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Woodstock 50 Founder Claims Investors "Illegally Swept" $17 Million From Festival
Woodstock 50 founder Michael Lang says investor Dentsu Aegis sabotaged the festival.
- WORDS
- Alex Brown
Woodstock 50 has been making headlines in the music world for all of the wrong reasons.
Initially, investor Dentsu Aegis said the festival had be cancelled, then festival founder Michael Lang fired back by stating they had no right to say such a thing. Now, Rolling Stone reports that according to Lang, the investors have stolen a whopping $17 million from the festival's bank account.
In his five-page note, Michael claims that he had “concerns” with working with Dentsu initially, stating “Corporations are not always the right match for certain creative endeavors.” However, he eventually decided to work with Dentsu, saying they had “pursued various social initiatives after certain tragedies and scandals,” giving him confidence that they would be a perfect fit for the festival.
Lang was then presented with a contract that for “optic reasons” made Dentus investment arm Amplifi both a co-producer and financier for the festival. Everything seemed to be going fine, until Dentsu “blocked this sale for no apparent reason.”
“Together, our organizations faced a question of cash flow since Dentsu had not been successful in selling sponsorships for the Woodstock Festival,” Lang writes in his letter to Dentsu. “To fill this void, my side had been working to obtain completion financing and based upon the feedback we had been getting were confident we would be successful. We communicated this to your people. We had also been working on value engineering the site to improve the economics. By Friday, April 26th, 2019, we presented multiple plans illustrating a slight profit and substantiated these plans with supporting documents. However, for reasons not explained to us, it seemed to fall on deaf ears.”
Three days later, the festival was cancelled, which is where Lang learned that Amplfi “illegally swept approximately $17 million from the festival bank account, leaving the festival in peril.”
When all is said and done, Lang has estimated that the festival needs about $30 million by this Friday to be saved, claiming that CID Entertainment is now handling the festival. All signs are pointing to that this festival will not be happening, but be on the lookout for more updates.
