Cream Thinks Outdoor Events Are Tasty Deal

The Cream Group, a leading U.K. dance nightclub operator, recently hinted that it plans to commit less to its well-known weekly indoor sessions and invest more in large outdoor dance festivals.

The owners of Cream, which began as an obscure club night in the Beatles' native city of Liverpool 10 years ago, insist that the proposed shift doesn't signify a business going sour. It simply confirms that the sweetness in techno dance music increasingly lies in the big outdoor festivals and events that Europe is now famous for.

"Ten years on, it is time to re-evaluate where we are going as a company and assess where that fits into today's market," Cream Group CEO James Barton said in a statement. "It's clear that young people want so much more from the Cream experience."

The Cream Group stamped its credentials as a pioneer in the U.K.'s thriving dance culture with its weekly Cream nights at such venues as Liverpool's Nation. Five years ago, it expanded the brand by entering the open-air dance-music festival scene with its annual Creamfields events.

It's business as usual for the Cream-promoted live music played at the Lomax Live Venue next door. But on July 23, the company entered a 30-day review to re-examine the fate of its weekly DJ dance nights at Nation, which will close down until Aug. 31. Yet at a time when the international media sector is bleeding from a badly wounded advertising market and global record sales continue to slump, Cream believes large-scale outdoor events are really the crème de la crème.

"This is evident from the massive success of Creamfields over the last five years," Barton continues. In addition, he points to the popularity of Cream's summer residency at clubs in Ibiza, the exotic island near Spain that has become an international club heaven (and haven) for dance-music lovers in the summer. And to celebrate its 10th birthday, there is the Cream X 10 arena tour, a combination of indoor and outdoor dates packaged as a once-in-a-lifetime event to experience.

The increasing importance of the big-scale open-air festivals and one-off events is Cream's acknowledgement of a trend in Europe. In July, the free Big Beach Boutique, described as Europe's largest beach party and partly backed by British mega-DJ Fatboy Slim, attracted a mammoth gathering of 250,000 dance fans. The organizers had predicted 60,000. Ministry of Sound, another U.K. nightclub pioneer positioning itself as a media and entertainment group, has started putting on big-event dance festivals in recent years.

MTV Networks Europe has been capitalizing on its high-profile music-TV brand and extended its growing links to clubbers this year with the launch of Isle of MTV, an 11-city Pan-European club tour. The tour's flagship main event took place July 20 outdoors near the Belem Tower in the Portuguese capital of Lisbon.

And it is this trend for the big picture, instead of a reliance on regular weekly indoor gigs, that is encouraging the Cream Group to take its Creamfields festivals global. This year's Creamfields U.K. and Creamfields Dublin in the Republic of Ireland take place Aug. 24 and Aug. 31, respectively. "This being our fifth Creamfields [in the U.K.], we wanted to once again try and push the event forward, making it appeal to an even wider audience," Barton explains. "This year will see more live acts playing on an outdoor stage . . . we felt that the bands needed a bit more than a tent can provide."

The group took the format to the Czech Republic for the first time Aug. 9. The Czech show, which was held at the Roundnice nad Labem Airfield Ground near Prague, entertained 20,000 fans. Dance favorites Faithless and Underworld are headlining all three Creamfields dates. Other high-profile DJs burning vinyl include Pete Tong, X-Press2, Judge Jules, and Sasha. Live performances will come from British female garage queens Mis-Teeq, Layo & Bushwacka!, and Dirty Vegas.

Previous international forays for Creamfields include Buenos Aires, which will be repeated in November. The only serious setback has been attempts to conquer the U.S. market.

Ambitions to bring Creamfields to Las Vegas and New York in 2001 collapsed. But a spokesperson said the U.S. objective is still intact, and a Creamfields might be staged there in 2003.