{"id":485685,"date":"2019-05-10T06:34:32","date_gmt":"2019-05-10T12:34:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rollingstone.com\/?p=833666"},"modified":"2019-05-10T06:34:32","modified_gmt":"2019-05-10T12:34:32","slug":"woodstock-50s-last-stand-6-key-things-we-learned-from-new-court-papers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kqzr\/music-news\/woodstock-50s-last-stand-6-key-things-we-learned-from-new-court-papers\/","title":{"rendered":"Woodstock 50\u2019s Last Stand: 6 Key Things We Learned From New Court Papers"},"content":{"rendered":"
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A week and a half after investor Dentsu Aegis announced it was pulling the plug on Woodstock 50<\/a>, the festival\u2019s organizers fired back at the company on Wednesday through the courts. In a filing with the Supreme Court of New York<\/a>, the festival requested an injunction that would, among other things, force Dentsu to hand over $17.8 million in disputed funds and continue work on the festival. A hearing on the matter is expected to take place on Monday in New York.<\/p>\n

Woodstock<\/a>\u2019s filing contains many surprising revelations as to why the festival became imperiled, both in its pleas to the court and its attached evidence, a Financing and Production Agreement between the festival and Dentsu subsidiary Amplifi. Although it contains concrete examples about how the two companies worked together, it also raised many questions about who was at fault. Although those issues will ultimately be settled by the Supreme Court, we\u2019ve gone through the filing and highlighted six key items that offer insight into the war over Woodstock. (A rep for Dentsu declined to comment on the injunction request.)<\/p>\n

1. This may be Woodstock\u2019s last stand<\/strong>. Until the petition was filed, Woodstock 50 organizers, especially founder Michael Lang, were publicly expressing confidence in finding an additional backer or backers for the festival. But the petition makes it clear that Woodstock 50 may fold up its psychedelic tent if the court does not force Dentsu to fork over $6 to $9 million from the festival\u2019s bank account. \u201cThe loss of W50\u2019s one-time opportunity to stage the festival cannot be recompensed through monetary damages,\u201d organizers write in the petition. \u201cAbsent the grant of injunctive relief, including the restoration of the festival\u2019s funding for production costs, W50 will not have the opportunity to stage this iconic and unique event.\u201d Without the funds, they add, Woodstock 50 planners \u201cwill be unable to produce the festival, secure the permits, retain the talent and attract the ticket purchasers.\u201d The court order is now a do-or-die situation for the festival.<\/p>\n

2. Capacity limitations may have been a sticking point between Woodstock 50 and Dentsu.<\/strong> When Woodstock 50 and Dentsu drafted up their production agreement, one of the provisions said that the \u201capproved budget\u201d would be based on the assumption that the fest could sell 150,000 tickets. The companies were to regroup this past March to decide whether that number was still accurate. \u201cIf \u2026 the projection for the festival\u2019s ticket sales should be increased or decreased by more than 30,000 tickets from the original assumption of 150,000 tickets \u2026 the [companies] will adjust the approved budget.\u201d A source close to Schuyler county representatives told Rolling Stone<\/em> that Watkins Glen International, where the festival was supposed to take place, had told Woodstock 50 that it could accommodate only 75,000 \u2013 100,000 people. The county would only permit 75,000. It\u2019s safe to assume that if the original expected turnout were cut in half (meaning half the possible revenue from tickets), Dentsu might not have been happy with those prospects. It\u2019s unknown, though, what happened in March between the two parties with regard to adjusting the projected budget.<\/p>\n

3. Organizers admit everything wasn\u2019t going swimmingly.<\/strong> The petition maintains that the festival was \u201cproceeding apace with planning and implanting key logistics to produce the festival.\u201d But it admits there were \u201csignificant issues\u201d yet to be worked out. As of the day of filing, the festival still did not have permits for the venue in Watkins Glen, New York, and not a single ticket had gone on sale \u2014 a perilous situation for a multi-day festival scheduled to take place in just a little over three months.<\/p>\n

