The Governors Ball Music Festival is a multi-day music festival held on Randall’s Island in New York City. The festival began in 2011 and features a wide array of musical genres, including rock, electronic, hip-hop, indie, Americana, pop, folk, and more. In 2016, Governors Ball Music Festival attracted 50,000 music fans for 2 days of music. Evidently, this generates a sizeable economic impact to New York City, which is measured in this comprehensive economic impact study of the event and its operations.

The study of Governors Ball includes the impact of Founders Entertainment’s annual operations and the impact of out-of-town festival attendee spending. The result of the study demonstrated that in just a few days, The Governors Ball Music Festival generates a staggering amount of economic activity throughout New York City.

This year, The Governors Ball Music Festival generated an impact of $37.5 million, where $24.8 million was generated by attendee spending alone. This impact is impressive, especially considering that inclement weather caused the final day of the festival due to be cancelled due to unsafe conditions. Included in the report, is a potential economic impact analysis, which demonstrates the increased impact that would have taken place if it were not for this cancellation.

Since AngelouEconomics was hired by Founders Entertainment in 2013 to evaluate the annual economic impact of The Governors Ball Music Festival on New York City’s economy, this long term partnership enables the impacts to be measured on an annual basis. Since 2014, The Governors Ball Music Festival has generated $125.2 million to New York City, which is quite impressive considering that this impact is produced by just eight days of music!