"In an era where concert tickets often rival the cost of a mortgage payment, Kevin Lyman stands as a defiant anomaly. Thirty-one years after founding the Vans Warped Tour, the pop-punk patriarch is looking at the modern music industry with a mixture of confusion and frustration. And he's excited that his Warped Tour, on the comeback trail for a second straight year, is staying true to its values."
""Ticket prices have gotten so out of hand," Lyman told Fortune over a Zoom call, luxuriating in the California Sun over Zoom as New York shivered under a brutal winter. A lot has changed since he first sunset Warped Tour before bringing it back over the last two years, said Lyman, who has been teaching a music industry program at the University of Southern California for eight years."
Kevin Lyman revived the Vans Warped Tour for a second consecutive year while maintaining its original values and emphasizing affordability. Ticket prices have risen dramatically, making large-scale nationwide touring financially and logistically impractical in the 2020s. The new Warped model prioritizes destination weekend events and expansion into Mexico and Canada to adapt to modern costs. Nostalgia for the tour’s 1990s lineups and low ticket prices persists among fans. Lyman combines industry experience with an academic role teaching music industry students and expresses frustration at broader social inhumanity affecting the community.
Read at Fortune
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