Rolling Stone has acquired a majority stake in Life Is Beautiful, the annual music and arts festival staged in downtown Las Vegas.
The sale — terms of which were not disclosed — is part of larger effort at both Rolling Stone, and its parent company Penske Media Corporation, to make further inroads in the live event space. While Life Is Beautiful will continue to take place each year in Vegas, Rolling Stone plans to bring it to new territories and expand the festival’s digital footprint.
“Live events have to have the ability to tell stories and create a narrative and impact through content just beyond the event itself that happens once a year,” says Rolling Stone CEO Gus Wenner. “So I think the combination of Rolling Stone, with our scale of over 60 million readers, and our ability as a journalistic outfit, to combine that skillset with an unbelievable live event that attracts 180,000 people a year — that’s new territory and really, really compelling.”
