We heard it in August, when City Council unanimously voted to let city council negotiate an ACL two weekender with C3. Then we hear it on Monday, when ACL announced it had created a two-weekend ACL Festival. Well, in case there was a shadow of a doubt that it wouldn't happen, Mayor Lee Leffingwell announced today that ACL was indeed getting expanded.
Leffingwell doted on ACL for bringing in "a hundred thousand visitors with over a hundred million dollars in economic impact to our city every year," and creating over 1,400 jobs.
Also in attendance was Bob Lander, president of Austin Convention Center and Visitors Bureau. He added that ACL produces "over 2 billion positive media impressions." He added,
That kind of attention benefits those of us who market the city for leisure travel, for conventions, and all those who market to companies that wanna bring their companies here and employ Austinites. So to me, an additional weekend for is double your pleasure, double your fun, double your economic impact.
It was Charlie Jones, founder of Austin City Limits Music Festival, who actually announced the two-weekends of ACL festival next year. According to Jones, next year's dates will be October 4-6 and October 11-13.
The structure of the festival will stay mostly the same. Jones said that their goal to duplicate the festival two weekends in a row. "90% of the bands will play both weekends. It will give us the chance to fill the slots with Austin bands who haven't gotten the chance to play the festival."
He credited the increase to two weekends to "overwhelming demand."
Jones stated that Austin can can expect to see more "city activation" between the two festivals, meaning Austin will likely see a lot more live music happening around town during the off-week.
"I'm not going to say there's a 130 bands that will stay here for ten days straight," said Jones. "But I guarantee that a lot of them are."
Jones added that his company will stick to its philosophy of leaving the festival grounds better than they found it.
The early bird 3-day passes will go on sale as usual after ACL this year.
