Greenhouse Talent reveals Spoorpark Live expansion
Greenhouse Talent has revealed plans to expand the annual Spoorpark LIVE from a festival weekend into a week-long event at the end of June 2025.
The 12,500-capacity Dutch festival was launched in Tilburg’s Spoorpark in June 2022 with a primary focus on domestic acts. After the second edition in 2023, the event was acquired by Greenhouse Talent – the biggest independent promoter in Benelux.
The firm now works on Spoorpark LIVE with another leading independent This Is Live Group, whose portfolio includes Paaspop, Extrema, Solar Weekend, WiSH Outdoor, SMÈRRIG, and Elektrum.
Following the acquisition, Greenhouse introduced the first-ever international headliners to the festival in 2023: English reggae and pop legends UB40. This year, Massive Attack and Young Fathers brought the international flavour.
“It was always our intention to expand the festival into a multi-date event,” Greenhouse Talent chief operating officer Wouter de Wilde tells IQ. “We wanted to turn the weekend festival into a series of events during one week and we are streamlining our site management and production to do this.
“It was always our intention to expand the festival into a multi-date event”
“The ability to do a multi-day event in the heart of a Dutch city is very unique, as we don’t see many events like this in city centres. This also gives us the opportunity to do weekdays which is helpful for tour routings. The end of June is a very busy touring period, so we are delighted that we can do this event in this timeframe.”
Canadian singer-songwriter and musician Bryan Adams is the first confirmed artist for Spoorpark LIVE 2025, with more to be announced in January.
“Bryan Adams is a very strong artist with an even stronger fanbase in our territory,” continues Wilde. “He has a proven record of great live shows which keep his fans coming for more.”
The news rounds off a successful year for Greenhouse Talent, with highlights including headline shows with Taylor Swift at Johan Cruijff ArenA in Amsterdam and two Rammstein shows.
“I think it’s actually one of the biggest years we have had,” says Wilde, whose slate has also included the summer Zuiderpark Live show series in The Hague and the returning C2C: Country to Country festival in Rotterdam in March, with arena shows for Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds and Bryan Adams coming up.
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Bid to earmark new permanent Dutch festival site
The team behind Dutch venue 013 is working to identify a new, permanent outdoor location to host concerts and festivals in the Netherlands.
The plan, which has the support of the local authority, involves finding a site near the city of Tilburg with a capacity of 30,000 to 35,000, which would be operated and programmed by 013.
013 first approached the municipality with three large-scale, permanent outdoor concepts: a plug and play concert venue, a festival site for large events and an open-air concert site for A-list artists, but have since consolidated their plans into one idea.
“There is a need for open-air locations,” says 013 director Frens Frijns, as per VNPF. “You should think of artists who also perform concerts in [Amsterdam’s] Ziggo Dome. We receive these signals at 013 and it is our wish and our dream to bring those great artists here.”
According to Frijns, establishing a permanent plug and play venue is more sustainable than building a festival site that then has to be dismantled.
“There is no dot on the horizon. There is a dream on the horizon.’
“Consider the emissions from trucks when delivering and removing items, but also practical advantages such as the fact that the power cables are already there,” he says. “[Promoter] MOJO has calculated that 47% of C02 emissions at festivals come from production.”
Frijns, who stresses that further research is required before a specific site is able to be earmarked, has enlisted Rotterdam-based design agency West8 to assist with the project.
“The idea of this open air venue is that it is recorded in a specially developed landscape park where performances can be performed in various places and which is designed in such a way that noise pollution is limited,” he adds.
“I jokingly dropped the date of 2 May 2030, but that is purely fictional. The renovation of 013 in 2015 was completed in eight months, so if the municipality is behind it, it can happen quickly. But there is no dot on the horizon. There is a dream on the horizon.”
Opened in 1998, Tilburg’s 013 is home to a 3,000-cap concert hall and a 700-cap smaller stage.
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