4. It\u2019s still unclear which artists will be obligated to perform.<\/strong> A clause in the petition explains that the organizers \u201cshall jointly enter into agreements with the following major vendors,\u201d which include \u201cartists receiving more than $500,000 to perform at the festival.\u201d Which acts may be legally forced to play the festival \u2014 and which ones could wriggle out of it \u2014 remains a major cloud hanging over Woodstock 50. Some lesser-known acts have told Rolling Stone<\/em> they signed only with Woodstock \u2014 which means they would be legally obligated to perform with Dentsu out of the picture \u2014 but reps for three major talent agencies \u2014 CAA, WME and Paradigm \u2014 told Billboard<\/em><\/a> that their clients are signed only with Dentsu. (Woodstock organizers insist that every artist has at least Woodstock 50 LLC as a signatory to the contract.) If the latter situation concerns some of the big names involved in the undisclosed agreements with Dentsu, Woodstock 50 could lose some of its headline acts.<\/p>\n

5. It\u2019s unclear who controls the money.<\/strong> One of Woodstock 50\u2019s major complaints is that Dentsu allegedly withdrew $17,800,000 from the \u201cFestival Bank Account.\u201d The financing and production agreement the festival\u2019s lawyers included in its filing defines the Festival Bank Account as one to be used for event-related revenue (other than that from ticket sales). Amplifi, the Dentsu subsidiary working with Woodstock 50, was to create this account, and in one section of the contract, the language says, \u201cAmplifi shall control all payments from the Festival Bank Account. \u2026 Woodstock 50 will be granted read-only access to the Festival Bank Account.\u201d<\/p>\n

This raises many questions since Woodstock 50 claims Amplifi allegedly stole from it. If Dentsu is the company that controls the account, and Woodstock 50 has read-only access, what does it matter if the money is in it or not? From the way the account is described in the contract, it reads as though Woodstock 50 wouldn\u2019t be able to control it, though it\u2019s unclear if there are any further amendments to the agreement.<\/p>\n

6. Woodstock 50 claims Dentsu took the nuclear option in deciding to exit the festival.<\/strong> The production contract between Woodstock 50 and Dentsu states that \u201cany decision to cancel the festival shall be jointly made in writing by the parties.\u201d Dentsu claimed authority to cancel the festival, according to the injunction request, by invoking the \u201ccontrol option\u201d (a nuclear option) of the two companies\u2019 production agreement. The language in the contract asserts that if Woodstock 50 engaged in a \u201cserial breach\u201d of the contract and did not get Amplifi\u2019s approval for certain matters, the contract would be canceled. \u201cAmplifi shall \u2026 have the option to take full control of the operation and production of the festival by a notice in writing to Woodstock 50 and cause Woodstock 50 and its officers and employees to cease all festival-related activity.\u201d<\/p>\n

Woodstock\u2019s lawyers claim Dentsu staged a two-pronged \u201cattack\u201d on the festival on April 29th. Its lawyers sent two letters to Woodstock 50. One claimed that it was invoking the \u201ccontrol option\u201d in its contract with the festival. The second said that with the authority of the control option, it was canceling the event. Since the letters are not public, it\u2019s unclear what grounds Dentsu stated as reasons why it should be allowed control of the festival. Woodstock\u2019s legal filing claims that it was not a mutual decision and alleges that Dentsu illegally shut it down. \u201cNo such joint decision was ever made, much less memorialized in a writing,\u201d Woodstock 50\u2019s lawyer wrote in the filing. \u201cIndeed, to the contrary, at every point in time, W50 has stated its intention that the festival must go on.\u201d Since Dentsu invoked the \u201ccontrol option\u201d in the production contract, though, it may have had the right. The Court will have to draw a conclusion on this next week.<\/p>\n

via:: Rolling Stone<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A week and a half after investor Dentsu Aegis announced it was pulling the plug on Woodstock 50, the festival\u2019s organizers fired back at the company on Wednesday through the courts. In a filing with the Supreme Court of New York, the festival requested an injunction that would, among other things, force Dentsu to hand […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[56],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-485685","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-music-news"},"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-19 00:36:06","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KQZR - The Reel","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kqzr","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kqzr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/485685","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kqzr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kqzr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kqzr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kqzr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=485685"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kqzr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/485685\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kqzr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=485685"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kqzr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=485685"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kqzr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=485685"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}