Friendly Fire co-founder Rense van Kessel has opened up to IQ as the Netherlands promoter celebrates 15 years in business.

Van Kessel teamed with colleagues Roel Coppen and Robert Swarts to launch the Amsterdam-based firm, which now stages more than 3,000 concerts a year, in 2009.

“It was basically a lot of young bravado,” reflects Van Kessel. “Roel, Robert and I were 26, and wanted to get into new events, go forward and think big, which wasn’t possible at the company we were with at the time. So we thought, ‘We’re young, let’s do something crazy and start our own business.’

“Looking back, it was probably a silly thing. You don’t know the dangers that lie ahead, so to speak, but I’m still glad we made that decision. A lot of our people have been with us for five to 10 years now – often from their early twenties or coming out of university – and have moved into higher positions. For a company that’s been only going for 15 years, that is quite an achievement.”

Over time, the trio have managed to establish the company as an alternative to Live Nation-backed Dutch market leader Mojo Concerts.

“We were part of opening the market,” suggests Van Kessel. “There’s always room for other players and it’s very healthy to have a less corporate approach. We try to be very career-focused and pride ourselves in working with certain artists for a very long time.”

“The stuff we work with is very diverse and often from the ground up”

Pertinent examples include Noah Kahan, Fontaines D.C., Dean Lewis, Black Pumas, Angus & Julia Stone, Khruangbin, Cigarettes After Sex, The 1975 and Mitski.

“We have worked with most of those artists from tiny club shows onwards,” notes Van Kessel. “I remember that first show with Angus & Julia Stone or I remember that first 1975 show, so that’s quite cool. The stuff we work with is very diverse and often from the ground up.

“With international artists, we often don’t have that much influence, but where we can, we try to think ahead and I think that sets us apart. We work with a lot of domestic artists as well, where you’re much more on the steering wheel for their careers, and we try to make long-term plans. That’s always important and exciting.”

In 2013, Friendly Fire launched its flagship festival, Best Kept Secret, which has gone on to host artists including Arctic Monkeys, Radiohead, The Strokes, A$AP Rocky, Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, Bon Iver, Kraftwerk, LCD Soundsystem, Arcade Fire, Run the Jewels, Beck and The National.

“At that point, we noticed a lot of artists were not playing festivals at all,” says Van Kessel. “A lot of the bigger events seemed to be a lot about partying and less about music. We would find ourselves standing in the crowd thinking, ‘This is a great band, why are there only 100 people here? What’s going on?’ So we felt like there was a gap to have a festival that was all about music. Of course, over the years, it developed into a different festival than what it was back in 2013, but that was the basis of it.”

Best Kept Secret, which returns to Beekse Bergen, Hilvarenbeek, from 13-15 June 2025, held its landmark 10th edition this year, when it featured acts such as Disclosure, Justice, Paolo Nutini, PJ Harvey and St Vincent.

“We’re trying to be less dependent on headliners than we were pre-Covid and that’s been working out well”

“It’s a strong cornerstone event with a very loyal audience,” he adds. “Artists seem to want it on their agenda and that’s something we’re proud of. We’re trying to be less dependent on headliners than we were pre-Covid and that’s been working out well. Obviously we have great headliners, but we try to book a wider range of artists and look more at the whole bill, which is very sustainable.

“Also, a headliner for a 25,000-capacity festival is a very different thing than a headliner for Reading & Leeds, Rock Werchter or Rock am Ring. We don’t have those massive artists and we never have.”

Three years after Friendly Fire’s launch, the promoter was acquired by German-headquartered touring giant FKP Scorpio.

“I think it was Folkert [Koopmans, FKP CEO] that approached us, because he bought a festival in Netherlands and was kind of like, ‘Okay, can we do more? I need people to be part of that,'” remembers Van Kessel. “I think we were the first country outside of Germany where they started cooperating with another office and, from our perspective, it was a very good move because it made us much more stable.

“We’d had some conversations with agents who were like, ‘We love you, but if this artist goes to stadium level, it’s hard to explain to management that we’re putting a few million gross in the hands of just three guys.'”

The partnership has succeeded in its goals, reckons Van Kessel.

“It’s helped us a lot in breaking open the market a bit and being more stable and stronger within that,” he says. “I don’t think we could have started a festival like Best Kept Secret and convince agents and managers at that point to bring the talent we had on the first edition, if [FKP] hadn’t been there – a very trustworthy company that had been going for a long time.

“There’s a lot of personality there; it’s a good match and going forward in the European landscape, it’s a very interesting player with a great future.”

“Despite inflation, people tend to still want to spend money on tickets and on experiences, so we can’t really complain”

Earlier this year, Van Kessel was promoted to president, touring & artist development at FKP alongside Rauha Kyyrö, founder of Finland’s Fullsteam. The duo joined the company’s international board, with responsibility for developing the group’s artist booking and promoter activities across Europe.

Van Kessel describes the arrangement as a “work in progress”.

“We have great people and great offices and there’s a lot to gain by working together, making more centralised decisions and looking at things from a European perspective,” he explains. “We’re making really good steps at the moment.”

Friendly Fire’s other festivals include Hit the City, Ginger Festival, Loose Ends and Live at Amsterdam Forest.

