In the hometown of Ultra Music Festival and Winter Music Conference, and in the same universe as well-established festivals such as Coachella and Pitchfork, Erica Freshman and David Sinopoli thought there was a room for a new kind of music experience.
In 2013, they started III Points Festival in Miami’s Wynwood neighborhood, intentionally forging an identity separate from South Beach’s party culture by focusing on three points: music, art, and technology.
Sinopoli, 32, and Freshman, 38, are both veterans of Miami’s nightlife and music scene. In the festival’s first year, they used their connections to line up attention-getting headliners James Murphy of LCD Soundsystem and Jamie XX, as well as blue-chip sponsors in Red Bull and Samsung. The first event came together in just three months. “We learned everything on a fly,” Sinopoli says. “That’s the thing: It’s beautiful chaos. You could see at the end of the first day it had caught fire.”
They took the leap to working full-time on the festival, stretching it to three days instead of two, and have seen it grow exponentially. It drew just 2,500 people in 2013, and now expects to draw 35,000 at this year’s event in October. The date comes at a strategic point in the calendar: after the summer festivals but before Coachella.
New sponsors have caught on to the concept as well. In 2015, BMW set up a racetrack and skating rink within the 40,000-square-foot sound stage that hosted the festival, where people could test drive electric cars and then roller skate. The two areas were tied together with a colorful digital mural. Another sponsor, the beer brand Beck’s, set up teepee-style lounges for fans. “It didn’t feel forced at all,” Sinopoli says. “We like when the sponsor comes in and has functionality and added components for the consumer.”
They have already started planning the 2017 event. “We went from having three months to do the festival to working a year and a half out,” Freshman says. “It validates that we’re here to stay.”
Adds Sinopoli, “I could see myself doing this project for the rest of my life.”
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