Tomorrowland, Rock Werchter launch new fest
Belgium festival behemoths Tomorrowland and Rock Werchter have joined forces to launch a new two-day festival in Brussels.
Core festival will debut between 27–28 May this year in Osseghem Park, a picturesque nature area in the Belgian capital.
The organisers say the boutique festival will feature “a very eclectic” line-up (yet to be announced) that will “break the boundaries between quality indie, hip hop, electronica, hyper pop and alternative dance”.
The four-stage event will aim to attract 25,000 visitors per day including domestic and international festivalgoers.
Core‘s lineup will be revealed soon and the presale for tickets (which start at €67 for one-day admission) will start on 23 February.
“Tomorrowland and Rock Werchter have been working together on several smaller events i.e. the Garden of Madness shows by Dimitri Vegas & Like Mike at the Antwerp Sportpaleis, the KNTXT event in Ghent, Swedish House Mafia at the Antwerp Sportpaleis,” Rock Werchter’s Yo Van Saet tells IQ.
“Our ideas are mostly complementary, the ambition of both our teams are high and like-minded. And so there was this new idea, becoming now a brand-new event. We are uniting to create this original and refreshing festival in one of Brussels’ most beautiful green parks. Expertise and knowledge are shared. Our teams are working together closely on this new festival, with great passion. It’s new, it’s fresh. It’s nothing like Rock Werchter, nor Tomorrowland.”
“Two of the most important players in the world of music, are coming to Brussels with this new concept”
Philippe Close, mayor of the city of Brussels, says: “We are very proud that Tomorrowland and Rock Werchter, two of the most important players in the world of music, are coming to Brussels with this new concept. A total experience of music, art and nature. Brussels celebrates and thus enables the event, cultural and hotel industry to breathe again.”
Rock Werchter (cap. 88,000), promoted by Herman Schueremans and Live Nation Belgium, is the country’s largest festival.
The marquee event is due to return between 30 June and 3 July this year for the first time since 2019.
Tomorrowland (70,000), meanwhile, will return to Boom from 22 July to 24 July and from 29 July to 31 July.
In addition to the flagship festival, Tomorrowland is also busy preparing for two weekends of Tomorrowland Winter in the Alpe d’Huez ski area between 19–26 March 2022.
The brand has had to cancel six festival weekends due to the pandemic, including four in Belgium (Tomorrowland 2020 and 2021) and two in France (Tomorrowland Winter 2020 and 2021).
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TicketSwap expands network with Portugal’s Boom
Amsterdam-based resale platform TicketSwap has announced a partnership with long-running festival, Boom.
The partnership includes integration with their ticketing company Weezevent, which allows TicketSwap to void a sold ticket and instead issue new tickets to buyers.
This Secure Swap integration ensures that fans can buy and sell quickly and easily, while providing visibility to the festival organiser.
The partnership with Boom marks TicketSwap’s first foray into Portugal and follows recent launches in Italy and Brazil.
“It’s great to have such a prominent partner for Portugal as we continue on our mission to be the experience platform that every fan loves”
“We are delighted to be working with Boom Festival,” says TicketSwap CEO Hans Ober. “The event is spectacular and people travel from all over the world to be there. We are very pleased to provide a safe and transparent way for fans to sell their tickets at a fair price.”
“TicketSwap have been expanding at a pace. We have set up an office in Brazil, launched in Italy, and we’re hiring our first local staff in the UK, Sweden, and Germany. It’s great to have such a prominent partner for Portugal as we continue on our mission to be the experience platform that every fan loves.”
The 25th edition of Boom festival will take place on 22–29th June 2022.
The event, which takes place every two years, has been ‘exceptionally popular’ on TicketSwap, with nearly 4,000 people registering for tickets and almost 500 tickets sold in the first three days.
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Belgian police rebuked over Tomorrowland screening
The Commission for the Protection of Privacy (CPP) – a Belgian public body tasked with protecting individuals against misuse of their personal data – has criticised police and local authorities for cancelling several Tomorrowland tickets after buyers’ details were checked against a national police database.
CPP says it has received a “number of complaints” from the 38 people who have been denied access to the 180,00-cap. EDM festival, which takes place next weekend, for “security reasons”.
The decision to screen ticketholders against the Federal National Database (BNG) – which holds details of every Belgian charged with a crime, even if they are later acquitted, for up to 15 years – would have been taken by the mayors of the towns of Rumst and Boom, says CPP, which has now launched an investigation into the legality of the checks.
“We deplore the fact we were not consulted to examine the lawfulness of this preventative measure”
“The Privacy Commission has in no way been involved in this preventive measure, which is problematic in several respects,” says the body in a statement. “CPP deplores the fact that it was not consulted beforehand to examine the lawfulness of this preventive control.”
Peter De Waele, a spokesman for the Belgian federal police, says the move requires only the “permission of the mayors of Boom and Rumst, which we have. Both communities voted for the regulations.”
He tells Flemish paper De Standaard that the screenings against the BNG are a kind of digital equivalent of installing physical security barriers at the festival. “We have for a long time had concrete blocks placed at major events,” he says. “As we have seen [with Tomorrowland], we can now also create digital ‘concrete blocks’.”
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