“The market is generally quite strong,” observes Van Kessel. “Despite inflation, people tend to still want to spend money on tickets and on experiences, so we can’t really complain. In the first year after Covid, everything sold out, it didn’t matter what it was. That is normalising a bit again now, but people are still into entertainment – maybe more so than ever. Touch wood, I think it’s a healthy market.”

Furthermore, Van Kessel has no major concerns over the talent pipeline – pointing to the number of newer artists still rising to arena level.

“Generally, a lot of the touring business is dependent on the larger artists,” he says. “I don’t think anyone’s making money from 250-cap club shows, so it’s important that artists keep growing bigger. The last couple of years have been very exciting in that sense: Cigarettes After Sex, Phoebe Bridgers, Fontaines D.C., Khruangbin, Dean Lewis, Noah Kahan and you can keep going. I’m only mentioning ones that we promote, but there are plenty more.”

“We have a great product, right? We sell happiness”

He adds: “The great thing about our business is there are always new exciting artists and ideas to work on. In pop culture, stuff changes and it’s always moving, so we’re never in a boring business. I don’t think we’ll ever have goals like, ‘We should have a 30% market share,’ we’re not that kind of corporate company. So it’s all about doing nice things with nice people, for nice people, and hopefully be able to pay the wages and make some money in the meantime. We have a great product, right? We sell happiness.”

Other concerts on the horizon for the company in the coming months include Hans Zimmer, Pixies, James Bay, Marti Pellow, Beabadoobee, Alfie Templeman, Kate Nash and Enter Shikari. While the firm has achieved many of its objectives in its first 15 years, Van Kessel is adamant it is still far from the finished article.

“A lot of our attention is on making it a better company, promoting people to higher positions and creating a middle management layer, because a lot of it has always been on mine, Robert’s and Roel’s shoulders in the past,” he says. “We’re also be a more diverse company and bring through the next generation.”

Wrapping up, Van Kessel attempts to put the last decade and a half into words.

“It’s been a great adventure,” he says. “I don’t think we ever thought we’d have a company of this size, with all these great people working here. Looking back, so much stuff has happened and I’m really proud of a lot of it. Obviously, we made a lot of mistakes: we started events that went completely wrong, we promoted shows where no one showed up and whatever, but these things happen and I would sum it up as an interesting adventure.

“Looking at the market in the future, a lot of things are moving and changing and it’s an exciting time.”

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FKP Scorpio has bolstered its international operations with the appointments of Rauha Kyyrö and Rense van Kessel as presidents touring & artist development.

Founders of Finland’s Fullsteam and the Netherlands’ Friendly Fire, respectively, Kyyrö and Van Kessel have worked with more than 3,000 artists combined since entering the business in the early 2000s.

The duo have been appointed to FKP’s international board and will be in charge of developing the group’s artist booking and promoter activities across Europe.

“Rauha and Rense’s work has been a vital part of our success for several years now”, says FKP boss Folkert Koopmans and CEO Stephan Thanscheidt. “Their new roles as presidents touring & artist development are the next step in strengthening our natural growth and diverse portfolio, with the aim of being the best partner for artists and music fans alike.”

In addition, the firm has recently appointed new directors in Finland (Aino-Maria Paasivirta, head promoter, Fullsteam Agency), Netherlands (Lauri van Ommen, head of promoted shows and Age Versluis, head of touring, Friendly Fire) and Germany (Inga Esseling and Ben Rodenberg, directors touring, FKP Scorpio).

Founded by Koopmans in 1990, Germany-headquartered FKP is part of the global CTS Eventim Group and works with acts such as Ed Sheeran, Taylor Swift, The Rolling Stones, Noah Kahan, Foo Fighters, Sam Fender, Kraftwerk, Phoebe Bridgers, James Blunt, George Ezra and Mumford & Sons.

FKP is also expanding its collaboration with DreamHaus to co-promote the Rock am Ring/Rock im Park and Hurricane/Southside festivals

Its domestic festival portfolio includes festivals such as Hurricane, Southside, Highfield, M’era Luna, Elbjazz and Deichbrand Festival, while international brands include Greenfield (CH), Syd For Solen (DK) , Best Kept Secret (NL), Lido Sounds (AT), Rosendal Garden Party (SE), Live Is Live (BE), Provinssi and Sideways (FI).

In other news, FKP will expand its collaboration with CTS stablemate DreamHaus by forming a strategic partnership to co-promote the Rock am Ring/Rock im Park and Hurricane/Southside festivals together in the future. Previously, DreamHaus and FKP Scorpio had already jointly organised the Tempelhof Sounds Festival in Berlin in 2022.

“We have always valued FKP Scorpio as a partner and are very much looking forward to further expanding our trusting cooperation,” says DreamHaus CEO Matt Schwarz.

The operational planning and implementation of the respective twin festivals will remain unchanged. FKP Scorpio will continue to act as head promoter and main contact at Hurricane/Southside and DreamHaus in cooperation with eventimpresents and Argo Konzerte at Rock am Ring/Rock im Park.

“We have worked closely with DreamHaus as equals from the very beginning,” adds Koopmans. “We face similar challenges at the festivals, and it is only logical that we use synergies to position ourselves even better on the market.”

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