UTA’s Kevin Gimble Talks Kaskade’s SoFi Stadium Opener: ‘A Thing Of Beauty’

Michael Tullberg / Getty Images – Kaskade SoFi
Electronic music artist Kaskade performs at SoFi Stadium on July 17, 2021 in Inglewood, California.

Kaskade has been a ground-breaking touring artist for well more than a decade now, making history as the first electronic artist to headline Staples Center, bringing in Coachella’s then-biggest crowd in 2015, having his own Sun Soaked festival and having the ability to sell hard tickets across the world.

Still, it may have been a surprise to some that the DJ otherwise known as Ryan Raddon was headlining his own July 17 show at SoFi Stadium, the new home of the Los Angeles Rams and Chargers — the first public, ticketed concert there to boot. That he’d sell out the show’s 30,000 tickets on short notice is all the more impressive when considering Kaskade was very busy during the pandemic, with six drive-in shows at the Drive-In OC in Anaheim in October, which moved 6,732 tickets and grossed just under $500,000, along with a March 2021 performance at Ubbi Dubbi festival in Texas and even a June 2020 performance at the Grand Canyon.

The Kaskade show, along with other notable stadium shows by electronic artists like fellow UTA client Illenium selling 40,000 tickets for a July 3 opening show at Las Vegas’ Allegiant Stadium, three upcoming Rufus Du Sol shows at Banc of California Stadium in November and still others show the strength of electronic music as a thriving genre despite a lingering pandemic. Just the following day, Los Angeles went back to requiring face coverings at gatherings.

Kaskade’s longtime agent, UTA electronic music co-head Kevin Gimble, gave Pollstar a deeper look into the stadium show, which even had a surprise opening set from electronic music staple Deadmau5.

Pollstar: How did the Kaskade SoFi show come together, how did you know it was a good idea, and what was it like leading up to the event?

Kevin Gimble: An opportunity presented itself for Kaskade to perform the first ticketed concert at SoFi and I instantly knew that the show needed to happen. Kaskade has had so many groundbreaking milestones throughout his career in the LA area. He was the first Electronic artist to headline and sell out the Staples Center and the LA Convention Center, he drew the largest-ever crowd on Coachella’s main stage at the time in 2015, and blew out 30,000 tickets at the on-sale of his own artist-curated festival Sun Soaked. He has always had a desire to top his previous achievements, and there were high expectations for his next big moment in LA, so opening up SoFi felt like a logical choice. Normally a show of this magnitude would have needed at least six months of planning. However, we only had six weeks, so all the focus shifted to nailing down the logistics of the execution. There was plenty of anticipation, anxiety and excitement leading into the Presale day. When we crossed the 20K ticket mark two hours in, we realized that the fans were just as excited about the show as we were, and we wanted to make sure that the event lived up to its hype.

How was the show? Can you share the capacity/tickets sold?

Michael Tullberg / Getty Images – Kaskade
Kaskade’s July 17 show at SoFi Stadium shows the ability of top electronic talent about to scale up to even bigger venues.

The show was extremely emotional. From start to finish, this was an all-hands-on-deck team effort between us, Kaskade’s management and the Insomniac Events crew. With only six weeks in between inception and the performance, and given that SoFi Stadium had never hosted a ticketed concert to date, it was a thing of beauty to witness. The capacity for this event was ~30,000. All tickets sold out at the presale, which was particularly impressive since consumers needed a password to purchase tickets.

Do you see a trend for more electronic artists to play big one-off shows like this, or stadiums? Kaskade has had a lot of interesting and unique shows during the pandemic, but can we expect more going forward?

Yes! As displayed with SoFi and all his previous tentpole moments, Kaskade has proven his ability to constantly raise the bar, and we should expect nothing less from him in the future. The morning after the show, Kaskade’s manager Ryan Henderson and I were already plotting our next big moment for him.

Do you have other similarly large shows coming up you can mention?

Yes we do, but nothing I am free to discuss just yet. All I can say is watch this space. #K5