Scoring Big
Creator of Mala Luna Music Fest scores deal with huge global festival promoter
Just eight years after it was founded, Mala Luna Music Festival creator ScoreMore Shows has been scooped up by one of the world's largest live entertainment companies. On May 30, LiveNation announced it was adding the homegrown Texas company to its impressive roster, a list that includes TicketMaster, the House of Blues brand, and C3 Presents.
As part of the deal, Live Nation will acquire the majority stake in ScoreMore, a company that promotes about 200 concerts a year and has founded three popular Texas music festivals: San Antonio's Mala Luna, the multi-city JMBYLA hip-hop festival, and El Paso's Neon Desert Music Festival. ScoreMore is also producing J. Cole's Dreamville Music Festival, which will take place in Raleigh, North Carolina, on September 15.
Financial details about the deal were not disclosed.
Co-founded in 2010 by Sascha Stone Guttfreund and Claire Bogle while they were students at the University of Texas at Austin, ScoreMore developed a reputation for booking under-the-radar turned superstar artists like Chance the Rapper, Kendrick Lamar, and J. Cole. Its reach quickly grew beyond Texas to turn ScoreMore into one of the most ambitious concert promoters in the Southern U.S.
"We started ScoreMore as teenagers and friends simply booking the artists we loved and believed in," said Guttfreund in a release announcing the news. "To have gotten our start in Austin, and ultimately be in business together with Live Nation is honestly a dream come true."
In joining forces with one of the largest event producers in the world (as its website notes, a Live Nation event happens every 18 minutes), ScoreMore's fests will join a family of music events that includes Bonnaroo, Lollapalooza, Governor's Ball, and Austin City Limits Festival.