The annual music, comedy and oddity confab Fun Fun Fun Fest is looking to add another layer of fun. Word comes from the Statesman that the Transmission Events-helmed November gathering has brokered a deal with Austin-based Stratus Properties, developer of the W Hotel, to inject an undisclosed amount of cash into project starting this year.
Although exact terms of the deal have not been revealed, Stratus Properties will now have a partial ownership stake in Transmission Events, whose co-founder James Moody has become a luminary in the overflowing Austin music scene.
“The way the festival business works, no money changes hands for nine months out of the year, and then there's really intense cash flow for a short period of time, so just having access to resources for that will be huge,” Moody told Billboard. “And we've had a lot of ideas but we've been limited. So if we're going to bring back Dio from the dead for the festival, now we have a partner to talk about that with.”
Fun Fun Fun Fest, held at Auditorium Shores has been the younger sibling of the city’s tourist-attracting and economy-boosting attractions, bringing in smaller numbers than Austin City Limits and SXSW, but more than 55,000 people attended Fun Fun Fun last year, according to the Austin Convention and Visitors Bureau.
Moody (who owns Mohawk), proffers the business deal as a way to provide “a bit of a career path” for artists, telling Billboard:
You do inside at Mohawk, then inside at Red 7, then outside at Red 7, then outside at Mohawk. Then you sell that out and you go to a new place we're now building on East Fifth Street, then you go to ACL Live and Fun Fun Fun Fest. In the past we'd end with them when they sell out Mohawk, because there's a giant gap between a 1000-head room and the fest.
This year’s Fun Fun Fun Fest will be held at Auditorium Shores the weekend of November 8.
Fun Fun Fun Fest enters deal with Stratus Properties.
One of Austin's most popular brunch spots is throwing in the towel when its lease ends.