take capital or even take control of one of the major French festivals has caused concern. In doing so, the French festival market would be the subject of a fierce battle between the American giant of the organization of concerts and his world rival Live Nation.