KAABOO Del Mar sells out for first time in festival's history; 30 performances to be live-streamed

KAABOO Del Mar sells out for first time in festival’s history; 30 performances to be live-streamed

San Diego Union-Tribune

Sept. 13, 2018 9:20 AM PT

KAABOO Del Mar, which kicks off its fourth annual edition Friday at the Del Mar Racetrack and adjacent fairgrounds, has sold out for the first time in the four-year-old event’s history.

All one-day, two-day and three-day passes — including the top-price Ultimate Hang passes, which cost $15,000 each — were sold as of Thursday morning.

No passes will be for sale at the box office, but KAABOO has partnered with the makers of a new app, FlipTix, to enable a limited number of attendees who leave the festival early to sell the remaining time left on their passes for others to buy and use.

KAABOO, which runs Friday through Sunday, is being headlined this year by Imagine Dragons, Robert Plant, Katy Perry and Foo Fighters.

No previous edition of the Del Mar festival has sold out, whether in advance or during the festival weekend.

“Reaching a full sell-out will be a major milestone for us at KAABOO,” said Jason Felts, the festival’s Chief Brand and Marketing Officer, in a statement released Thursday.

Just how many passes constitute a sell-out — and how many people will attend the event this weekend — remains unclear.

“KAABOO does not release attendance numbers,” a festival spokeswoman told the Union-Tribune Thursday morning, in response to an email query. “The festival kindly requests that hard numbers are not reported.”

Those unable to attend KAABOO in person this weekend will be able to watch and listen to 30 performances at the festival — free of charge — including those by Perry, Plant, Imagines Dragons, Halsey and Post Malone.

They will be live-streamed through Stingray Qello, KAABOO’s exclusive streaming partner for the festival. The streams can be viewed on smart phones, tablets, game consoles, media players and smart TVs.

george.varga@sduniontribune.com

Twitter @georgevarga

Music

George Varga

San Diego Union-Tribune music critic George Varga began drumming in rock bands at 12 and writing professionally about music at 15. A Louisiana native who grew up mostly in Germany, Varga has earned three Pulitzer Prize nominations for his writing at the U-T and is a voting member of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. In addition to providing live coverage of the Grammy Awards and festivals from Coachella and KAABOO to the 1994 edition of Woodstock, he has interviewed everyone from Miles Davis, Britney Spears and (over a game of chess) Ray Charles to Willie Nelson, Kanye West and Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Anthony Davis. A triple first prize-winner for criticism and arts writing at the 2022 and 2023 San Diego Press Club awards and a double first prize-winner at the 2022 and 2023 San Diego Society of Professional Journalists awards, Varga is also a contributing writer for Jazz Times magazine and has written for Billboard, Spin and other publications. After attending San Diego City College and San Diego State University, he created and taught the 2002 UC San Diego Extension course, “Jazz in a Post-Ken-Burns World.” Varga has written liner notes for more than a dozen albums, including by jazz sax greats James Moody and Michael Brecker, and contributed two chapters to the book, “Dylan: Disc By Disc.”