Tomorrowland is about to make its Southeast Asian debut, and the event has already sold every ticket available. But according to Bangkok Biznews and The Nation, as first reported by Thethaiger, the festival’s organizers expect to lose money on the inaugural edition anyway.
The three-day festival runs December 11 through 13 at Wisdom Valley in Chon Buri province, with room for 50,000 attendees per day. That’s a massive buildout for a brand-new market, and it comes with a price tag to match — organizer WEAREONE.WORLD (Thailand) Co Ltd says the budget ballooned from an initial 1.6 billion baht to roughly 2 billion baht, or close to $55 million USD at current exchange rates.
Executive board member Rachata Thunyavuthi pointed to timing as the main culprit. December is peak season for outdoor events across Asia, which meant Thailand didn’t have enough staging equipment and gear in the country to pull off a production of this scale. Organizers had to import infrastructure from Singapore and Malaysia just to get the site built, driving costs well past projections. About 60 percent of that spending is tied to this first edition alone, with the remainder going toward site development meant to carry over into future years.
