UPDATED: Behind Tomorrowland’s expansion: Robert Sillerman’s SFX forms joint venture with ID&T North America

When the news of Tomorrowland’s international expansion broke, the prayers of dance music fans worldwide had been answered. In another respect, the massive move raised questions; mainly the question of “Who is behind the scenes that could be powering a global endeavor?” With Robert Sillerman’s purchases of The Opium Group and Miami Marketing Group that landed his SFX Entertainment a large portion of Miami’s nightlife operation, it had been made clear that the predicted arms race of EDM entities had begun.

That is when we dug deep enough to answer our own, aforementioned question — Sillerman’s SFX has acquired the North American division of ID&T. formed a joint venture with ID&T to create it’s North American division.

ID&T couldn’t bring Sensation to America on their own, so they had partnered with Live Nation for the inaugural event. Suspecting corporate involvement once again, we searched the State of Delaware’s Division of Corporations and found an entity titled SFX-IDT N.A. HOLDING LLC. Being a “holding corporation,” it is clear that SFX has not entirely purchased ID&T, but has acquired a portion of it, which appears to be North America (hence the N.A.).

The Limited Liability Corporation was registered on December 20th, 2012, and the timing supports what we can infer from the entity’s title. SFX-IDT was registered less than one month before one of Belgium’s biggest websites broke the Tomorrowland news — but more importantly, only four months after ID&T CEO Duncan Stutterheim hinted at an acquisition with his “we’re talking to everyone” comment.

“For us, the U.S. is one of the most important markets; it’s going to be the biggest EDM market in the world. Our plan is to introduce ourselves with the Sensation event [in October]. At that point, we can announce who our partner is going to be for the future in the U.S.” – Duncan Stutterheim

It is likely that SFX will not only be bringing Tomorrowland to North America, but they will presumably continue Sensation’s stateside reign and could potentially bring us any of ID&T’s infamous events including, but not limited to, Mysteryland, Amazone Project, and Dirty Dutch.

As for the EDM arms race that began with Sillerman’s purchase of DayGlow and lead to the present rumors of an Insomniac buyout, it appears that big spenders have opened their wallets — but we will bring you more from dance music’s big business persona as it comes our way.

UPDATED 1/16/2013: According to Link2Party, who received an official quote from Duncan Stutterheim earlier today, the SFX and ID&T partnership is a joint venture and that ID&T has not officially been acquired by Sillerman. ID&T also plans to open an office in Brooklyn, NY – adding more fuel to the Tomorrowland USA rumor mill.

Tip: Albert Berdellans, Jesse Grushack, Boyd Baptist



Categories: News