Newsom touts Coachella as CA success story; 60% of tickets were financed

Imagine financing hundreds and thousands of dollars to go to a drug, sex and rock and roll conference.  The same people who claim not to be able to pay back their student loans.

“According to Billboard, 60% of general admission ticket buyers for Coachella financed their tickets amid slower ticket sales, suggesting weakening consumer demand for music festivals. Unlike prior years, higher level tickets are still on sale from the official festival website, and resale tickets can be purchased below face value, with three-day passes as low as $547 on Stubhub at time of publication. 

Hope they enjoyed listening to the anti-capitalistic message of AOC and Bernie Sanders.  Obviously these folks were too high to understand what was going on.

Newsom touts Coachella as CA success story; 60% of tickets were financed

By Kenneth Schrupp | The Center Square, 4/14/25  https://www.thecentersquare.com/california/article_69a037ad-28f0-453c-9f24-44668dc2c937.html?utm_source=california.thecentersquare.com&utm_medium=newsletter&utm_campaign=today-s-top-california-headlines-current_date_mdy&_bhlid=e750d77d8c8c5d8c0749becd12b24eee04d30972

(The Center Square) – California Gov. Gavin Newsom touted the success of California’s Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival as evidence the state remains the world’s entertainment capital.

But with reports finding 60% of the festival’s $599 bare-bones tickets were financed and Los Angeles film shoots down 22% since last year, some wonder if the curtain is falling on the state’s entertainment industry.

“Only Charli XCX could turn the Coachella Valley desert into an electrifying, star-studded performance,” said Newsom in a statement. “California remains the global entertainment capital.”

However, new reports on Coachella and Hollywood suggest trouble is emerging for the state’s storied entertainment industry. 

According to Billboard, 60% of general admission ticket buyers for Coachella financed their tickets amid slower ticket sales, suggesting weakening consumer demand for music festivals. Unlike prior years, higher level tickets are still on sale from the official festival website, and resale tickets can be purchased below face value, with three-day passes as low as $547 on Stubhub at time of publication. 

California’s world-famous film and television production industry has also been in steady decline, with a new report from FilmLA finding production declined 22% in the first quarter of the year compared to 2024. 

FilmLA says the greatest decline has been in television, once a mainstay for the region.

“As the largest and hardest-hit segment of L.A.’s film production economy, declines in Television carry wide employment repercussions,” said FilmLA. “Television production peaked in Greater Los Angeles in 2021 at 18,560 annual Shoot Days. With just 7,716 Shoot Days logged in 2024, annual Television production declined by -58.4 percent in just three years.”

Newsom is now seeking to double film tax credits to $750 million to slow or reverse LA’s production decline. According to the state-funded Legislative Analyst’s Office, these credits cost much more than they generate in revenue. LAO said studies “suggest that each $1 of film credit results in $0.20 to $0.50 of state revenues.”

With the state’s revenue highly dependent on volatile stock market capital gains, and corporate and sales tax revenues trending down, it’s unclear how the state would pay for these credits in the face of another budget shortfall. 

The proposed boost in credits still won’t match the generous credits provided by other countries, which generally have lower costs of production as well due to lower costs of living and doing business.

Earlier this month, “Parks and Recreation” star Rob Lowe said it’s cheaper to bring a hundred Americans from Los Angeles to Ireland to film than it is to shoot in the next building over.

“It’s cheaper to bring 100 American people to Ireland than to walk across the lot at Fox past the sound stages and do it and do it there,” said Lowe. “All those other places are offering 40% — forty percent — and then on top of that there’s other stuff that they do, and then that’s not even talking about the union stuff.”